
Ask HN: What's relevant to Google Search ranking anymore? - antjanus
As a small-time blogger, I&#x27;ve faced several big blows by google and their search algorithm updates.&lt;p&gt;It seems like Google may be trying to cut down on big site&#x27;s black-hat (or grey-hat) SEO but it feels to me like there is nothing left to do for any small bloggers in order to get ranked and be relevant.<p>High quality content doesn&#x27;t mean much (hell, low quality content from already highly ranked sites gets the first picks)
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bhartzer
Quit obsessing over Google rankings and worry more about getting traffic and
eyeballs to your site. If you get the traffic and real visitors, then rankings
will naturally follow.

Stop thinking of yourself as a "small-time blogger" and think of yourself as a
journalist, a reporter, someone who has a story to tell. Write content that
people want to read. Uncover something that people care about. Write something
controversial. Use 'social' to get people to see what you write.

I've been in your shoes: I was a 'small-time blogger' and just kept uncovering
stuff that people care about, articles that people want read, and after
hundreds of posts I finally started getting traffic regularly. Then I
uncovered something that lots of people cared about and that post of mine hit
the home page of HN and Reddit all at the same time. I didn't think my server
could keep up with all the traffic.

Sure, make sure your site is "optimized" based on SEO best practices. But
don't obsess over rankings.

~~~
antjanus
Right. So I understand that an organic-only strategy will yield little to no
results especially nowadays; however, it is still a major way people access
content. That's what I was wondering about.

Otherwise, I get a nice amount of traffic from various sources (people that
linked to my site, social media, HN, and Reddit) but those sources aren't
"long-term" like organic traffic is. (you hit top once and then you're gone
the next day so to speak).

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hagbardgroup
At the same time that Google is cracking down on a lot of old black hat
methods (which is good, because it was unpleasant when they worked), other
content discovery methods besides search are popping up.

There are now many services that exist just to advertise content: Taboola,
Outbrain, Stumbleupon's ad product, CoPromote, and more. You can build a
following over Wordpress or Tumblr. The rates are lower than conventional PPC
and display because the ad networks who offer it regulate what can be
promoted.

Other opportunities include syndicating your content on popular sites, which,
if you follow Google's guidelines, can be great for improving search ranking.

It has always costed something to rank. Ranking on Google for a valuable term
is now more expensive than ever. If your budget doesn't allow you to rank for
your target terms, there are lower cost options to build qualified traffic.
You can use those lower cost options to build up your site quality and
authority to the point to which you can compete.

~~~
antjanus
Interesting but that seems to rely on advertising as a means of distributing
content.

And what do you mean "syndicating your content"? I've actually not heard of
doing this.

~~~
hagbardgroup
Syndication is an old term that just means running the same article in
multiple outlets. For example, George Will's column is syndicated across a ton
of different newspapers. The National Board of Realtors syndicates content
through hundreds of local publications by providing articles for free.

For SEO purposes it's a little different and not always easy to manage. This
is a good article that I've found that talks about some of the practical
issues that can pop up: [http://smepals.com/small-business-seo/how-content-
syndicatio...](http://smepals.com/small-business-seo/how-content-syndication-
can-be-devastating-small-business-seo-and-website-traffic)?

Yeah, title is a little negative, but it's still got some useful details on
how to manage it intelligently.

Not everyone who will syndicate or scrape your stuff will be willing to follow
the rules. A lot of people will not even understand what you're asking them to
do, so you'll have to spell it out for them as didactically as possible.

If you can get them to follow the rules, it can be an effective way to
'borrow' the traffic and link equity for a certain page or post.

More on rel=canonical from Google:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/5-common-
mistakes-with-relcanonical.html)

And a Moz discussion: [http://moz.com/community/q/syndication-link-back-vs-
rel-cano...](http://moz.com/community/q/syndication-link-back-vs-rel-
canonical)

~~~
antjanus
Right, I had a negative connection with that term since, basically, Google
sees original content or nothing.

Thanks for the tip!

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andymurd
You still need links to rank, just like the old days. However, unlike the old
days, you need links from (very) high quality, high relevance sites.

Commenting won't cut it, blogrolls won't cut it, site-wide footer links (e.g.
"Wordpress Theme by MyBlog.com") won't cut it. You need someone that writes
regularly for a premier or second tier site to create an editorial link to
your post with relevant anchor text.

It's hard to get those authors to notice you - really hard - but it does
happen. Keep writing good quality content and engage the right people often.
Do something nice for them, offer a free tool that's perfect for their niche
or help them out with technical stuff. Be a good guy - good guys get good
links, given enough time.

When you have a few high authority links into your pages, you can link to
yourself and distribute that page rank around your site. And when your site
moves up the rankings, don't forget to link out to the other struggling good
guys out there.

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NewsReader42
The other main trouble is that if one of these large sites scrapes your OWN
unique content (lets say a blog post) and has it on their site Google will
treat the larger site as the OWNER of that content due to it's higher rank /
reputation leaving your OWN site getting penalised (or at least not ranked)
for DUPE content - this is something that needs fixing

~~~
lifeisstillgood
It's easily fixBle - add rel="canonical" to the page and ensure you are linked
to google plus as the sites author (google authorship) it's not too hard but
essentially google wants to verify your g+ account against your site - then if
your text appears on your site it's your original work.

------
petercooper
Getting mentions (especially popular ones or those from popular users) on
Twitter appears to be having quite an impact nowadays. Ditto for Google+. It
makes sense though since legit people only share legitimately good/interesting
stuff on these networks, so make stuff that's worth sharing and get it out
there.

~~~
antjanus
So getting social media followers?

~~~
hlmencken
or just links to the site

