The New Citations for SEO. Or how SEO is changing
We think the new rankings algorithm is based on Supervised Learning and raw statistical analysis that Google uses. The change is probably simple, and frankly very logical. I have two blogs listed at the end of this article you can read for more and better detailed information.
Before the panda and penguin updates at Google It was too easy to use on site tactics ( Keywords and H1 Tags and meta titles) to influence rankings.
Google is now moving too, and undoubtedly is using more off site context, and content to determine what your site should rank for. To do that they probably look at all the “citations” (mentions) for your site, in what ever format they appear, and have a raw statistical analysis of the relevancy, and then the context.
The results would be very much in line with what we have seen with the Panda and Penguin updates and algorithm changes. If your site
has been listed in a bunch of directories that have SEO or Rankings in the titles then Google starts with this:
You say your site is about Insurance.
Sites about or related to Insurance that you are listed on or mentioned: 3
Sites not about Insurance or related topics you are listed on: 200
You get credit for the three, and how much credit would depend on the Authority of the page and site you are listed on.
One of the interesting consequences of all this is the no follow or follow link value disappears. As many “citations” may not have a link to your site.
So, in summary:
- A Citation or link is only going to help you if it comes from a site or page that Google see’s as relevant to your site.That’s one reason your rankings dropped off the face of the earth if you where primarily using non relevant sites.
Words matter. Google probably (using raw statistical analysis) looks at what a relevant page citation says about your site, or the content about your site on that page. ( Co-citation’s and such)
- Follow or not, a high authority site citation with a link or without is still good for your sites Authority, and ranking.
- On site signals continue to be important, but they only point Google in a direction to determine your sites Authority theywon’t help your ranking on their own.
Interesting example.
We recently built a 2 page site about a specific remodeling type project. We wanted to test the exact match domain changes. The site
url is (Project Type) in (City).
We added it to 4 or 5 sites that were related directly to Remodeling. We may have tweeted it, and added it to a facebook comment.
Two months later it was ranked number 1 for that very specific keyword, and on the first page for that keyword phrase in different form. It was (and is) ranking higher than several sites that have been around for a long time and had SEO companies working on for years (at least to an extent).
We originally thought the the exact match domain for local sites was still a very important ranking factor and it was that simple. Now, I think if we had back linked the same 2 page site to 4 or 5 unrelated directories… or sites, that it would have never been ranked. Well, only one way to find out. Check back in a few months. We will give you an up date.
All of this is admittedly a very simplistic view of the new Google ranking changes. There are many other important factors. Our point is to communicate that many of the old SEO tactics don’t work any more, and why. For us, it’s all good news, as we have followed the
“act as if Google doesn’t exist” principle in SEO for years (to the extent any Internet marketing company like My One Call LLC can).
Our clients didn’t see any rankings drop over the last 6 months based on these new changes.
For far more detail read Joshua Giardino’s excellent blog here :http://blog.iacquire.com/2012/11/28/its-not-co-citation-but-its-still-awesome/
I also mentioned the SEOmoz blog on Co-citations on an early blog. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/prediction-anchor-text-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-whiteboard-friday .
By Mike Bayes
