Google - The Library Concept
Many webmasters are unaware of how Google works and the way it ranks some websites higher than other. The concept which this article introduces is how Google closely relates to the operations of a public library. Many webmasters find it difficult to master the art of search engine optimisation (SEO) to achieve the highest ranking possible on the search engine result pages (SERPs), but by understanding the concepts of how a library works, you’ll realise that only natural SEO techniques are valid to achieve this ranking.
How is Google related towards a Library?
Every webmaster should know that search engines index websites into a searchable database, just like how a book is placed into a library. A librarian would be able to categorise the book into the correct section, keeping books of the same genre together. Search engines operate just like this, except there isn’t a librarian indexing the websites, it would be a computer bot using an algorithm. So how does Google categorise your website into different genres? Google doesn’t actually have a predefined set of categories to index your website into; this is because a website could contain information on origami on one webpage and business management information on another. If Google was category related, Google wouldn’t know whether to categorise this website into the Arts & Crafts category or the Business category. Google will analyse your website such as indexing content to try and find out which websites your sites relates to within the search engine index database. The Googlebot, Google’s automatic indexing bot, will index the webpages of your sites stripping textual content and analysing keyword densities and keyword prominence. This alone isn’t good enough to categorise a website into a specific section and give a good website ranking for competitive keywords. The internal linking structure and analysis of incoming and outgoing links are very important to distinguish a broad category for your website. This will help contribute towards top 10 rankings within Google.
Books: Referencing – Websites: Linking
You probably thought outgoing links weren’t very important, seems as though you’ve probably read so many articles on the negative effects ob outgoing links from your website. Google can only categorise your website by knowing which websites yours relates to, this can only be done through linking. Placing external links on your website can have a negative effect if you’re linking to the wrong websites i.e. websites which are not related to yours. This is similar to how books reference each other. A book maybe distinguished as a reliable source if it references other books which are well known for their good quality content. If would seem very unusual for an author of an origami book to reference a book of business management. In relation to this, you should be linking (referencing) to websites which are closely related to yours and have been known for a good number of years. An author which has written more books has more experience and is most likely going to write more reliable sources in the future, therefore in search engine optimisation the age of the domain and website you are linking to can contribute greatly towards boosting your ranking within the Google index.
Valuing the Websites you are Referencing
How can I value the websites which I am linking to? There is no straight answer to this but there are numerous different factors which affect the value of the link. This includes the content placed on both the webpage receiving the link and the webpage providing the link; this can further be broken down into keyword density and keyword prominence. Two webpages from different websites which have similar keyword densities and keyword prominence values will provide a much better link, than those which are completely unrelated. Lookup the WHOIS information of the domain to find out how long the domain name has been registered, the longer it has been registered the better. Also, the longer the website has appeared within the index of Google, the better as it appears as a reliable source.
Websites to avoid Linking to
You should watch out for some of those fraudulent websites on the Internet as you do not want to be linking to these. The following list should provide a good indication of the websites which you should refrain from linking to:
- Competitor websites – Linking to competitor websites will help optimise your competitor’s website on the search engines;
- Websites which have a varied focus of content e.g. websites containing a mixture of information on origami and business management – The search engines will find it difficult on how to categorise your website;
- Webpages which have not relation to yours – The link will be completely invaluable and will not contribute towards your search engine optimisation practices;
- Webpages without any Google PageRank – The webpage you are linking to probably has very little incoming links to it and therefore has little value, therefore why link to a webpage which has little significance on the Internet;
- Websites without any Google PageRank – As mentioned above;
Choosing Websites to Link to
Go onto Google and type in a keyphrase which you would like to optimise your website for, within the top 10 results choose a website to link to which closely relates to your website. You should refrain from linking to your competitors, or any websites which may be liable to competing against you. Doing so, would help to optimise that’s competitor’s website on Google. Incoming links have a big contribution towards search engine optimisation for websites. Out of the top 10 results display on the Google results page, pick between 2-4 websites you would like to link to, you should check the Google PageRank of the webpage you are linking to, as well as the age of the domain. Other than this there isn’t really much else to check, if Google has ranked the website within their top 10 results then the website must be doing something right.
Conclusion: Google – The Library Concept
I hope this article has provided you with a good indication of how the Google index database relates to a library of books. You should now understand that outgoing link is an important contribution towards search engine optimisation and closely categorising your website. It helps the search engines distinguish which websites your site is related to, and vice-versa. Although no-one actually knows the algorithm behind Google than the developers themselves, you should relate to how Google works with real-world examples, for instance comparing it to a real-world library.
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