Great Quality Content? Not Enough. Must be popular too. So it REALLY IS all about links then

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Really interesting reveal from a Google engineer highlighted in this piece

Google's Ryan Moulton: Higher Quality Content Might Not Be More Useful Content

Basically the engineer admits the best quality content takes a back seat to the more popular "useful" content. Thing is he doesn't explain how Google determines popularity but there are really only two ways

links and CTR/bounce data

So if the engineer is to be believed then it doesn't matter how great your content is - If it does not have signals of being popular you still will be beat by inferior content. It STILL comes down to promotion/link building

kind of destroys the claim Google makes elsewhere that you should just create great content in order to rank. Also explains why I see Yahoo answers as much as I do with long tail searches. As a searcher I think this is flawed. Yahoo answers is garbage most of the time.
#content #great #links #nah #popular #quality
  • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
    This is definitely a great article, and it is congruent with some of my test where you can see an increase in the search engines when you "create a viral effect" meaning a lot of traffic from several sources at once, BUT I am not sure if it is a positive correlation or a cause and effect relationship.

    This is why I always recommend to write your title for the masses, no matter how technical your topic may be, the national enquire type of titles work like magic.

    This article points out some of the things I have been commenting, that in order to rank your site Google uses the Google Analytics info and compares it among the sites that are trying to rank.

    This is definitely one of my favorites pices of info from this part of the forum in the last few days.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post


      This article points out some of the things I have been commenting, that in order to rank your site Google uses the Google Analytics info and compares it among the sites that are trying to rank.
      .
      Doesn't say that at all Pat. Popularity can be determined by other metrics related to links. It does not require Google analytics. Its almost a certainty that Google analytics does NOT play a part in ranking. The sheer computer resources needed to analyze each crawled sites traffic would be insane and pointless since a significant part of the web does not use GA and google cannot know their traffic.
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      • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        Doesn't say that at all Pat. Popularity can be determined by other metrics related to links. It does not require Google analytics. Its almost a certainty that Google analytics does NOT play a part in ranking. The sheer computer resources needed to analyze each crawled sites traffic t would be insane and pointless since a significant part of the web does not use GA and google cannot know their traffic.
        I think this is not an either or desicion Mike, I agree with you that ranking is determined by several metrics related to the links, I agree with you that sites that dont use GA are a black box to Google, but I would not take it as far as to say that Google Analytics does not play a part in ranking, I dont mean that if you dont have GA you wont rank BUT I think the data they collect with the tool it is used as a benchmark... I can't prove this... it is mere speculation based on my tests.....

        Respectfully
        patadeperro
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

          I would not take it as far as to say that Google Analytics does not play a part in ranking,
          Provide some proof Pat. For the love of some good SEO on this board every once in awhile - provide some proof. All this conjecture and guessing just junks up this board no end. Every week there is some new thesis without a drop of evidence just some anecdotal story. Whats the point of even talking SEo if there in't a drop of evidence for anything stated.

          One thing is for sure - the article does not mention GA at all.
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          • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
            Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

            Provide some proof Pat. For the love of some good SEO on this board every once in awhile - provide some proof. All this conjecture and guessing just junks up this board no end. Every week there is some new thesis without a drop of evidence just some anecdotal story. Whats the point of even talking SEo if there in't a drop of evidence for anything stated.
            Good call, it is fair to ask for proof when we are trying to accomplish something otherwise, everything will become an "I think I belive, my neighbors told me" board... fair enough, I will prepare some test and I will show something so we can get better conclusions.

            Thanks
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

              fair enough, I will prepare some test and I will show something so we can get better conclusions.

              Thanks
              Good stuff. Will look forward to it.
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              • Profile picture of the author paulgl
                It's the only way: Links.

                PageRank: gives reputation.

                Page: Relevance

                Both of those are all about links.

                Relevance and reputation. Two of perhaps the most things used by google,
                and discounted by many.

                Not me.

                Google tries to shmooze people into not just shmoozing the algo. Sadly,
                the gurus that are born daily just repeat that pablum. They toss out
                PR or think quality content contributes to it.

                Toss in social stuff that is linked, and the whole thing really is
                backlinks.

                Now the hard part is convincing people what links to actually go after
                that work.

                Two biggest myths are quality content and (tons of)spamming(low level) links.

                Paul
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                • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
                  Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

                  It's the only way: Links.

                  PageRank: gives reputation.

                  Page: Relevance

                  Both of those are all about links.

                  Relevance and reputation. Two of perhaps the most things used by google,
                  and discounted by many.

                  Not me.

                  Google tries to shmooze people into not just shmoozing the algo. Sadly,
                  the gurus that are born daily just repeat that pablum. They toss out
                  PR or think quality content contributes to it.

                  Toss in social stuff that is linked, and the whole thing really is
                  backlinks.

                  Now the hard part is convincing people what links to actually go after
                  that work.

                  Two biggest myths are quality content and (tons of)spamming(low level) links.

                  Paul
                  There is also the idea that there are different perceptions of what quality content is.

                  Quality doesn't have to mean its jam packed with info.

                  Quality could really just be a paragraph that answers the problem. OR it could be a simple 1 minute video that although is junk, solves the issue better than someone who did a high production 1 minute video.

                  I do know one thing though..

                  Content has always played a massive role in rankings. With barely any links on websites I've created and have ranked, the main focus I put into the site was the content and the organization of that content.

                  My best results were simple.. with no links (which yes, I know they matter, I'm just saying).

                  Heading title 1

                  Beginning Paragraph

                  Image (aligned right to move content up and not take up as much space)

                  paragraph

                  Heading title 2

                  Paragraph

                  Paragraph

                  Video or Image

                  Heading title 3

                  Paragraph

                  Ending paragraph


                  And that's about it. Sometimes I replace the first image with another video or audio, but images seemed to hold the most value.

                  Lastly, those are my experiences after building hundreds of websites with the same content ratio (2500 words, 3 images, 1 video, 5 pages for main content). Everyones going to have a different result.
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                  • Profile picture of the author HajimeAnne
                    Content has always played a massive role in rankings. With barely any links on websites I've created and have ranked, the main focus I put into the site was the content and the organization of that content.

                    My best results were simple.. with no links (which yes, I know they matter, I'm just saying).

                    Heading title 1

                    Beginning Paragraph

                    Image (aligned right to move content up and not take up as much space)

                    paragraph

                    Heading title 2

                    Paragraph

                    Paragraph

                    Video or Image

                    Heading title 3

                    Paragraph

                    Ending paragraph


                    And that's about it. Sometimes I replace the first image with another video or audio, but images seemed to hold the most value.

                    Lastly, those are my experiences after building hundreds of websites with the same content ratio (2500 words, 3 images, 1 video, 5 pages for main content). Everyones going to have a different result.[/QUOTE]

                    I like the "simplicity" and clarity of this one response...how to build and structure good quality. What about a silo structure to support this good content? I just learned today that Wordpress "natural" interlinking needs to be over-ridden to have the proper linking that reflects the silo strategy. Peter Garety's recent p1 traffic machine and Alec Becker's earlier seozen both emphasize proper silo structures. Peter especially recommends unique good content for 5 main pages also.

                    I appreciate your response.
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        • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
          Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

          I think this is not an either or desicion Mike, I agree with you that ranking is determined by several metrics related to the links, I agree with you that sites that dont use GA are a black box to Google, but I would not take it as far as to say that Google Analytics does not play a part in ranking, I dont mean that if you dont have GA you wont rank BUT I think the data they collect with the tool it is used as a benchmark... I can't prove this... it is mere speculation based on my tests.....

          Respectfully
          patadeperro
          I don't touch Google Analytics.. some of my clients have, but I personally don't even attach it to any of my sites and they are doing just fine in competitive niches with focus primarily on content itself, rather than links.

          Just because you add Google Analytics to your site and the rankings increase doesn't mean that it was because of Google Analytics.

          I say that because sites jump constantly, even when not touched, when updated daily, when updated weekly, etc. it's all over the place. I can't say for sure that GA does or doesn't have an impact.. but I'm not using it and I'm doing just fine.
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          • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
            Originally Posted by Justin Says View Post

            I don't touch Google Analytics.. some of my clients have, but I personally don't even attach it to any of my sites and they are doing just fine in competitive niches with focus primarily on content itself, rather than links.
            I am not quite sure what is a competitive niche for you, maybe it is something like "Oranville SEO consultant super expert" or something like that, and that is the evidence you have to say that you dont need backlinks in "competitive" niches to rank, but I challenge you to focus just in content to rank for a term such as "payday loans".

