Beyond PageRank: The Hilltop Algorithm
https://medium.com/@norachay89/the-hilltop-algorithm-understanding-its-application-and-basics-of-modern-seo-63271a365388
In class, we got a general understanding of how the PageRank algorithm works. However, with the extremely rapid expansion of the World Wide Web (there are billions of webpages), the PageRank algorithm can quickly get very inefficient with regards to its running time. Therefore, Google needed to modify their approach to information retrieval from the web.
PageRank started becoming slower because the mutually recursive algorithm was inefficient at finding the authority scores the way it was described in class. The Hilltop Algorithm is one of the most important algorithms in search engine applications today. It was introduced by Google in 2003 and continues being the primary foundation of SEO even as other parameters in newer algorithms are added. The primary goal of the Hilltop algorithm was identifying authoritative digital pages, and that information would be used for page ranking. It is essentially a model that worked together with PageRank to identify the pages that are authoritative and expert. Hilltop identifies the authoritative website pages by first selecting the “expert pages.” Expert pages mean the pages that are specific to particular topics that linked to a lot of other websites. Once the expert pages are selected, Google goes ahead to identify the highest quality sites to rank.
As in PageRank, we assume that the number and quality of the web pages pointing to a specific web page form an accurate measure of the page’s quality. The main difference is the fact that the primary target is picking the “expert” sources designed to assist directing visitors towards a specific resource. Now, Hilltop draws from sites that are linked to create a pool of “experts” pages carefully organized by the niche subjects.
When it was introduced, Hilltop had a dramatic impact on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It was established that links that emanated from .edu pages, links from highly relevant websites such as About.com, and links that came from top directories such as Zeal and Yahoo help websites to get better ranking. Note that these high authority pages have continued to increase over time. In fact, getting a link from sites like Yahoo or About.com was known to significantly increase the page ranking.
A natural question to follow up with would be how one could optimize their web pages to make sure the algorithms would rank the web pages higher.
- Start by identifying authoritative websites
- Mix your site profile link: Google helps a lot in analyzing links. If your website only has expert, authority, and seed links, it is likely to be considered suspicious. Here, you need to look for newer links including less trusted websites to demonstrate that links are natural.
- Network with real people and websites: Reach out to institutions, companies, and organizations and work on corroboration to get regular links. You could follow the products offered by such companies and work towards their links or even do guest posts.
- Discover and follow competitor’s authority links