Google has moved on big-time in the past few years. First, putting noticeable restrictions on spammers, and now to a potential death of inbound links. Companies across the world still base their SEO strategies on link building and I cant tell you how many times people approach me asking how to increase inbound links. Sure, Yahoo and MSN could still be living the early days where relevance of a site was determined by incoming links, but Google is developing something new and it could clearly be seen in their Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data patent (by the way, if you read through inventors of that patent, youll see good-old Matt Cutts thats been buzzing around the net to my great annoyance). From the document:
A system identifies a document and obtains one or more types of history data associated with the document. The system may generate a score for the document based, at least in part, on the one or more types of history data.
With this patent Google is remodelling their search algorithm and the new age of search will be based on Clickstream. In other words, Google is now able to measure user behaviour on a website by tracking clickthroughs, cached items, history, etc. Google makes it clear that the way users behave while visiting your site after finding it through a search query reflects on the relevance of that site. I have absolutely no objections to that method. So what can you do get prepared for the new wave of search algorithms
Create an inviting Description Meta Tag
While there are still some meta tag critics, I wan to encourage everyone to write a user friendly description tag. It doesnt have to contain your keywords, the sole function of it is to increase visitor CTR (click through ratio) when they see your result in their search.
Establish a solid content base
When a visitor find himself on your site, there needs to be information he/she was looking for. In other words, you mist write useful and compelling content to grab attention. This is where blogs are guaranteed to succeed, since it is a bloggers goal to write quality content.
Make your site user-friendly
There is no other way to convert visitors to regular readers other than making your site user-friendly. You should work on obvious navigation, good color scheme, and anything else that can be though of as attractive by a random visitor.
Make visitors want to bookmark your site
The patent hints that bookmarking can be though of as a measure of your sites relevance/importance. Make it easy for users to bookmark you and secure an extra returning visitor.
The path Ive just described seems abstract and mathematically unfocused. Fortunately (or unfortunately for some of us) this seems to be the way Google is headed. Ranking a site based on how visitors behave on it is a very good estimate of that sites relevance and importance. For now, we all must think in terms of the future and work for things that are yet to come. Whatever it maybe, the only sure way to high rankings is quality work and product.
Additional Sources: patent.
Ignat Drozdov is an SEO working in Washington DC, specializing in new business launches in Europe and Asia. Ignat is also an editor of .
When talking of the Jagger updates (1-3) the forums are full of people defending it in the belief that its relevancy somehow explains away the stupidity of its current state: rankings now depend on the age of a site; others refer to governmental bodies dominating the top positions. But on my own web turf the following is what Google has struggled for a year to usher in: utter irrelevance.
For weeks the returns for web site design bangkok had positions 5-9:
1) Occupying position 5 is: Bangkok hotel and Thailand travel guide. Instead of looking at the title and on-page copy they have used the link url of the designers, Web Design Copyright 2005 by Asia Web Direct Co., Ltd.
2) Occupying position 6 is: Asian Institute of Technology. This site is about advanced education in engineering and science. They do, not too unreasonably, have a web mail link which obviously deserves a high position to compete with the web designers here.
3) Occupying position 7 is: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development with a title HTTP Error 404. This is the most ludicrous of them all as its in French. This definately has a certain ring to it when searching for an English-speaking web designer in the metropolis.
4) Occupying position 8 is: The Peninsula Bangkok.This is one of Bangkoks premier hotels and nowhere on the home page is there even the mention of the word web. The hotel does, however, have a wave-shaped design and therefore should be positioned along with the citys web designers.
5) Finally, occupying position 9 is: Conference on Trade and Development. Here, they have not indexed the title of the page but have seen fit to index Free Website Stats and Website counter by WebSTAT.
Where exactly in Bangkok has the municipality created the Free Website Stats district. In the French quarter, I suspect
To date it has changed, but if you dont believe me, see http://www.v9designbuild.com/images/google_wsd.jpg to view an older screenshot of the same.
Media Director of V9 Design & Build, providing both local and outsourcing web and SEO services: we provide both brochureware and custom-designed websites, with tasteful design and branding, professional design and build, proven and successful SEO and e-marketing, e-commerce-driven database integration and content management systems.