From Zero To SEO Achieving High Rankings Through Coding

Nofollow PageRank sculpting hysteria

Bad news for SEO’s alike who believe in nofollow PageRank sculpting bullshit and sell it to clients. Matt Cutts informed that Google changed PR flow more than a year ago. Nofollow links take a part of link trust, i.e. reduce the flow of link juice.

A bolt from the blue

People are talking about the change everywhere. Many webmasters are really scared of possibility to lose the Holy Grail – PageRank. The news totally pissed some “authoritative” bloggers off. Everyone who has been at the cookie jar is inventing some “tricky workarounds”. The nofollow PageRank sculpting hysteria has infected SEO cheaters’ minds.

What to do?

If you’re not one of them, then there is nothing to do about that. Just take it as it is. Single HTML attribute doesn’t play major role in ranking. The small piece of code thrown at web community is another Google’s trick to manipulate SEOs minds. Years will pass and Google will trick webmasters again. There will be new bone for us to pick. Either you will snap at bait or go by it.

What is important?

From the search engine perspective a “good” website is a well-structured website, which is regularly updated with “kosher” content; has a number of readers (community) that grows over time; has its own brand inherited from organization, individual, or event; and has incoming links from “good” websites. Websites, which satisfy these requirements, deserve trust and high rankings.

1. Well-structured website

Search engine spider, robot, crawler, or however engineers call it, is a program. This program parses code and makes a preliminary decision regarding a website – “Is this website readable and user-friendly?” If yes, then a website has a chance to hit the top of the SERP. (I oversimplify things greatly, but you get the idea.)

The decision is made according to results of website architecture verification. Verification is done by applying predefined set of rules to a website. In other words, search engine evaluates whether website complies with “specification”, which covers syntactic aspect of website building, like navigation, internal link structure, markup validation, etc.

When you build your website according to “specification” you improve website’s ranking in the SERP. Google Webmasters Guidelines say it clearly:

“Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site.”

But you won’t find anything about nofollow links there, and what they make website’s ranking better or worse.

2. Regular updates with “kosher” content

Content is food for search engines. More food means more frequent crawling and fresh index. But it doesn’t automatically mean higher rankings. Otherwise splogs would occupy all SERPs entirely. That’s why search engines validate content and make a decision regarding its relevancy and value – “Is this website worth reading?” And you know very well, what really makes search engines to put a website on the top of the SERP is a value website delivers to visitors.

This is when validation of semantic aspect of information takes place. Search engines validate content against “predetermined visitor’s expectations”. Of course, this process is more complex than structure verification. Engines must build website’s knowledge database before assigning meaningful ranking: keywords, incoming links, anchors, etc. It takes time. That’s why new domains/websites need some blackhat help .

After relevancy and value are determined, machines are waiting for more content to appear. Fresh content allow engines to leverage knowledge and modify ranking according to it. This is never stop learning process. It means Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other companies will put more effort into semantic validation development. And no doubt that necessity of regular updates with valuable content will increase.

3. Growing community

Ranking algorithms are getting more complex over time, because engines learn how users behave. Every visitor is a tiny feedback channel. The more visitors a website has, the more feedback is provided to engines. More feedback means more accurate rankings. That’s why thousands of links won’t help a website to rank if nobody reads it.

The growing number of visitors (and other metrics) indicates that “value delivered” is real and it’s increasing. That’s the way engines confirm or disprove their “predetermined visitor’s expectations” hypothesis. Programs compare their binary understanding of value against human behavior (how they respond to value delivered) and leverage their knowledge.

Total idiots suggest removing links from comments. They wrongly assume that it saves some PageRank and improve rankings. This is the most stupid “optimization” idea I’ve ever heard. Tell me, who will comment your blogs after that? Do you really think that blog will become more attractive to readers? Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Do everything you can to comfort your community. It pays off.

4. Inherited brand

The Lama who knows the meaning of life may not know anything about SEO. But his poorly structured webpage can outrank huge religion-based scam websites, which suck juices and money from their gullible victims. The Lama has authority and respect of millions of people. Why would search engines ignore that?

Search engines take brand factor into account very seriously. If you search for you favorite band, company you work for, or hot swine flu news, most likely, you will find exactly what you’re looking for. Why it happens? People behind search engines know about brands too. They manipulate rankings to satisfy users’ needs.

Brand is a backdoor to the top of the SERPs. If you put more effort in building your own brand offline, you will succeed online too. Nothing can stop you from online victory when people know you.

5. Incoming links

It’s a fact that search engines love links. Links indicate that website has worth-linking content, i.e. provides value to readers. And valuable website deserves high rankings. But it doesn’t mean that the more incoming links a website has, the better it ranks. What makes sense is that a website has incoming links from other valuable websites and links are distributed among website’s content.

Incoming link from valuable website is an evidence of trust and value for search engines. Engines analyze “legality” of every link (paid, affiliate, organic, etc) and if a test passed, website gets some ranking credit.

Do you remember the most interesting book you’ve read? I hope you do Most likely, almost every page provides some value. The book costs money you’ve paid for. The same principle search engines apply to websites. A valuable website has many worth-linking pages. If few pages of thousand provide some value, then a website is not valuable.

How not to become a SEO victim?

The news about the nofollow PageRank sculpting revealed the dark side of SEO business. There are a lot of scammers who milk their clients. Hopefully, you can stay away from both parties. Just stay focused on people.