When the ax comes down at Google, there are always big winners
and big losers. Recently, we’ve seen the first big
algorithm change of the year and many web site owners and
their respective sites have fallen, much like the proverbial
tree. What was it about their site that was simply too much
for the new algorithm to allow anymore searchers to see?
Taking a look at their sites (if you can find them) as well
as the sites at the top, gives us great insight into the
mind of the Google boys and the evidence is clear; the word
ontology is not getting the attention in deserves.
What is ontology? The quick answer is that it is words that
are related to the keywords that you are targeting. However,
it’s a bit more complicated than just dusting off
the old Thesaurus. The way it works is that it is an undetermined
amount of words that most frequently appear on the same
pages throughout the internet as the keywords you are targeting.
I would assume that more weight is given to the words on
pages that rank well than those that don’t. So now
that we know that, how is it affecting today’s SERPs?
Logically, ontology makes a lot more sense than keyword
density, which is clearly a thing of the past. Of course,
Google needs to know what your site is about, and you need
to tell them, but not in the way that some sites have in
the past. This is a lesson learned for the site owners who
have been axed from Google’s rankings. I have taken
a look at a few that have been talked about in the SEO “underworld”
and while it’s been obvious in the past that keyword
density is nothing more than spamming the search engines,
it is now clear that Google has made the necessary adjustments
in it’s algorithm to avoid sending it’s users
to spammy sites.
Not only is it important to have related keywords so that
you can rank well for the keywords that you’ve targeted,
but if you do your homework properly you can actually generate
quite a lot of traffic from strategically placed ontological
words. If you think about it, it is a situation that will
help you in more ways than one. Forget just dropping in
a word here or there, make sure that you have a nice array
of words that relate to your keywords. Don’t hesitate
to include them in your your meta tags and page titles.
The underlying though behind Google’s change is the
removal of spam. As long as you keep that in mind while
writing the content of your web site, you will be fine.
If there’s one thing that we all hate when it comes
to the internet, it’s spam. Now, Google has stepped
up and insured it’s searchers that, while Gmail is
still a work in progress, they at least won’t have
to deal with spam in their search results.
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