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Marketing
Article
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Can You Pass
Google's Credit Check?
(c) 2008 By Sean Proske
mailto:sean.proske@thewebhostcompany.com
Getting your site listed on the first
page of Google's search results is a bit like getting a loan from a
bank.
You aren't likely to be approved for a
loan if you have no income and no credit history. It's too
risky for the bank to extend credit to those who aren't worthy of
it.
Google trades in a different
currency... traffic, and just like the banks assess risk
before lending money, Google will assess risk before "lending"
traffic.
Google may not care if you've ever paid
a bill late, but make no mistake about it... they have their
own version of a credit check and you need to pass it in order to be
found in their search results.
The Google credit check is of course the
process of determining "Page Rank".
Nobody outside of Google, and probably
very few people on the inside actually know how page rank is
calculated. There are a number of factors, but exactly what
they are and how they're weighted is about as closely guarded as the
recipe for coca-cola.
We may not ever know the formula in its
entirety, but we don't need to. The most important ingredients
are always obvious. Sugar and water for coca-cola...
Relevance and Link Popularity for Google Page Rank.
Relevance is something Google is very
good at figuring out.
If you sell widgets on your site, as
long as Google has crawled it... they know your site is about
widgets and you're already in the result set for the search term
"widgets".
The problem is that no matter what you
do in terms of optimizing the content and structure of your website,
it is going to start out on the last page of the result set instead
of page 1, and that's where it will stay until you establish your
credit history (link popularity).
Google's own assessment of relevance
isn't sufficient for anything other than inclusion in a result
set. To move you up in the result set, Google has to be sure
your site will actually be perceived as relevant and important by
human beings.
That's where the link popularity comes
in. If webmasters of other sites that Google thinks are in
some way relevant to widgets see fit to send traffic to your widget
site, then that confirms to Google that human beings will perceive
relevance.
Inbound links form your credit report,
which is an indication of human perception of relevance.
That's what makes Google comfortable with sending their traffic to
you.
If you want traffic, and the top spot on
Google, then you need to get other webmasters to link to you from
relevant sites... period.
Fortunately, that is a very easy thing
to accomplish. It simply involves offering something of value
in exchange for each link you receive. There are literally
dozens of ways to do this for free... and on a massive
scale.
To learn these techniques, refer to the
other articles in this series, which are available by free
subscription to the author's newsletter.
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ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Sean Proske is the CEO of
thewebhostcompany.com. For website marketing tips subscribe to
the author's free newsletter at: http://www.thewebhostcompany.com
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