            I have experience in real competitive niches (where everybody have at least a million of backlinks, affiliates, private networks etc..) and you wont even appear in the first 30 reults without backlinks.


            Originally Posted by Justin Says View Post

            Just because you add Google Analytics to your site and the rankings increase doesn't mean that it was because of Google Analytics.

            I say that because sites jump constantly, even when not touched, when updated daily, when updated weekly, etc. it's all over the place. I can't say for sure that GA does or doesn't have an impact.. but I'm not using it and I'm doing just fine.
            Please read very carefully my statement, what I said is:

            "I think the data they collect with the tool it is used as a benchmark"

            What I mean is this: if you are Google and you have set up Google Analytics on 100,000 sites in the entertainment business, and you realize that on average they have a bounce rate of 40% and visitors spend on average 7 minutes, and all the competitors have more than 10,000 in backlinks, so if one of those sites make some change where the bounce rate is 10% and the average visit is 15 minutes, dont you think that they will rank this site above the others? at the end of the day what they want is to deliver the information surfers are looking for, so in average this new site have 25 times less bounce rate, and doubles the average time of his competitor... dont you think it is pretty clear this website is doing a better work than the competition in answering the quesiton the prospect is looking for?

            Furtheremore this site will rank higher than the rest in his category,as I said I am going to prepare a test, an argument or data to pinpoint this theory, but to me there is no sense that if you are Google and you give for free a tool like Google Analytics you would not use the info the tool is giving you to better rank websites.
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

              but to me there is no sense that if you are Google and you give for free a tool like Google Analytics you would not use the info the tool is giving you to better rank websites.
              Makes lots of sense because what you propose would cost SERIOUS processing load. Its not feasible whatsoever for google to have to churn through all the traffic data for every page on the net to rank websites.

              Too often people forget entirely that Google cannot just wave a wand and use data they have. These things must be programmed to be usable and there are considerations of technology and feasibility and speed that come into play.

              To create such a system based on GA which many people do not use would be a waste of programming and technology resources because at the end of the day it would be useless in analyzing any page outside of GA which is quite a lot.
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            • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
              Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

              I am not quite sure what is a competitive niche for you, maybe it is something like "Oranville SEO consultant super expert" or something like that, and that is the evidence you have to say that you dont need backlinks in "competitive" niches to rank, but I challenge you to focus just in content to rank for a term such as "payday loans".
              I again didn't say backlinks weren't valuable. I just said it's possible and I've done it.

              The video game, "Halo 4" for example. I ranked for it along with every subsidiary keyword "Halo 4 Tips", "Halo 4 Characters", "Halo 4 Weapons", "Halo 4 Maps", etc. for about 2 years with 0 backlinks. The only thing I put any attention on was content.

              Another term "Pipe Repair", I recently ranked a site (about 6 months ago).. never touched it after the first 30 minutes of setup. Indexed it and it was ranked #2 with 0 backlinks and only 2 pages. It hasn't ranked for about a month now, but again.. I never touched it.

              There are plenty of other competitive keywords that I've ranked for and still do. Most being 2 words. Other examples have included "GSXR 600", one of the most popular motorcycles in the world. "Air Conditioners", "Motorcycle Boots", and even terms like "Website Creation".

              Now those are terms I'm no longer targeting as they weren't as profitable to me, but the point was that I didn't have backlinks targeting those websites or pages.

              Many were EMDs as well, but again that's not relative to backlinks.

              Anywho, that's just my 2 cents on the matter. I definitely think that popularity, backlinks, social etc. are important. It's just possible to not have any of that Ciao.
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              • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                Originally Posted by Justin Says View Post

                The video game, "Halo 4" for example. I ranked for it along with every subsidiary keyword "Halo 4 Tips", "Halo 4 Characters", "Halo 4 Weapons", "Halo 4 Maps", etc. for about 2 years with 0 backlinks. The only thing I put any attention on was content.
                "Air Conditioners", "Motorcycle Boots", and even terms like "Website Creation".
                Halo 4 was released a year ago but look - anyone can write anything in a forum and to put it straight I really don't believe you. Ive seen the claim before and the sites had backlinks that the owner was not even aware of. It doesn't matter that the links were not built by he owner -they were there.

                Things like that are easy to write but without evidence its just forum talk.
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                • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
                  Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                  Halo 4 was released a year ago but look - anyone can write anything in a forum and to put it straight I really don't believe you. Ive seen the claim before and the sites had backlinks that the owner was not even aware of. It doesn't matter that the links were not built by he owner -they were there.

                  Things like that are easy to write but without evidence its just forum talk.
                  You can believe what you want to believe.

                  The fact remains that it's possible..

                  EMDs still have a very high value in the search engines, along with properly optimized content you can still take out the big guys that are spending all their time on backlinks.

                  As per the "Halo 4" site, there were no backlinks when I was working on it.. in fact it only had a few posts on it at the time and was used to help me build a Facebook page.

                  I had a like button right near the top of the site which connected to the Facebook page and when people were searching for Halo 4 they would find my website and then click on the like button which would then get them to like my page.

                  That page now has 160,000+ people and in that specific niche I've moved away from hosting websites dedicated to it and more towards sending that traffic to partners, affiliates, companies, etc.

                  I'm definitely not saying that every experience you have is going to get you ranking just with content.. but it's possible and I've seen it happen numerous times in very competitive markets.

                  You think the term Halo 4 isn't competitive because the game is only a year old? The media has been talking about the game for more than 2 1/2 years nonstop, much bigger websites with thousands of backlinks and yet I was able to outrank it with a page with content and no backlinks.

                  It happens.
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                  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                    Originally Posted by Justin Says View Post

                    You can believe what you want to believe.

                    The fact remains that it's possible..
                    The only fact is that you have presented no evidence - just a series of claims with nothing behind them but your say so.

                    EMDs still have a very high value in the search engines,
                    No they don't. they can rank of course but the very high value was turned down last year. Everyone knows this.

                    As per the "Halo 4" site, there were no backlinks when I was working on it.. in fact it only had a few posts on it at the time and was used to help me build a Facebook page.
                    Doesn't really matter about when you were working on it. It matters if it had links when it ranked. Like I said I have seen the claim before - at least those times the people put some evidence on the table and the sites very much had links

                    yet I was able to outrank it with a page with content and no backlinks.

                    It happens.
                    You can say so ten more times. No one has to believe you just because you say so. You could present some evidence but you have chosen not to do so. Until you do its just like any other claim on the internet.
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                    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                      The word "Quality" is a general term that can have very different meanings to different people and within different scenarios. In other words, context matters. Where I disagree with you is in your application of the term "quality" as I believe it was used out of context.
                      The context was in the link I provided. You won't deal with the real context because it blows up your point about me conflating and creating strawman. Not a whole lot of honesty on your part making accusations and not dealing with the actual context. Instead you do what you always do - write long volumes about how it is you WANT Google to work and pretend you are writing facts about how they really do work.
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                      • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
                        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

                        Google uses a combination of data from crowd-sourced human evaluation and behavioral analytics to asses usefulness of content. It's not based on Popularity, but on content and how users react to that content when included in the SERP. Google's assessment of usefulness can have a huge impact on the popularity of a document, however we must not confuse correlation with causation.
                        There can be only two ways they could rate behavioral analytics.. CTR and Bounce rate. And even these wouldn't be accurate enough to rate usefulness. Google can't read minds.

                        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

                        You said "...their only real gauge of how 'quality' a piece of content is, or website, or page, is by how many links are pointing at it."

                        That is simply not true, as Google uses very specific metrics that relate to quality, and none of them have anything to do with how many links are pointing at your page.
                        That is why I put 'quality' in quotes. Yes they have very specific ways to judge quality, as you said, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, etc etc. These are all hard coded, non-variable assessments of quality that can be programmed.

                        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

                        You also asserted "Usefullness can only be gauged by popularity (a computer can't tell what is useful or not)."
                        Again you have grossly misjudged the sophistication of Google's algorithm. They do indeed have a computation method of assessing usefulness, as I have alluded to above. They use an adaptive heuristic algorithm that is informed by user behavioral analysis.
                        There is no adaptive heuristic algorithm to analyze behavior, because until Google can read mental patterns through brain wave scans and pupil dilation in the year 3825, again it can only come down to CTR, bounce rate, and links - amongst other factors far less science fiction. It's not HAL.

