Google And Page Rank

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 SEO

There are different ways how to advertise your product. Some traditional ways how to do this are yellow pages, bill boards, news papers, television advertisement and others. However when making use of the mentioned advertisement you are minimizing your profits because these types of advertisements can be very expensive. This is why the majority of business owners are investing in creating a good website for their business. There are several advantages for the business when they have a website, the main advantage is that visitors can visit the website any time they want, and it is like your business is open whole day for 7 days a week.

The main reason for this thesis is the fast growth of the internet usage. When having more users searching on the internet it is very important to have a good website. How does a webmaster ensure that his website will appear high on search results? A definitive answer is SEO(Search Engine Optimization). [1](Dr. Khanna Samrat) SEO is a technique which helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to search query. To rank high on a search engine search a website must optimize several factors, both internal and external factors. For that reason SEO is divided into two factors: SEO on page factors and SEO off-page factors[9](J.Shi).

On-page factors are the factors that exist inside a website or web page, such examples are Meta Tags, URL address and unique contents. On the other side off-page factors are those factors existing outside the website or web page, such examples are inbound links, keywords used in the anchor text of the inbound links and variety of sources of inbound links [10](P.Kent).

SEO is not a new idea as it has been existing almost as long as the search engines. [2] (Sean A. Golliher) One of the early web crawlers was Wandex, created in 1993 at MIT by Matthew Gray. Web crawler, released in 1994, is considered the first web crawler to look at the entire text of a web document. SEO have changed dramatically over the past few years, with the majority shift being the rise and dominance of Google [12].

While SEO is used to rank a website, each search engine has its own method how to do this. Google and Yahoo do not rank a particular website the same. On Google a website can be visible on the second page, while on Yahoo it can be visible on the first page or vice versa. However there are a set of evolving techniques that can be applied to optimize the alignment on an ongoing basis among specific elements. These elements include, the search engine algorithm, the content of the website, keywords entered as queries into the search engine, the prominence of the site and its pages, and the behaviour of users.[13] Valdes 2009

Nowadays there are different search engine optimization techniques that are being used. In this thesis I will determine which are the most efficient techniques that needs to be used so that the particular website will rank higher.

As a search engine for this thesis I am going to use Google. Although it is not a part of my thesis I had to understand how the search engine works to have a better picture about the SEO tools to be used. I will implement the different tools on three different websites and determine whether they actually yield a significant result.

2.2 SEO Techniques

According to (Baxter, 2010)[11]. A natural SERP refers to those listing appearing because of their relevance to search terms. The non-organic SERPs are for pay-per-click(PPC) advertising and appear along the top to the right of the search engine results page. Studies have shown that people are more apt to click on natural results, especially high-ticket and research-oriented items. Regular unpaid listings resulting from a search, referred as "organic" or "natural" listings, are most valued by marketers because they are generally viewed most often and because there is no cost.

There are different types of SEO techniques that a developer can make use of. However it is highly important to choose the proper techniques, as SEO techniques are split into two categories, White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO [3]. [4] (Rakesh Kumar) White Hat SEO adopts the standard optimizing technology by search engine to have the regular and balanced operation. On the other hand Black Hat SEO adopt malicious website ranking optimization techniques which violate the search engine optimization policy.

I am going to use the White Hat SEO techniques which consist of the, Page titles Keywords, Meta Tags, Site Map and Page Text. The starting point of every website must be the page title. [5] (Google) Title tag shows both the user and the search engines what the topic of a particular page is. Ideally a unique title is created for each page on a website.

Similar to the page title is the Meta Tags. Meta tags must be informative, contains the keywords that had been selected and must also have a good description about the particular website. It is important not to keep the description in short and avoid having long sentences.

[4] Suitable keywords are the primary step to make a high- rank website. However it is extremely important not to overload the website with keywords because it might face the possibility of registration cancellation. To make sure the best keywords are implemented the Google Adwords Tool is the best tool I find.

The factors affecting the ranking in search result page can be classified keywords – relevant and keyword independent. A research on agricultural search engine optimization was carried out in June 2010 where the authors started their study by selecting the respective keywords. They prepared 160 keywords agriculture related keywords. Then 9 keywords and three categories were selected from the 160 keywords. The authors said that the higher user attention and the more keywords search, the higher concern degree. [14](Wang)

[6]Internal links of website pass on to the other links between pages of website. Sensible links can build the web pages more visual, help visitors focus on the topic of website and make the topic key words more sensitive to search engine. In addition, internal links to websites can also increase speed rate of the spider crawling.

The text on the page is also an important factor when implementing SEO to a website. A website can have the nicest design of all containing flashing images etc. However this will not improve the ranking of your website because the search engine will not see the flash images. The search engine uses a crawler which will visit a site and send content back to the search engine. The website should contain informative text and where possible make use of the keywords inside the text.

Google and other search engines counts link to a page from another website as a vote for this page. In other words, web pages and websites with more external links from other websites will be ranked more highly. The quality of external links is also very important factor as, if links from other web pages are from a website with good reputation and with relevant content and key phrases, then this is more valuable. Many of web focused companies should improve this aspect of search engine optimization in process called External Link Building and Internal Link architecture. When implementing the external link builder if possible the webpage from where to get the links must have a higher Page Rank. Or at least it must have a page rank four. Page rank is a scale between 0 and 10 used by Google to determine the importance of websites according to the number of quality of inbound links and external links. Incoming or external links to website should always be in natural textual form, rather than in graphic form (banner ads images etc.) [16]

After a page is crawled, the next step is to index its content. The indexed page is stored in a giant database, from where it can later be retrieved [1]. The process of indexing is carried out to identify the words and expressions that best describe the particular website. Keywords are also assigned to the particular website in this process.

