I like to watch some of the things people are talking about when it comes to SEO. Lately the biggest discussions between webmasters and SEO consultants is the ideal that Google will eventually be dropping page rank from their entire algorithm.
The biggest question on everyone’s mind is, “if Google drops Page Rank and stops taking backlinks into consideration; how will Google determine whether or not a website should have authority and how it should be ranking in the search index”.
The reality is, Google will never remove the consideration of backlinks, what they will do is start putting more emphasis on relevancy of content and social influence. This means each specific page will be ranked on the relevancy of the topic. Also, if your article has a lot of social influence such as Tweets, Likes and most importantly Google + it will rank higher as opposed to someone who has little to no relevancy and social influence.
The one major drawback in this situation for example is if you blog on many subjects and have no specific niche. When this is the case you can in fact rank lower overall for your entire site or blog. Blog Engage would rank extremely well for Blogging, Blog Community and other keywords we have high relevancy for. Sadly our story pages that are not relevant to that topic would rank less and perhaps in some cases not much at all.
I’ve also seen Google making huge changes on how they rank sites based on usability from a users standpoint and a search bot standpoint. Making your site fast, easy to navigate and easy for bots to crawl is one step you must take in order to ensure your site ranks well in the Google search engine. So overall making your site easier to crawl and find individual pages is considered as an effective search engine optimization strategy.
No one knows the direction Google is going; we have to agree with the power of social media and the influence it has on today’s society Google will be taking this new technology and media platform into consideration. How much Google will take it into consideration is really unknown, we just know it has to start playing a larger role in determining search engine rankings and authority.
I find one of the greatest things about Google is how much they have become an truly unpredictable company and how much the industry relies on their ability to decipher from what is good content and what is poor quality content. It truly amazes me how they have been able to take billions of search results and find the top articles for presentation to their end users.
What’s your opinion on the subject? Do you think Google will be reducing the importance of backlinking and moving more towards the idea of relevancy and authority? Do you think social influences will start playing a larger part of search engine ranking and if so how do you feel about that? Let me know your thoughts I would love to hear your feedback.
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
About
Hi There my name is Brian, I'm the owner of Blog Engage. I own a personal blog about SEO and Marketing. Make sure to follow blogengage on twitter @blogengage and like us on facebook. Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017
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Suresh Khanal
September 20th, 2012
Social signals are certainly going to have higher value to the ranking compared to traditional back link counting. After all, the signals are feedback of real users and not an anonymous link back pointing to my page. I hope, Google will be able to present better relevant content in this way.
The role of keywords won’t be removed but I suspect Google will put any value to linking in long run. Let’s see what’s there in unpredictable G’s head!
Suresh Khanal recently posted..Best Ways to Start Making Money Online (dofollow)
bbrian017
September 20th, 2012
Hi Suresh , seems were both on the same page. I heard there’s another penguin update happening within the next few days it will be interesting to see what happens when it’s all said and done. I’m excited for these changes and can’t wait to see what the guru’s say and how we can start ranking better within the new system.
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Michael Davis
September 20th, 2012
For those of you who have been proactive in your link building, and focused on relevant sites using the Google Directory, searches or a tool like PR Prowler it means, “stay the course”. Those of you who have been building or buying links based only on PageRank with little concern for it’s location, or how it is presented – you will need to adjust your link building efforts accordingly.
bbrian017
September 21st, 2012
Buying links is the worst you can do. The only way you should purchase links is #1. They are No Follow and are for promotional purposed not ranking purposes. It’s always good to diversify that backlink portfolio so it’s No Follow and Do Follow. If not it’s unnatural and Google will catch on.
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Chuck Jones
September 20th, 2012
Thanks for clearing that up Michael I was wondering about that.
Rich
September 23rd, 2012
It definitely makes sense that Google will put more emphasis on social platforms like Twitter and Google+ in the [near] future. Thanks for sharing this, it’s definitely something to think about!
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JenaIsle
September 24th, 2012
I want to contribute what I have learned through experience about Google’s ranking. Of course, links to the more popular blogs would appear first in Google’s radars. Google’s crawler is more discerning nowadays, leading users to more legitimate links through SEO maximized sites. So called linking farms are not good for a website, because eventually Google catches up with what’s happening, and would place less value to the site. This would mean being ranked in the last pages of the SERP.
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Blazing Minds
September 24th, 2012
To be honest, it’s been a long time since I even checked my pagerank, it’s been something that used to get everyone going wild when I first started blogging over 4 years ago and these days, it’s just something that never crosses my mind, I don’t think about it when I’m writing an article, all I think about is the article, not it’s ranking etc.
Yes SEO is something that a seasoned blogger probably does without thinking about it, but as for Pagerank, who cares!
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bloomtools
September 25th, 2012
you are completely right , what google will do next ? is really the best part of google updates. for the social media part, it is really something google really gives importance, but at times even that spams, so it is better if it gives more importance to high pr and better quality sites. thanks fro sharing this post.
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Carl
September 27th, 2012
I mainly use seoMoz’s Domain Authority when evaluating the worth of potential links, I do take note of Page rank but its not my sole metric
Wedding Speeches
October 4th, 2012
Personally I think it will always be about links and not so much about social media. mainly because I can get thousands of people to share something but its a lot more harder to get 1000′s to link to you.
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George
October 22nd, 2012
well Suresh your post just came a bit earlier than the emd update. Hit the nail on the head with the post. Google is unreliable and god alone knows whats cooking up
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Martin
November 7th, 2012
I think the best balance of the whole rankings should be a mixture of everything, like original content, number of pages, number of backlinks from other quality websites, etc. That way the SEO will become more natural as basing only on a number of backlinks isn’t enough to tell how quality the website is.
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