                        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

                        In conclusion, you have severely underestimated Google's mathematical prowess and the general geek power of their engineers.
                        In my conclusion, you are severely overestimating theirs. No offense
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                        • Profile picture of the author dburk
                          [quote=jinx1221;8552734]There can be only two ways they could rate behavioral analytics.. CTR and Bounce rate. And even these wouldn't be accurate enough to rate usefulness. Google can't read minds.

                          Hi jinx1221,

                          Google doesn't need to read minds, they rely on behavioral science. There are distinctive patterns of behavior that appear in the data that indicates relative usefulness. You are on the right track, they do use CTR, bounce rates, TOS, session paths, keyword term revisions, and a host of other metrics in their data analysis. Take what you think they do, and multiply it by 20 and you will be much closer to what they actually do.

                          Originally Posted by jinx1221 View Post

                          That is why I put 'quality' in quotes. Yes they have very specific ways to judge quality, as you said, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, etc etc. These are all hard coded, non-variable assessments of quality that can be programmed.
                          Seems we agree on this point.


                          Originally Posted by jinx1221 View Post

                          There is no adaptive heuristic algorithm to analyze behavior, because until Google can read mental patterns through brain wave scans and pupil dilation in the year 3825, again it can only come down to CTR, bounce rate, and links - amongst other factors far less science fiction. It's not HAL.
                          You're right, they cannot "read mental patterns". however they can and do read behavioral patterns.

                          In fact, Google holds Patents in heuristic analysis. One of the most common heuristics methods used in data search algorithms is known as fast a frugal heuristics. Anytime you have a large amount of data you can accurately predict the relative usefulness of a snippet of text. This isn't science fiction, it is math. For more information about this topic, pick up a book on simple heuristics.

                          Originally Posted by jinx1221 View Post

                          In my conclusion, you are severely overestimating theirs. No offense
                          Perhaps you are right? Maybe Google lets those hundreds of scientists and mathematicians they employee sit around doing nothing. Or, maybe they do actually use science and math to solve difficult equations.

                          There are brilliant methods, worked out by scientist like Markov, Gigerenzer and Goldstein, just sitting there waiting for someone to apply them to an algorithm. Perhaps they haven't overlooked those methods and actually do use them?

                          Maybe we are both underestimating?

                          Let's just agree to disagree on this point.

                          Let me share a brief story with you...

                          About ten years ago I built a little website for my daughter's new profession. Not being an expert on the topic I randomly selected a bunch of stuff that I thought might be interesting.

                          To my surprise a page deep within the website, a page that I thought would be overlooked filler information, started receiving massive amounts of traffic. A quick check revealed that it was listed no.4 in SERP for a keyword that got a lot of traffic. So I went in and expanded the content on that page, and made it easier to sort and navigate. Within a couple months the page hit and retained the number one position for many years. I never built any links to that page.

                          After much study of this situation, and the type and nature of the content, I realized that Google had a method of analyzing content for usefulness. I looked at thousands of other websites to see if I could find the same pattern of high ranking content without backlinks and found a definite pattern of ranking content based on content usefulness.

                          This led me to an adventure where I have been documenting content structure to find a number of patterns that automatically rank higher based on nothing other than the predicted usefulness of that content.

                          Now before anyone asks, I will not reveal exactly what I have learned because I don't want to see it exploited anymore that it already has been. I'm not the first person to discover this, and I'm sure I will not be the last. I am perfectly comfortable with most people thinking it doesn't exist.

                          If you are smart enough to figure it out for yourself then good on you.
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                    • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
                      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                      The only fact is that you have presented no evidence - just a series of claims with nothing behind them but your say so.
                      I'm not here to try and advertise my sites. I rarely include links to my sites in posts, if you want to contact me privately about it go for it.

                      Edit: I added a link to an example below.


                      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                      No they don't. they can rank of course but the very high value was turned down last year. Everyone knows this.
                      Do you have first hand experience with them now? They definitely haven't lost all of their value... in fact many still feel they hold a lot of power. And I know from experience that they do.

                      "The ranking ability of exact and partial match domains (EMD/PMD) has been heavily debated by SEOs recently, and it appears Google is still adjusting their ranking ability (e.g. this recent post by Dr. Pete). In our data collected in early June (before the June 25 update), we found EMD correlations to be relatively high at 0.17 (0.20 if the EMD is also a dot-com), just about on par with the value from our 2011 study:"



                      "However, we see a see-saw pattern in the EMD correlations (red line) where they decreased last fall, then rose back again in the last few months. We attribute the decrease last fall to Google's EMD update (as announced by Matt Cutts). The increase in correlations between March and June says that the EMDs that are still present are ranking higher overall in the SERPs, even though they are less prevalent. Could this be Google removing lower quality EMDs?"

                      Source: 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors - Moz


                      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                      Doesn't really matter about when you were working on it. It matters if it had links when it ranked. Like I said I have seen the claim before - at least those times the people put some evidence on the table and the sites very much had links
                      It had no links when it ranked... it only established links over the past few months. But it had ranked on the front page for more than a year. The site was hxxp://www.halo4.org and I do not own it anymore as I put more focus on https://www.facebook.com/Halo4Fans the current owner of the site doesn't even touch it :\

                      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                      You can say so ten more times. No one has to believe you just because you say so. You could present some evidence but you have chosen not to do so. Until you do its just like any other claim on the internet.
                      You like to call people out don't you, ha. It's okay that you are and I defiitely understand it.. I don't trust anything I see online either without evidence, but I also don't want to link spam a thread with links to my websites.

                      Since this isn't my website anymore, here's another example of a site I created to promote a piping company.

                      hxxp://piperepair.org

                      It ranked #1 for "pipe repair" for some time with ZERO backlinks and if you look at the front page of "pipe repair" you'll see there is a .net and .com EMD up there.

                      Anyways, take it as you do.. I know that an EMD can hold a lot of value and I know that very minimal quality content can rank for competitive keywords.
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                      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                        Originally Posted by Justin Says View Post

                        I'm not here to try and advertise my sites. I rarely include links to my sites in posts, if you want to contact me privately about it go for it.
                        Hey I have told you here or private by PM. I'm game


                        The increase in correlations between March and June says that the EMDs that are still present are ranking higher overall in the SERPs, even though they are less prevalent. Could this be Google removing lower quality EMDs?"
                        The above part of your quote is the key. The EMD update took a pile of EMDs out and left the stronger ones. Like I said before the value was turned down there was not a penalty. so its really not that surprising to me. If you cut out the weakest then the stronger can do well

                        It had no links when it ranked... it only established links over the past few months. But it had ranked on the front page for more than a year. The site was hxxp://www.halo4.org and I do not own it anymore as I put more focus on https://www.facebook.com/Halo4Fans the current owner of the site doesn't even touch it :
                        Thank you for that but unfortunately for your thesis your whole premise just went right down the toilet. the site has nearly 400 links and worse for your claims there ARE anchor text Halo links in articles from THREE YEARS AGO that I found. Pretty much the same thing I have always encountered by people making the claim that you do. There are always links to be found. I don't know how you got them but the examples I found was very deliberate and the dates of the article are right there. In fact sorry just found a blog network set of links from 2010 and 2011. So someone was very deliberately linking to that site a full three years ago and frankly given the presence of blog network links the site probably had even more links to it that have since been deleted through domain expirations etc. The claim that it got links only recently is totally false unless you have some reason why the dates of multiple articles would have been set to three years ago.

