It’s shaky to build a site around ranking for keywords. Google has moved on from simply matching keyword strings in a search query to keyword strings on a web page. Search results are based on identifying searcher intent and matching what they’re trying to accomplish to a website that may help them accomplish that. Many […]
Brand is Not a Ranking Factor
I’m surprised the SEO industry continues to perpetuate the assertion that Google prefers “brands.” The word “brand” is used as if it is a ranking factor, like PageRank. This thing that SEOs call “Brand” is a symptom of a site that has their ranking factors in order. Brand is not the ranking factor itself. If […]
Rethinking Outbound Linking
For search engines, links have at least two functions. Links are a signal of relevance and links are a signal of authority (which includes a lack of authority, too!). Outlinks (links that point to a page on another site) can indicate what a web page is about. If a web page links to sites about […]
TrustRank Teardown – Is Trust a Useful Metric?
Trust is a popular metric for determining the authority level of a website or page. The concept of trust is based on a research paper by Yahoo and Stanford University researchers. TrustRank is based on the idea that good sites tend to link to other good sites. TrustRank begins with a seed set of high […]