Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

Whatever it might be, if you want to stay ahead of the game, you better start thinking about it now.
I read an interesting comment on an SEO blog the other day. In lots of ways you could almost see that the comment was really just what the writer was contemplating at the time. The original post that he was adding his comment to talked about the factors that Google considers important when it ranks a website and he was wondering what might come next.

Over the years those important factors and the way Google judges their importance has changed considerably. One of the major factors in the way Google has judged a website has always been inbound links but over the years the way Google judges that importance has changed.

Long gone are the days when Steve could rank at number one on Google for a major term that sold a heap of memberships in one of Nasty Dollars' paysites via a site that was nothing more than a full page ad. That full page ad stayed at the top of Google' search engine results pages (SERPS) for months and the only inbound links to that page came from a number of free sites on several domains we owned that resided on the same IP address.

These days that full page ad would have no hope of ever appearing anywhere useful in the SERPS because all the inbound links obviously came from the same place and were not meant to suggest that the full page ad had any significance or worth at all.

Back then everyone linked to other pages and other sites in their empire from the same IP address and very few people ever bothered to ask for new IP addresses when they were adding a new site to their hosting plan.

After a while Google woke up to the problem and realized that it needed to tweak its algorithm and inbound links from sites on the same IP address have very little value these days. Instead Google looks for inbound links from sites not obviously related to the one that it is ranking.

But even making that change has not cured the problem from Google's point of view. Of course it did work for a while but Webmasters are notorious for not playing the game according to the way Google wants the game played. Along came paid links and suddenly Webmasters were once more getting great rankings because they knew how to make inbound links work for them.

Once again Google changed the algorithm and these days buying inbound links can be a rather dangerous way to try and rank well in the SERPS. So instead of buying links most SEOs and Webmasters who want those links are back out on the 'streets' begging for them. While they're begging for links many Webmasters are also buying up old sites and using them to feed links and relevance to their own sites.

So Google's algorithm is being gamed once again and sooner or later Google is going to have to make some more changes. Personally I love the idea that Webmasters are continually making life difficult for Google. Google feeds off our work so why should they expect us to play according to their rules?

Perhaps that's just the rebellious Australian nature coming out in me but I can't stand people and companies who want to use my work for their benefit and then expect me to do what they want. That's just never going to happen!

Instead I'll be out there doing all I can to ethically work their algorithm in my favor. Of course, what I and many others would consider ethical is not likely to be viewed in the same light by Google.

Ok, enough of the posturing and chest beating. There is little doubt that Google is going to change the algorithm once more to try and beat all those nasty Webmasters who want to play the game by their rules and not Google's but what will be changed? What comes next?

I don't know what will come next but as I mentioned yesterday Google already seems to have the ability to identify every site that you might own whether you want them to or not. Perhaps we might be about to see some penalty imposed on a site simply because it belongs to a Webmaster that Google has already identified as a spammer.

Perhaps Google is going to start ranking sites based on the monetary value that site might have to Google. Just lately we're seeing relevant adult sites drop off page one for very adult search terms. The missing sites are far more relevant than the sites that are replacing them. There is even some talk of something similar happening to many mainstream sites. Does this mean we are seeing Google making a move to 'encourage' Webmasters to take up paid listings?

It's probably too early to tell but there is no doubt that Google is going to go on changing things and if we want to keep on making money here on the Web then we need to stay ahead of the game.