                        hxxp://piperepair.org

                        It ranked #1 for "pipe repair" for some time with ZERO backlinks and if you look at the front page of "pipe repair" you'll see there is a .net and .com EMD up there.
                        sure but they have links (some good ones too) yours doesn't and its nowhere to be found
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    Great content gets shared, thus attract links, 1+1=2

    All those nay sayers to link building are right in a certain sense but hugely wrong in another sense, without initial publicity or back links it will stay out of view of everyone who might be willing to link to it when they read it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Baba Pandey
    Would be nice to know from you Paul regarding what kind of links to go after ...
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  • Profile picture of the author tokobajukoo
    So we can say it's not true that backlinks is not needed anymore after "panda" and "penguin"..Beside good article we still need backlinks to the posts..
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    • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
      Originally Posted by tokobajukoo View Post

      So we can say it's not true that backlinks is not needed anymore after "panda" and "penguin"..Beside good article we still need backlinks to the posts..
      It's never been true that links aren't needed anymore. Matt Cutts makes it sound that way when he says that all you need is great quality content, because he wants their main 'signal' that ranks a site (links) to be authentic, therefore people will naturally share and link to quality content. In other words, link building screws up their quality factor because they are not natural, and don't necessarily mean the content is quality.. kind of like a false positive. That doesn't mean links aren't needed anymore, actually the opposite, it proves they are needed, and very much so.

      About bounce/ctr, could we safely say then that, all backlinks and other factors being equal, that we could outrank a site with tons of "quality" content by just putting up a bunch of videos? Seems to me people would at least stick around for awhile watching videos, or any other ways (multimedia, images) that would reduce the bounce rate and/or increase clickthru rate?
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  • Profile picture of the author Moneymaker2012
    So we can say it's not true that backlinks is not needed anymore after "panda" and "penguin"..Beside good article we still need backlinks to the posts
    No you can't say this, backlinks are still necessary and useful but they are not enough alone, as google has always cleard that content will be given more importance, so when you work on getting backlinks and you have popular content on your site, this will be everything you'll need to fly high in the sky.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Yahoo Answers isn't that bad If your looking for tips about software or things like that, it's short & to the point. I found an answer to a Photoshop question/search last night, saved me a lot of time compared to Youtube videos where people want to talk about things I don't care about.

    All depends on the search.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Yahoo answers sucks. If you already know something about the subject it might point you in the right direction but trusting something that some anonymous poster puts up on a subject you can't verify yourself isn't useful.

      The example the google tech gave is even worse. He was justifying Yahoo answers being right up there ranking with Mayoclinic on a health related subject. Thats borderline insane
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Hi Mike,

          I think a lot of people posting in this thread have completely missed the point the Google engineer was attempting to make in that article. At the center of the confusion seems to be the habitual conflating of the meaning of distinctly different words.


          For example when you say:
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          Basically the engineer admits the best quality content takes a back seat to the more popular "useful" content. Thing is he doesn't explain how Google determines popularity but there are really only two ways

          links and CTR/bounce data
          It appears that you have accidentally conflated the meaning of "useful" with "popularity", which are 2 distinctly different things.

          A piece of content can be very useful, while at the same time, not very popular, conversely, it might be highly popular, while not useful at all. The point is that "popularity" and "useful" are words that have very different meanings, and your assertion seems to conflate the two words to make a point that appears to be out of context.

          In the first sentence you cleverly used the term "popular" as an adjective to describe the subject of "useful content". Then in the following sentence, you appear to transpose the subject from "useful content" to "popularity". That's a classic straw man argument, which seems to be your "go-to" method of stirring up controversy on this board.

          Don't get me wrong Mike, I like you. I understand what you are doing, trying to deliberately create controversy where none really exists, to stir up conversation and attention. I just can't resist correcting invalid claims on public forms as it may help people avoid falling victim to disinformation.

          Now here is where you inject the staw man argument:
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          So if the engineer is to be believed then it doesn't matter how great your content is - If it does not have signals of being popular you still will be beat by inferior content. It STILL comes down to promotion/link building
          You appear to deliberately misstate what the engineer said, and replace it with your straw man.

          Clearly, the engineer was talking about "usefulness" of content based on the keyword search term, and you have distorted his assertion to apply to something he never actually said.

          And next you follow the straw man assertion with the injection and plugging of a false controversy:
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          kind of destroys the claim Google makes elsewhere that you should just create great content in order to rank. Also explains why I see Yahoo answers as much as I do with long tail searches. As a searcher I think this is flawed. Yahoo answers is garbage most of the time.
          And there you have it, the classic link baiting method using a straw man argument. Now all you need is a few charts and graphics and you will master Rand Fishkins signature link baiting technique.

          Mike please don't take this the wrong way, I am paying you a compliment as a student of Rand's classic link baiting technique and breaking it down so that others can learn from it.

          Google's primary ranking factors have always been relevance and usefulness, this has not changed nor was anything new revealed in that article, it was simply clarifying what Google has been saying all along.

          People have often confused terms like quality, popularity, usefulness and relevance, frequently taking them out of context. If you take the time to look up the definitions, and apply them within the context in which they are used, you will discover that for the most part Google has been very consistent in their discussions of ranking factors.

          It has been all of the misinformation being promulgated by straw man assertions that distort statements made by Google engineers that have lead so many people "down the rabbit hole", metaphorically speaking.

          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          All depends on the search.
          Hi Yukon,

          You have made the most salient point in this thread with that statement. Indeed, context matters.
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          • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
            Originally Posted by dburk View Post

            In the first sentence you cleverly used the term "popular" as an adjective to describe the subject of "useful content". Then in the following sentence, you appear to transpose the subject from "useful content" to "popularity". That's a classic straw man argument, which seems to be your "go-to" method of stirring up controversy on this board.
            Brining light and not just heat to the conversation, very happy to hear somebody that is talking about fallacies and argument analysis, I did not know your comments on this board, but if they are like the one I read above, I am happy to hear more of them
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          • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
            Originally Posted by dburk View Post

            A piece of content can be very useful, while at the same time, not very popular, conversely, it might be highly popular, while not useful at all. The point is that "popularity" and "useful" are words that have very different meanings, and your assertion seems to conflate the two words to make a point that appears to be out of context.
            The 2 words in conflict of the OP were "quality" and "useful", meaning that their only real gauge of how 'quality' a piece of content is, or website, or page, is by how many links are pointing at it. Usefullness can only be gauged by popularity (a computer can't tell what is useful or not). In the OP's context of the argument, total garbage content can rank above a complete quality piece of content based on "popularity", i.e. links pointing to it, not necessarily by the actual quality of it.

            In other words, by what an actual Google engineer said, in not exact words, is Google really can't distinguish what is high quality or poor quality, it can only judge based on the number of links (votes) pointing at it, and the weight of those votes. Having great content will help in the natural link department, but again doesn't necessarily mean the piece is quality. In the end, ranking mainly comes down to links.
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Originally Posted by jinx1221 View Post

              The 2 words in conflict of the OP were "quality" and "useful", meaning that their only real gauge of how 'quality' a piece of content is, or website, or page, is by how many links are pointing at it. Usefullness can only be gauged by popularity (a computer can't tell what is useful or not).
              Precisely which is why the engineer himself references both words/concepts. You just have a few people here with a huge man crush on Google and anything that betrays it isn't this perfect company that always does the best thing infuriates them and gets them attacking regardless of the facts.

              I mean you have to be near brain dead to not see that the engineer talks about usefulness AND popularity but Don launches off based on said level of reading comprehension totally blinded by the google crush he has.
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            • Profile picture of the author dburk
              Originally Posted by jinx1221 View Post

              The 2 words in conflict of the OP were "quality" and "useful", meaning that their only real gauge of how 'quality' a piece of content is, or website, or page, is by how many links are pointing at it. Usefullness can only be gauged by popularity (a computer can't tell what is useful or not). In the OP's context of the argument, total garbage content can rank above a complete quality piece of content based on "popularity", i.e. links pointing to it, not necessarily by the actual quality of it.

              In other words, by what an actual Google engineer said, in not exact words, is Google really can't distinguish what is high quality or poor quality, it can only judge based on the number of links (votes) pointing at it, and the weight of those votes. Having great content will help in the natural link department, but again doesn't necessarily mean the piece is quality. In the end, ranking mainly comes down to links.
              Hi jinx1221,

              I'm sorry, but I must totally disagree with your analysis. Please consider, for a moment, that you may have mistaken the context in which the Google engineer was using the term "quality". If you can do this, just for a moment, while I try to clarify, I think you might actually agree with his assertions.

              The word "Quality" is a general term that can have very different meanings to different people and within different scenarios. In other words, context matters. Where I disagree with you is in your application of the term "quality" as I believe it was used out of context.

              I will argue that the most relevant context of the term "quality" in this discussion is in how Google applies "quality" to their SERP algorithm. All other applications are out of context for the point the Google engineer was making, which is the topic of this discussion. Can we at least agree on that?

