TRAFFIC
how to categorise websites. It really is a
comprehensive instruction manual on
what is desirable or not from Google’s
point of view.
Let’s review some excerpts from the
2014 guidelines.
From Google: “As long as the page is
created to help users, we will not consider
one particular purpose or type of page to be
higher quality than another. For example,
encyclopedia pages are not necessarily
higher quality than humor pages”.
This is very important. The Internet is
vast and there are lots of neighbourhoods,
ranging from medical through to cookery
and, of course, online gambling. The
point Google is making here is that
if you’re a stand out site in your
neighborhood, then you’ll be rated more
highly than the next one. It’s all about
you doing better than your peers.
What others say about you: reputation
From Google: “Use reputation research
to find out what real users, as well as
experts, think about a website. Look for
reviews, references, recommendations by
experts, news articles, and other credible
information created/written by individuals
about the website.”
Sources of reputation information
From Google: “Look for information
written by a person, not statistics or other
machine-compiled information. News
articles, Wikipedia articles, blog posts,
magazine articles, forum discussions, and
ratings from independent organizations
can all be sources of reputation
information. Look for independent,
credible sources of information.”
Remember the idea about
neighbourhoods? A good reputation for
medical site is very different to one for a
casino site, it’s all about relative reputation.
There might be a thread on a forum where
they’re discussing your website and they
say that it’s got a lot of listings and its a
good source of bonus offers. If that’s a
real conversation, or looks real and has a
citation back to you, that’s good.
How to check your reputation
We know that Google is getting very good
at natural language processing, so it makes
Figure 3: Rankings over time for simonsblogpark.com
10.0k
5.0k
Nov 13
Jan 14
Mar 14
May 14
Jul 14
Sep 14
Nov 14
Majestic Metrics: TrustFlow: 15 | Citation Flow 40 | External Backlinks 30,414 |
Referring Domains 270 |Referring IPs 259 |Referring Subnets 238
Figure 4: Rankings over time for my bettingsites.co.uk
– SE Traffic – Ads Traffic
7.5k
5.0k
2.5k
Apr 13
Jul 13
Oct 13
Jan 14
Apr 14
Jul 14
Oct 14
Majestic Metrics: TrustFlow: 25 | Citation Flow 20 | External Backlinks 3,979 |
Referring Domains 32 | Referring IPs 30 |Referring Subnets 30
sense they can judge the sentiment behind
a reference to your website.
Here’s how the manual raters use
advanced query strings to find information.
It’s worth doing it for yourself to see what’s
out there about your site. Does your site’s
footprint look positive?
How about background checking
yourself. Using ‘mysite.com’ as an
example, try one or more of the following
searches on Google:
●●
[mysite –site:mysite.com]: A search for
mysite which excludes pages on mysite.
com.
●●
[“mysite.com” –site:mysite.com]: A
search for “mysite.com” which excludes
pages on mysite.com.
reviews –site:mysite.com] A
search for reviews of mysite which
excludes pages on mysite.com.
●●
[“mysite.com” reviews –site:mysite.com]:
A search for reviews of “mysite.com”
which excludes pages on mysite.com.
●●
[mysite
Anyone home?
From Google:
“Websites frequently include the following
information:
●●
About Us information.
●●
Contact or Customer Service information.
●●
Information about who is responsible for
content and maintenance of the website.”
iGB Affiliate Issue 48 DEC/JAN 2014/2015
15