The new Google Algorithm has been good to most of my sites, but one of them has taken a severe hit on Google’s SERPS. 
I know its the effect of Google’s new algo because this site is still #1 on Yahoo and MSN.
An article on Mediapost titled “Google Watchers See Shift In Algorithm,” throws some light on the changes.
According to Hershberg, the update appears to be focused on distinguishing between the quality of different links, which the algorithm generally tabulates to determine order in the organic rankings.
"It would appear as though Google is making distinction of quality of links. All links are not equal, and they're giving some links more credence than others," he said. "Lots of attention is being given to site content and anchor text."
He said that the new formula appears to give more weight to sites that have content, not just sponsored links and a navigation bar.
And Google apparently now evaluates the anchor text to determine if it's related to the site content, or is just the same word over and over again--in which case the site's rank would fall.
This seems to indicate that Google is giving more weight to Topic-Sensitive Pagerank (TSPR) which I covered in the last update of my SEO Guide.
The original research paper on TSPR, written by Taher H. Haveliwala, states that “by making PageRank topic-sensitive, we avoid the problem of heavily linked pages getting highly ranked for queries for which they have no particular authority.”
In other words, TSPR is assigned to pages based on how well they are linked from similarly on-topic pages.
The reason my site suffered could be because:
- It has too many inbound links with the same anchor text.
- Some of the sites that I link to may have been penalised or blacklisted.
- The content on that site hasn’t been updates for months.
Personally I think the first two are more important, and I intend to remedy the situation before the next update. I also outsourced my linking campaign recently, so maybe I need to pay more attention to that for a while.
So how does this affect your own SEO and linking strategy?
Well, I say avoid going the reciprocal route altogether and try to get more one-way links from pages that have a good deal of content related to the same theme or topic as your site.
Update: I just came across this excellent article, Content and The New Google Algorithm, by Bob Wakfer that sums it up beautifully.
If what has been said in the section above is true, suddenly content has a new importance in the ranking of a page. Now it is not so much the content of one’s own page that will get it ranked in the SERPs, but the content of the pages from which the links are coming.
All interconnected pages are now giving each other a boost in relevance. In addition to the mathematical PageRank boost, it suddenly becomes important that all interconnecting pages have relevant, or related, content.We may have come full circle.
Links are the factor that will get a page ranked highly in the SERPs. However, content is what will give your backlinks their ultimate ranking value.
# posted by Priya Shah @ 7:24 AM