              So that begs the question, what is "quality" within the context of the Google engineer's assertions?

              Google most definitely does not use the number of links to determine "quality". The way Google performs "quality" assessment is similar to the quality assurance methods used in a typical manufacturing plant. They have set a standard, that can be measured, and the content either passes or fails the standard. Now they have tried to keep the specific points of assessment held close to the vest, but some things have been rather easy to discern through testing, and others they have publicly disclosed. They mainly apply to the proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, layout of text on the page, and other measurable factors.

              The "key" point is that when Google discusses "quality" within the context of their search algorithm, they are referring to a very specific set of metrics. The disagreements in that article, and within this thread, all seem to stem from using the term "quality" in a completely different context from that used by the Google engineer.

              I will assert that the context in which you used "quality" is totally irrelevant to how the Google engineer was using that term. Those of us that understand the context in which Google uses the term "quality" totally get what he is saying, while folks that are applying the term to an irrelevant context seem to have a disagreement with what the engineer is stating. I think nearly all our opinions will merge if we focus on the exact same context of that term.

              Consider for a moment that what you said is true, in the context in which you stated it, while what the engineer said was also true in the context in which he made his statement. Neither are wrong, just talking about totally different things.

              Now the same can be said for the term "popularity", that word means something very specific to Google engineers, not what most people think when they use that same term. Again, disagreement comes from applying the Google engineers use of that term to a totally different context. When Google uses the term popularity, they are frequently referring to PageRank, a specific metric used by their algorithm. We often think of popularity in a more general way.

              The engineers statements were consistent with the fact that Google does not use Popularity, nor Quality as a primary ranking factor. Relevance has always been the Primary factor, and other signals like Quality and Popularity are secondary influences used to weight the relevancy scores of one the 4 primary signal groups. Usefulness and Timeliness are also weighting factors of overall relevancy, and as such they tend to carry more weight than other secondary factors.

              Google uses a combination of data from crowd-sourced human evaluation and behavioral analytics to asses usefulness of content. It's not based on Popularity, but on content and how users react to that content when included in the SERP. Google's assessment of usefulness can have a huge impact on the popularity of a document, however we must not confuse correlation with causation.

              So to be specific in where I disagree with your conclusions:

              You said "...their only real gauge of how 'quality' a piece of content is, or website, or page, is by how many links are pointing at it."

              That is simply not true, as Google uses very specific metrics that relate to quality, and none of them have anything to do with how many links are pointing at your page.

              You also asserted "Usefullness can only be gauged by popularity (a computer can't tell what is useful or not)."

              Again you have grossly misjudged the sophistication of Google's algorithm. They do indeed have a computation method of assessing usefulness, as I have alluded to above. They use an adaptive heuristic algorithm that is informed by user behavioral analysis.

              In conclusion, you have severely underestimated Google's mathematical prowess and the general geek power of their engineers.

              This not to say that links are unimportant, they are important, but the influence of links are secondary to relevancy, and limited to just one of the 4 primary signal groups. In a tight race links are often the thing needed to push ahead of the competition. But, they also can be relatively unimportant in certain circumstances where the other signal groups have been ignored by you, or your competitors.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by dburk View Post

            It appears that you have accidentally conflated the meaning of "useful" with "popularity", which are 2 distinctly different things.
            Don try reading the article in the OP and you won't make such a foolish argument. The piece uses both the words useful and popular and the discussion that the article is about discusses both usefulness AND popularity. Its quite obvious you have no idea about either and are just pained by the revelation. Its not me conflating. It is you that haven't read it. The engineer addresses both issues.

            In the first sentence you cleverly used the term "popular" as an adjective to describe the subject of "useful content". Then in the following sentence, you appear to transpose the subject from "useful content" to "popularity". That's a classic straw man argument, which seems to be your "go-to" method of stirring up controversy on this board.
            and being silly seems to be yours. Thats why we disagree so often. You make so much poor illogical points just like this most of the time. Bottom line . You have not read the piece in the OP so all your comments are just off based and hopeless. Yours is the invalid claim (WF is soooo funny sometimes). Read it and weep -

            He said, while MDN might be much more accurate, it is often way too over the top for most newbies to understand and thus not as useful. Ryan adds, "there's a balance between popularity and quality that we try to be very careful with
            See the bolded words Don? sinking in yet?

            Furthermore the discussion referenced is here

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6422998

            In which leephillips is specifically asking him about popularity as expressed by pagerank and is challenging him on quality being outranked based on said pagerank/popularity.

            In other words the title and the OP are perfectly on target in expressing both usefulness AND popularity. Epic fail in not reading.

            So turns out you are totally clueless in making that accusation and why???

            My guess - You are probably deeply offended that your build it and they will come thesis is betrayed by what the engineer related.

            Sorry those be the facts. You can try and shoot the messenger again but it is what it is. One of your most illogical and weakest posts ever.
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            • Profile picture of the author dburk
              Hi Mike,

              Thanks for you feedback. I have come to learn that when you resort to belligerent name calling, rather than asking for clarification or counter arguments, I have made my point.

              Yes, I did read the article and I stand by my assertions. So call me "silly" and "clueless" and ignore my assertions, it's just easier that way, isn't it?

              I understand what you do, you start controversial threads as linkbait to get lots of people reading your posts, that's your thing. And my thing is to clarify and correct misinformation, so we are bound to be on opposing sides of these discussions of linkbait threads.

              Now I am not infallible, so if you can be specific in where my assertions are wrong, please clarify, and this time without the name calling please. Perhaps we are just focusing on different things and not really in disagreement?
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              • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                Originally Posted by dburk View Post

                Hi Mike,

                Thanks for you feedback. I have come to learn that when you resort to belligerent name calling, rather than asking for clarification or counter arguments, I have made my point.
                Nope.... your point has been completely dismantled by the facts and the real context of the article which you refuse to address. I have come to learn that when people cannot deal with facts they try and deflect. If there was any belligerence it is clear to anyone who reads the thread that it was on your part launching off into a series of personal accusation and ad homs. It will not work any better than your previous debate tactics. Meanwhile the link with the discussions that shows the context is in front of you since I gave it to you. When can we expect you to muster the honesty and address it?

                And my thing is to clarify and correct misinformation, so we are bound to be on opposing sides of these discussions of linkbait threads.
                Only problem is you UTTERLY failed to establish it was a link bait thread since the article talks about both terms which you claimed I made up and conflated. An error created due to your incomplete reading. I am not alone in this - Jinx has done an outstanding job in dismantling your assertions and proving that the only misinformation that is flowing is from your posts.

                Now I am not infallible, so if you can be specific in where my assertions are wrong, please clarify, and this time without the name calling please.
                Oh Don that is so hilarious. You launch off in your very first post in this thread with a series of attacks and accusations and are now trying to claim the high ground on civility?

                That too fails. Meanwhile you expect everyone to miss that I have PRECISELY answered your vain ad hom and accusations by quoting directly from the article AND the discussion that the article was about?

                I get that you are hurt and emotional about the Google engineer talking BOTH about usefulness and popularity because it betrays how you swear Google works but seriously - people here are more intelligent than you think and can see right through you refusing to address the article, the discussion the article is about and their real context.
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                • Profile picture of the author dburk
                  Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                  Nope.... your point has been completely dismantled by the facts and the real context of the article which you refuse to address. I have come to learn that when people cannot deal with facts they try and deflect. If there was any belligerence it is clear to anyone who reads the thread that it was on your part launching off into a series of personal accusation and ad homs. It will not work any better than your previous debate tactics. Meanwhile the link with the discussions that shows the context is in front of you since I gave it to you. When can we expect you to muster the honesty and address it?

                  Only problem is you UTTERLY failed to establish it was a link bait thread since the article talks about both terms which you claimed I made up and conflated. An error created due to your incomplete reading. I am not alone in this - Jinx has done an outstanding job in dismantling your assertions and proving that the only misinformation that is flowing is from your posts.

                  Oh Don that is so hilarious. You launch off in your very first post in this thread with a series of attacks and accusations and are now trying to claim the high ground on civility?

                  That too fails. Meanwhile you expect everyone to miss that I have PRECISELY answered your vain ad hom and accusations by quoting directly from the article AND the discussion that the article was about?