When a search request comes, the search engine needs to process it and it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database. Since it is very common that more than one page has the same search string, the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index with the same search string.

Large companies occasionally use caching servers which automatically saves a local copy of some web pages when online user visits a website. Companies organize these servers in order to cut down the amount of bandwidth customer’s use.[17] in some cases, if online user decides to visit the same web page, the caching server deliver the stored page, rather than pulling down another from the internet. As result, web analytics tools might provide deceptive information about web traffic. This may cause analysts to conclude that their website is not performing well.

2.3 Google and Page Rank

Page rank is the system used by Google to determine the popularity of a site. Currently, in order to provide users the correct results searched in a more scientific and balanced way, Google uses its sequencing technology combining page rank and hill top to establish the ranking of a webpage. The following is the new algorithm formula.

{(1-d)+a(RS)}*{(1-e)+b(PR*fb)}*{(1-f)+c(LS)} [7]

The regulation control of weights are a, b and c and d,e,f are the damping controls while fb is the factor base. The new algorithm consists of three parts, the RS Correlation Scores, PR Page Rank Scores and LS Industry. [8]

Nowadays Google is the most common search engine used by users who want to search on the web. Google has various tools that are very useful for Search Engine Optimization. Such of which are Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Google Ad words.

Google webmaster tool is a free web service provided by Google for developers/ website owners. This tool allows webmasters to observe their website ranking and indexing. It gives more information about website performance according to Google search query. The webmaster will know how many times the website is being crawled. One can also add a site map and check if there are any blocked pages.

Google Analytics offers a detailed statistic about a website’s traffic and traffic sources. One can also view from where users are viewing their website, being location or even sources. This tool is very useful because the webmaster will know how the users are reaching the particular website as it shows direct visitors, redirected visitors and also those from search queries. Real time data about the amount of viewers on the particular website is also available.

Google AdWords is Google's main advertising product and main source of revenue.  AdWords offers pay-per-click, that is, cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, cost-per-thousand-impressions or cost-per-mille (CPM) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one headline of 25 characters and two additional text lines of 35 characters each. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

The study I am proposing will be an experiment using my own three websites in hopes of providing that a strong relationship does exist between ethical SEO and a successful website. To achieve this goal, I plan to implement into the development of my websites, all the SEO techniques listed in the previous sections. My experiment will be based on implementing, explaining and tracking the results of each technique as they are added. And since SEO has become a very complex and sophisticated practice that requires constant research, practice and reevaluation to be effective, this study will most likely take a good deal of time. However in the end it should provide an updated source on the subject to be used for further research.

Chapter 3: Data collection & Methodology

This study will show the effectiveness of ethical SEO practices and techniques in determining the success of a website. I will be using my three websites to show the importance of different techniques that must be used for better ranking. Two of which are desktop websites and the other is a mobile website, therefore I will be also testing the techniques to be used on the two different situations, being a desktop website or a mobile website. All the three websites will be checked every week to analyse the progress of the particular technique that will be used in that particular period.

Before starting implementing any SEO technique it is highly important to know the visibility of the website, therefore I will have a baseline of information to compare the ending result. The visibility analysis method is split in three different aspects that will arise from a four-phase method: (1) Visitors – those users that visit the site, (2)Search engines – because they are tools which allow users to search through internet and (3) Referrers which are sites that make recommendations to other sites a s links. Once the information of these aspects is known, most of the information for improving the visibility of the websites will be recovered.

Phase 1: Website Visibility

The purpose of phase 1 is to analyse my websites positions based on visitors and search engines. There is several popular analysis tools that one can make use of to analyse all the aspects of a website. I will be using Google Analytics which is a web based SEO analysis tool that gives different detailed reports regarding what report you are in need of.

The number of visitors is a very important factor; however how the users got to your website is equally important. The visitors’ analysis will include the numbers of visitors which will be split in search traffic and direct traffic, referrers, internal search engines, search terms and popularity due to traffic. Since it is necessary to know what search terms or key phrases are used to find my websites, the search engine analysis will include: Indexed pages, Types of Files, Topology, and Popularity according to references, Robots, Invisibility and keywords.

Phase 2: Competitor Identification

Nowadays on the internet one can find different companies with the same product as yours, therefore it is necessary to identify sites with which I will be competing. These competitors will be identified by their websites content, topic, preferences and the directory category.

Phase 3: Competitor Visibility

Once my competitors are identified, I will repeat phase one to analyse their websites. This will allow me to make comparisons of the best and worst positioned sites, as well as the practices used by such sites.

Phase 4: Evaluation of Results and Action Plan

Once analysis of all the previous aspects has been completed, I will have a general idea of the position of my websites. If my website visibility is low or not visible, I will execute my plan of action, the treatment method, which involves the implementation of ethical SEO practices and techniques.

Implementing SEO practices and techniques

There are different techniques I will take into consideration when optimizing my websites for search engine visibility. Before implementing my SEO techniques, I would create a list of goals that I would like to see my website achieve. Once I start the treatment of implementing SEO techniques, each task I will be recorded in a journal according to the specific web page, date of implementation and technique used and I will re-analyze my sites visibility every week to see if and when any results of the treatment, good or bad, show up.

Chapter 4: Findings

Chapter 5: Discussion of findings / Results

Chapter 6: Conclusion and Recommendations

Chapter 7: Bibliography