Google Search: Getting to the First Page (and trying to take advantage of the algorithm)
How to Show Up on the First Page of Google (Even if You’re a Nobody)
In class, we talked briefly about how Google tries to hide information about its algorithm as it becomes more complex to avoid people trying to take advantage of the system. However, as is the case with any system, people will always try to take advantage of it, and this article shows an example of how. Neil Patel breaks down how new, less established sites can try to get to the first page of Google (given the fact that 70% of users do not go past the first page), surpassing websites with what he shows as higher “domain authorities” than the newer, less established sites. In doing so, he explains that there are two main kinds of searches–shorter, more popular searches, and what he refers to as “long-tail searches”. Long-tail searches are specific searches, often with more keywords (for example, “small metal brush for short-haired dogs under 25 pounds” instead of “dog brush”); individually, they are less common than their shorter equivalents, but as a whole, they make up well more than half of all actual searches. By catering their posts and pages to these more specific searches (giving just a few key searches to each post) and creating a huge number of those posts and pages, websites can begin to surpass the large number of massive, established websites that are almost impossible to pass in the bigger, more general searches.
In class, we covered that Google uses a system to rank the authority and importance of its sites based at least partly off of in-links and out-links. We know that there are many parts of this algorithm that we don’t completely understand (for good reason). However, there are other parts, like the linkage and the keywords that Patel talks about, that we do know about–and those parts can be abused in some ways, to help established sites dominate the first page during short searches, but also can be abused in arguably positive ways, to help lesser known sites find a way to get traffic sometimes. Bigger sites don’t want to expend the time to dominate those smaller long-tailed searches (except for some, like Amazon), leaving that avenue open. However, it is important to note that the overall takeaway is that Google is actively shaping the content of the webpages it leads to. By the nature of its algorithm, it is forcing some sites to change their behavior from what they may want to do in order to find traffic. This has various advantages for users and sites alike, such as forcing niche areas in which each site can dominate and forcing sites to create content that will actually be exactly what long-tailed searchers are looking for, and also has disadvantages, such as creating a labor burden on newer sites to fight their way to web traffic. I have to wonder if there is any algorithm Google could use that could be fair to all of its users.