                  I get that you are hurt and emotional about the Google engineer talking BOTH about usefulness and popularity because it betrays how you swear Google works but seriously - people here are more intelligent than you think and can see right through you refusing to address the article, the discussion the article is about and their real context.
                  Hi Mike,

                  Again, thanks for the feedback. :rolleyes:

                  Not going for your straw man, I stand by my previous assertions.
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                  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                    Originally Posted by dburk View Post

                    Not going for your straw man

                    Pure nonsense Dburk. The only strawman is you trying to duck looking at the original article and discussion because it disproves your various accusations. Poor form and totally dishonest.
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                    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                      Google doesn't need to read minds, they rely on behavioral science. There are distinctive patterns of behavior that appear in the data that indicates relative usefulness. You are on the right track, they do use CTR, bounce rates, TOS, session paths, keyword term revisions, and a host of other metrics in their data analysis. Take what you think they do, and multiply it by 20 and you will be much closer to what they actually do.
                      Jinx its pointless discussing this with Dburk. He is just going to continue to pontificate about how he wants Google to work making statements of fact that are nothing of the sort. If you notice he refuses to link to any proof or deal with the links and sources provided. Pointless.

                      As for the whole ranking with only useful content thing. Of course you can rank pages with no competition on content alone. Newbies to SEO usually can point to some page that ranked they did not expect but thats not the same as going for terms people are actually competing for. Also in alot of occasions - like the one that Justin claimed for halo 4 - links are actually there and they just did not adequately analyze the serp or the page.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        Yahoo answers sucks. If you already know something about the subject it might point you in the right direction but trusting something that some anonymous poster puts up on a subject you can't verify yourself isn't useful.

        The example the google tech gave is even worse. He was justifying Yahoo answers being right up there ranking with Mayoclinic on a health related subject. Thats borderline insane
        Sorry, not everyone in the world is searching Google for the meaning of life. :rolleyes:
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
          Banned
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          Sorry, not everyone in the world is searching Google for the meaning of life. :rolleyes:
          Sometimes it's quite handy yes, don't know what I looked up recently but found the answer at Yahoo through a Google search, probably some WP related thing that I had to figure out and the solution was there.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

            Sometimes it's quite handy yes, don't know what I looked up recently but found the answer at Yahoo through a Google search, probably some WP related thing that I had to figure out and the solution was there.
            Like I said. if you know something about the subject it can be a quick reference to some other resource or answer, but if you don't, you have no clue whether the answer is any good. I have found right answers but I have also found pure garbage as well. Its just a matter of obvious logic. Any site where anyone can answer is going to give unreliable results. Plus every serp I have seen the answer was already on the front page from a more reliable source.
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            • Profile picture of the author yukon
              Banned
              Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

              I have found right answers but I have also found pure garbage as well.
              Welcome to the interwebs.
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          • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
            Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

            Sometimes it's quite handy yes, don't know what I looked up recently but found the answer at Yahoo through a Google search, probably some WP related thing that I had to figure out and the solution was there.
            I actually found a good answer from Yahoo thru Google search too the other day. That was the exception to the rule though.. 99% of the time it's complete crap. Like waaayy off almost misleading answers. It should be called "Yahoo Opinions and Possible Hunches, Maybe" cause thats just what you get
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            • Profile picture of the author yukon
              Banned
              Originally Posted by jinx1221 View Post

              I actually found a good answer from Yahoo thru Google search too the other day. That was the exception to the rule though.. 99% of the time it's complete crap. Like waaayy off almost misleading answers. It should be called "Yahoo Opinions and Possible Hunches, Maybe" cause thats just what you get
              Like I said earlier, it all depends on what your searching for. Things like software related questions/answers aren't typically spam/crap from IMers unless it's an IM software that has affiliates.

              Anyone searching for the meaning of life or how to cure hemorrhoids, try Bing.
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  • Profile picture of the author hipeopo02
    you have to cater to stupid people?

    what business does google have catering to stupid people?

    they are a search engine not a school.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by hipeopo02 View Post

      you have to cater to stupid people?

      what business does google have catering to stupid people?

      they are a search engine not a school.
      No, you have to optimize for SEO (If your targeting the SERPs).

      Doesn't matter what Google or anyone else says about quality, ranking a page is still all about optimized pages/plain text/links, the content value only matters for the traffic viewing the page/s.

      The page with better SEO wins in the SERPs.
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  • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
    I believed this was true once I was brought into this clothing company...

    The URL's messed up, the on-page is shit. There's like 2-3 sentences of content, yet we rank on the first page and generate 110k UNIQUE visitors a day? Why? Because of a high quality link profile.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by GGpaul View Post

      I believed this was true once I was brought into this clothing company...

      The URL's messed up, the on-page is shit. There's like 2-3 sentences of content, yet we rank on the first page and generate 110k UNIQUE visitors a day? Why? Because of a high quality link profile.
      Good luck trying to convince people around here that they don't need 3,000 word articles like Wikipedia to rank a page. If a webmaster is a writer, cool, write pages & pages of articles, that's what writers do best, otherwise it's just silly writing articles for the sake of SEO.

      Depending on what's being ranked, there's really not a lot of different things that need to be done. There's little sub-niches of SEO (ranking pages, images, video, SERP optimization/tweaking, etc...), but most everything comes down to optimized plain text & quality links, not large amounts of text just for SEO.
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      • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        Good luck trying to convince people around here that they don't need 3,000 word articles like Wikipedia to rank a page. If a webmaster is a writer, cool, write pages & pages of articles, that's what writers do best, otherwise it's just silly writing articles for the sake of SEO.

        Depending on what's being ranked, there's really not a lot of different things that need to be done. There's little sub-niches of SEO (ranking pages, images, video, SERP optimization/tweaking, etc...), but most everything comes down to optimized plain text & quality links, not large amounts of text just for SEO.
        I'm not trying to convince anybody!
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by GGpaul View Post

      I believed this was true once I was brought into this clothing company...

      The URL's messed up, the on-page is shit. There's like 2-3 sentences of content, yet we rank on the first page and generate 110k UNIQUE visitors a day? Why? Because of a high quality link profile.
      Sometimes I think by myself.

      It's better to have 2-3 sentences of content then a lap of mostly irrelevant text.

      Although I'm not really a fan of Yukon's statement saying that content length doesn't matter for rankings as when it's highly LSI rich it does matter, but I guess that should always be mentioned with it.

      Anyway I saw it myself some times, a 1200 word page with a lot of fluff talk in between, vs a basic page that has a comparison chart and 1 paragraph of text.

      Which one ranks better?

      The comparison chart page cause almost every word inside that chart is an LSI keyword.

      Another example: I had a Q&A site with like 12 featured posts on homepage which had less to do with the main EMD kw "your questions answered", when the site got accidentally deleted I was left with an empty WP with kw in title, h1 tag and description. The rankings moved up to #1 instead of #4

      Nowadays you have to be careful with lengthy content as it can easily work against you when you don't stay hyper focused on the topic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
    If you seen the absolute garbage quality articles I first ranked my site with. I outsourced the entire writing job.

    40 pages x 1500-2000 words

    They where cheap.
    I read the first 2 I got back and they read ok. After that, I was literally just pasting and publishing without hardly looking. When I decided to expand the site, I hired 2 full time writers. When they read my content they went in convulsions of laughter. It was pure mambo jahambo nonsense.

    The experience did tell me that it is truely all about the links. But I will preach to anyone who would listen. To take the time or spend the money for high quality. As it only makes sense moving forward.
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  • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
    Type in shopbop.com. They have a huge list of "designers". There are a lot of designers that generate a high search volume globally, every month.

