Search Engine Optimization Software in the World of PageRank
In today’s age, website developers and online content producers spend countless hours trying to improve their Google rankings. As we learned in class, the way in which Google displays search results is driven by a PageRank algorithm. However, as people have become more familiar with the algorithm, they have started to artificially boost the rankings of their webpages by building spam sites with the sole purpose of linking to their main pages. With the introduction and constant updating of Google Penguin since 2012, the search engine giant has been able to identify these spam sites and penalize the webpages they link to by lowering their rankings. With that said, a core problem still plagues Google Penguin: collateral damage. In an attempt to improve their hub scores, many spam sites link to a broad array of webpages, including ones that are innocent of trying to artificially raise their rankings. These innocent sites then get penalized by Google and their rankings drop as a result.
In order to protect honest webpage developers, a variety of search engine optimization (SEO) software tools have been created. Released in 1997 by the firm Axandra GmbH, OpenLinkProfiler is one such tool that focuses specifically on identifying the different hubs that link to a specific authority of interest. For a single URL, OpenLinkProfiler compiles the following pieces of data:
Two of the most important boxes here are “Unique Active Backlinks” and “Nofollow Links.” The former identifies the number of sites from distinct IP addresses that point to the webpage of interest. In other words, these are strong, high-quality hubs. On the other hand, the percentage of “Nofollow Links” represents the proportion of total sites pointing to the webpage of interest that has been marked as spam by Google. These sites are the weaker, low-quality hubs. To avoid simply dividing hubs into a dichotomy of “strong” and “weak,” OpenLinkProfiler provides a “Link Influence Score.” On a percentage scale, this score represents the relative strength of the webpage of interest as a hub. Therefore, all of the backlinks to the webpage of interest also have link influence scores that can provide even further insight into the quality of the authority itself.
Once OpenLinkProfiler identifies the weak hubs, there are two ways to go about removing them: manual requests and using the disavow tool. Manual requests entail reaching out to the owner of the low-quality hub and asking them to remove the link. On the other hand, using the disavow tool notifies Google to stop considering a specific spam site when calculating final rankings. Both of these methods ultimately drive down the proportion of weak hubs and drive up the proportion of strong hubs pointing to the webpage of interest. As a result, the strength of the webpage of interest as an authority increases. When Google runs its PageRank algorithm to compile search results, the webpage of interest will then have a higher rank and will show up earlier on the page. Overall, SEO optimization tools protect honest and innocent online content producers in the highly algorithmic world of Google.
Sources:
http://neilpatel.com/2014/12/02/improve-google-rankings-without-getting-penalized/
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/09/penguin-is-now-part-of-our-core.html