    They are an ecommerce site. Each product listing/designer page has less than 200 words. Yet, they're ranked on the first page of Google. I doubt it's the 10000 words .
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  • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
    Mike always goin HAM. Geeze man. Can't wait to see you at the wedding.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by GGpaul View Post

      Mike always goin HAM. Geeze man. Can't wait to see you at the wedding.
      Man don't even start about that wedding. I got ready to book my flight several times and could taste the wedding cake in my mouth but you always tripping. If this keeps up Nest and I are going to come to Cali packing. We will have a real Shotgun wedding and force you to say I do.

      or better yet maybe one of us will just marry the girl
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  • Profile picture of the author dalegolden
    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

    Really interesting reveal from a Google engineer highlighted in this piece

    Google's Ryan Moulton: Higher Quality Content Might Not Be More Useful Content

    Basically the engineer admits the best quality content takes a back seat to the more popular "useful" content. Thing is he doesn't explain how Google determines popularity but there are really only two ways

    links and CTR/bounce data

    So if the engineer is to be believed then it doesn't matter how great your content is - If it does not have signals of being popular you still will be beat by inferior content. It STILL comes down to promotion/link building kind of destroys the claim Google makes elsewhere that you should just create great content in order to rank.
    Link building and SEO are two sides of a coin. If one is vanished, other will be of no use. Link building will never die as long as SEO exists and SEO will never die as long as Search engines exists.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by dalegolden View Post

      Link building and SEO are two sides of a coin. If one is vanished, other will be of no use. Link building will never die as long as SEO exists and SEO will never die as long as Search engines exists.
      Because link building isn't the same thing as SEO?
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  • Profile picture of the author jinx1221
    Originally Posted by dburk View Post

    In fact, Google holds Patents in heuristic analysis. One of the most common heuristics methods used in data search algorithms is known as fast a frugal heuristics. Anytime you have a large amount of data you can accurately predict the relative usefulness of a snippet of text. This isn't science fiction, it is math. For more information about this topic, pick up a book on simple heuristics.
    I hear what you're saying man. Not going to argue that they use heuristic analysis of content. That's another thing that can be programmed. Not going to say they don't use it, I'm sure they do. I just doubt how high a factor that is in ranking. It's another thing that can be manipulated. If they relied too much on this, they would have no need for another little thing they rely on so much.. votes, aka links.

    Originally Posted by dburk View Post

    Perhaps you are right? Maybe Google lets those hundreds of scientists and mathematicians they employee sit around doing nothing. Or, maybe they do actually use science and math to solve difficult equations.
    I don't doubt they have quite a few brilliant minds at Google inc. but they're not all standing around writing wierd equations on chalkboards like Good Will Hunting. Yes, their programmers are figuring new ways to tweak their algorithm every day. It's just not as complex as you make it out to be.

    Originally Posted by dburk View Post

    This led me to an adventure where I have been documenting content structure to find a number of patterns that automatically rank higher based on nothing other than the predicted usefulness of that content. If you are smart enough to figure it out for yourself then good on you.
    Well then, here you go, everyone:

    Content Analysis Heuristics « Boxes and Arrows

    So now you, too, can write garbage, but structure your site in such a way as to fool the algorithm into slipping you higher in the serps. Wait, those brilliant minds at Google, haven't they already thought of this? :rolleyes:

    But it's not a bad thought, you do want your site structure and content to be consistent with other sites like yours.. that determines relevency. Our debate was whether or not they can judge quality of a piece of content from a human standpoint, not an algorithmic one. They can't, that's why you need votes/links.
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  • Profile picture of the author blindado
    I have a few questions regarding the words "great content". It makes sense to me if we are talking about a blog of a specific niche. But i don't know what great content is if i'm searching, for example, for a used car or a used iphone.

    If i write "used iphone 4" on google, the first link is a list of iphones from the ebay site. I don't see much content there. Where does that page differs from others that are also listing used iphones?
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by blindado View Post

      I have a few questions regarding the words "great content". It makes sense to me if we are talking about a blog of a specific niche. But i don't know what great content is if i'm searching, for example, for a used car or a used iphone.

      If i write "used iphone 4" on google, the first link is a list of iphones from the ebay site. I don't see much content there. Where does that page differs from others that are also listing used iphones?
      Hi blindado,

      If someone searches using the term "used iphone 4" they are often looking for a place to purchase a used iphone 4 cellphone, right? Many people might suggest that ebay is a good place to find used cellphones for sale, right? So a page that returns a list of used iphones for sale on eBay would be the most appropriate page for that search, correct?

      Now you ask why that page and not another when you "don't see much content there". More does not always equal better. It could be that the most useful content is just a brief list. Too much content on a page is just as bad as too little. In fact, that seemed to be the central idea the Google engineer was trying to convey in his discussion.

      Having just the right amount of content for the search query is what makes it "great content" for users.

      "One man's junk, is another mans treasure."
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  • Profile picture of the author blindado
    You're right. So, how can anyone get there and compete with an already established site like that?
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by blindado View Post

      You're right. So, how can anyone get there and compete with an already established site like that?
      Hi blindado,

      I'll give you a simple 2 step method.

      Step 1. Find a way to make a page with even more usefulness for searchers. Look for anything that might have been overlooked, or perhaps a layout that makes it faster and easier for users to find precisely what they want and need. It could be as simple as a better layout, or one bit of vital information the competitor left out, or perhaps a more useful way of sorting or visualizing and comparing products.

      Step 2. Promote and advertise the hell out of it.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

        Step 2. Promote and advertise the hell out of it.

        ROFL....in other words make it more popular. A rose by any other name.
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Hi Mike,

          Thanks again for your feedback. You really do all you can to keep the belligerence levels high on this forum. :p

          Again with the straw man. :rolleyes:

          You are taking what I said out of context and twisting it into a straw man.

          I have never suggested being popular is bad, or that it doesn't help you to rank. Nor did I suggest that there is a "designated right amount of content". That's a silly notion and a lame tactic on you part to suggest that I made that assertion.

          You are the only person that suggested that on this thread so I have no intentions of defending your assertion. I stand by what I said, and disavow what you said I said. That is a classic straw man and I'm calling you out on it, just another fallacious argument which is what regulars on this forum have come to expect from you.

          I am just pointing out that there is a bit more to ranking than just backlinks.

          I have always been a big proponent of advertising and promoting to get exposure for your content. You have been a member of this forum long enough to know that well. So why pretend?

          Your link does provide evidence that anchortext is one of the 4 signal groups. And yes, you can rank with just the one set of signals, just as you can rank with any of the other 3 signal groups. You have to be a total novice to not know that. But, your link also demonstrates my point. A newcomer, with barely any linkjuice, as compered to Adobe, was able to outrank them with just a little bit of relevant content. Thanks for that example which highlights my main point.

          Come on man, that is so basic that a kindergartner can see through it. You can do better than that. I have seen you pull out all sorts of fallacious arguments in the past. If this thread is going to be a demonstration of your fallacious arguments, then bring your A game, you're hardly making an effort today. Are feeling okay?

          p.s. @yukon,

          Good catch, I had completely forgotten about that, though I have seen pages rank in the past with Google bombing.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by dburk View Post


            I have never suggested being popular is bad, or that it doesn't help you to rank. Nor did I suggest that there is a "designated right amount of content". That's a silly notion and a lame tactic on you part to suggest that I made that assertion.

            ROFL...Perhaps you need to follow your own reasoning Don. You won't trip over your own words so much. Heres what you wrote

            Now you ask why that page and not another when you "don't see much content there". More does not always equal better. It could be that the most useful content is just a brief list. Too much content on a page is just as bad as too little. In fact, that seemed to be the central idea the Google engineer was trying to convey in his discussion.
            SO what are you saying there? - simple that the page ranks based on good useful content that Google recognizes. Then you state

            Having just the right amount of content for the search query is what makes it "great content" for users.
            So whats the take away from what you actually wrote? that google identified the great content (which is your whole thesis - that google can do that) by it having the right amount of content for users. Sorry Don, Mike anthony isn't responsible for your inability to understand what you have written. Yet another one of your strawman accusations bites the dust.

            I have always been a big proponent of advertising and promoting to get exposure for your content. You have been a member of this forum long enough to know that well. So why pretend?
            Sigh...Whose pretending. Read the OP again. You are the one that has created strawman after strawman while making the accusations. I have never ever stated that a page must not be relevant, have the keywords and even LSI content . Whats in contention is that google can really determine great content and even useful content for human beings by on page factors. Its science fiction. When it comes down to determining great and useful content (not merely just relevant content) then Google has to look at popularity and metrics that HUMANS give them.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by dburk View Post

            But, your link also demonstrates my point. A newcomer, with barely any linkjuice, as compered to Adobe, was able to outrank them with just a little bit of relevant content. Thanks for that example which highlights my main point.


            Did you even look at the site that ranks?......HAHAHAHAHA

            Your entire premise has been that Google ranks based on usefulness of the sites relevant to the term searched for. Go ahead Don ... Show us the relevant useful great content relevant to the words click here that allows it to rank higher than all the rest?

            http://clickhere.com

            I dare you. Double dare you

            Thanks for highlighting the first result. It completely destroys your argument. Why? The first result is just a brand that outside of the brand name has no useful relevance to the term "click here". There is no usefulness and great content for the term Don? where?

            Hey like you said. This is so basic that a kindergartner can see through it (but you missed it). Your premise is just junk SEO. That site could be used to argue for EMDs or Google elevating brands but great relevant content that has superior usefulness for readers? Total nonsense. The whole site is a Flash based commercial for a marketing agency. ROFL.


            P.S. Just a tip - When doing analysis never rely on PR which has not been updated. Check the backlinks . It has plenty of juice and its profile is even more targeted for the term than Adobe. Try again but please at least this time as you said elevate your game to actually look at the sites you are claiming prove your point on usefulness. Its not that much fun pointing out obvious flubs. YOu've been doing this all thread long - making statements without checking sources or presenting ANY evidence. Real straw stuff

            Also since i know how you like to slide sideways to save a destroyed point. If you argue that the term click here refers in relevance to the brand then it would be a recognition by google of such a brand or of EMD status. It would mean the algo Identified the relevance not by whats on the page but by the existence of the brand. Either way your prime example just utterly failed to back your point.

            seh la vie
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by blindado View Post

      You're right. So, how can anyone get there and compete with an already established site like that?
      Actually he is wrong and its total nonsense. There is no designated right amount of content for a page to be useful. If Ebay ranks for that term its because as the engineer really pointed out its based on the popularity of the content on top of the basic relevance of the page. No algo in the world can yet determine what is more useful to humans. Google must rely on human signals which includes links to determine content's usefulness.

      If you want to see if Don's theory is legit then test if a page continues to climb the more quality links you put to it. Those of us who actually rank pages rather than talk about how we think Google works have proven that links will rank a site whose initial alleged "usefulness" did not make it rank.

      In fact at times the link factor is so powerful in the algo it will override many sites that have the full keyword relevance and rank sites that do not even have the full term relevance. As you can see here

      https://www.google.com/search?q=clic...a&channel=fflb

      Where Adobe readers site ranks number 2 though having next to no content and the full phrase not even appearing on the page.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        In fact at times the link factor is so powerful in the algo it will override many sites that have the full keyword relevance and rank sites that do not even have the full term relevance. As you can see here

        https://www.google.com/search?q=clic...a&channel=fflb

        Where Adobe readers site ranks number 2 though having next to no content and the full phrase not even appearing on the page.
        I agree the keyword doesn't always have to be on the ranked page, still having the keyword on the ranked page just makes ranking the page easier.

        Your Adobe example page actually has the [exact] keyword phrase (click here) on the example page as anchor-text. The keyword phrase might not show up on the live page that traffic is looking at, but Google doesn't have a problem finding that [exact] keyword phrase (screenshot/link below).

        That same web page also includes the word clicking as plain text.

        By clicking the Download now button, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to the Adobe Software Licensing Agreement.
        Google Cache (text version)









        If you turn javascript Off on your browser, the same Adobe live web page ranking #2 for the keyword click here shows the hidden anchor-text/link.







        This is a good example of why I always tell people to look at the Google Cache (text version), the cache text version removes all the clutter that's on the live web page & only shows what's important (text/links).
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          Your Adobe example page actually has the [exact] keyword phrase (click here) on the example page as anchor-text. The keyword phrase might not show up on the live page that traffic is looking at, but Google doesn't have a problem finding that [exact] keyword phrase (screenshot/link below).
          Yuke thats a good point . I did not see that. I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree that having relevance on the page is a usual must, but thats not the same as usefulness. Fact is it doesn't change that there is nothing particularly "useful" of that page over the others. That IS an example of links pushing up a page.
          Popularity driving rankings.

          Mind you I am not at all stating that you should just rely on links. What I am responding to is the nonsense that Google has some algo that can determine besides the links the usefulness of the page not merely the relevance of the page. Pages for Good SE should have the terms and LSI related content. Thats solid SEO . What is not Solid SEO is running around with the science fiction idea that google can determine the usefulness of a page without the input of human beings. Its total nonsense. Even the most advanced AI in the world now has problems in determining usefulness of responses to a particular set of words. Humans alone have a good grip on what is useful.

          A few people on here are always messing with newbies fooling them into thinking this if you build it they will come theory. Newbies reading this stuff will think hey google is really in there with me helping me to rank great content if I write it. No they are not. It s not enough to write great content just like the OP title says. You have to create popularity for it as well. On the net that is determined by links. Anyone saying different is just dreaming and leading people astray..







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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Bit off topic,

    That Adobe link that Mike A. mentioned is a perfect example that not all hidden text/links are bad.

    The only reason I mention that is, once in a while someone will start a new forum thread about hidden text/links & most replies jump in with comments like hidden text/links will hurt your page in the SERPs, which is obviously nonsense. There's a difference between hidden text/links that are useful & spamming a web page.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    The #1 ranked page for the keyword click here is a branded EMD which most likely has a bunch of backlinks with anchor text as either click here or clickhere (I didn't check).

    Besides us searching that keyword (click here) I'm sure the only other people searching are people that know about that branded EMD business.

    I just now looked at the #1 ranked site for the keyword click here & noticed they're doing exactly what I've been saying about how to optimize Flash pages. Typically Flash content won't show up on a Cache because the webmaster will usually make the mistake of embedding the content (text/links) inside the Flash.

    The #1 ranked page/site (hxxp://clickhere.com) is pulling their on-page content from .xml files & displaying that .xml content inside the Flash, that's how Flash is optimized for SEO.

    Here's the #1 ranked site/pages content: filetype:xml site:clickhere.com

    Keep in mind that Google will convert all those xml files on the Flash site to regular HTML on the Google Cache.

    Example: http://clickhere.com/people/leaders.xml

    I'll have to keep that keyword in mind, it makes for 2 good examples (legit hidden text/links & optimizing Flash with xml).
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      The #1 ranked page for the keyword click here is a branded EMD which most likely has a bunch of backlinks with anchor text as either click here or clickhere (I didn't check).
      I did and yes ton loads of them and many High authority links

      Besides us searching that keyword (click here) I'm sure the only other people searching are people that know about that branded EMD business.
      Yes that could be a measure of popularity as well.

      I just now looked at the #1 ranked site for the keyword click here & noticed they're doing exactly what I've been saying about how to optimize Flash pages. Typically Flash content won't show up on a Cache because the webmaster will usually make the mistake of embedding the content (text/links) inside the Flash.
      Yep it is a very interesting result. Like I said I COULD see someone making the argument from this result for EMDs even company brand preference but particularly useful content over all the other results for "click here"? Not on your life. Its nothing but a marketing site with sales talk for its services.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeffery Moss
    What that article says to me is that you should write your content more simply, such as on the sixth grade level. Cut out the technical jargon and big words that an average person won't understand. Ease and simplicity of understanding for content is what makes the page more useful to the reader.
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    • Profile picture of the author Icematikx
      Originally Posted by Jeffery Moss View Post

      What that article says to me is that you should write your content more simply, such as on the sixth grade level. Cut out the technical jargon and big words that an average person won't understand. Ease and simplicity of understanding for content is what makes the page more useful to the reader.
      Google looks at your content, and assigns a "reader difficulty" level to it. It's understood that this is one of the ranking factors. Who knows how important it is though?

      I would suspect that Yahoo answers has a very easy readability level, with Mayoclinic being difficult.
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      • Profile picture of the author Samuel Adams
        Originally Posted by Icematikx View Post

        Google looks at your content, and assigns a "reader difficulty" level to it. It's understood that this is one of the ranking factors. Who knows how important it is though?

        I would suspect that Yahoo answers has a very easy readability level, with Mayoclinic being difficult.
        Just from my own point of view, I want authoritative medical advice and am not willing to take advice from just any random person on the internet. My health is much too important for guesswork. So I don't understand Google's logic if assigning any real value to these psuedo medical/health pages such as contained on Yahoo answers. And, I can understand how they are easy to read, but not very authoritative. Google has a long way to go if they think those pages are in the least helpful to anyone suffering a real health issue.
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  • Profile picture of the author IMStrategus
    i think links always outweight the content.
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