Where to 'place' the SEO profession?

[MJW]

Hello again,

I just arrived at work after a long, sunny weekend to find loads of replies,
some more relevant, valuable and/or sensible than others.
Thank you all for your thoughts, they will help me form my own view on the matter.

One thing I can tell you is that I'll stick around to learn what I can,
perhaps even dabble in SEO practices from the comfort of my home.

Cheers,

MJW

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by emanuelh

No. I mean # 1 in the organic results for any search query.

The page that ranks # 1 for coke (the homepage of Coca-Cola's official site at this moment) has the highest relevance score, as measured by Google's ranking algorithm, for this particular search query in comparison with any other page indexed by Google.

I (and my team, and extra staff if needed) only have to increase the relevance score of any other suitable web page (that has not been punished, for instance) to close the relevance score gap between the two pages and become # 1. We don't have to break into Coca-Cola's headquarters, or into Google's.

I am surprised again and again why SEO workers prefer to quote Google's logically false statement.

What exactly do you consider a relevance score? You talk about it as if you read it in a book. The reality is that Google looks at factors that can't be found on the page. The positions of websites depend in part on what is found all over the internet. And in the case of coca cola, their first position is the result of only what was found on the internet. (i.e. The word coke can not be found on the home page of coca cola.)

That means it's not really about some sort of "relevance score", but more about how well you´re known. And I seriously doubt that you can build a brand that will become better known than coca cola.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by MJW

Hello again,

I just arrived at work after a long, sunny weekend to find loads of replies,
some more relevant, valuable and/or sensible than others.
Thank you all for your thoughts, they will help me form my own view on the matter.

One thing I can tell you is that I'll stick around to learn what I can,
perhaps even dabble in SEO practices from the comfort of my home.

Cheers,

MJW

Feel free to participate in many threads,... It's fun and you'll learn even faster that way...

[emanuelh]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

What exactly do you consider a relevance score? You talk about it as if you read it in a book. The reality is that Google looks at factors that can't be found on the page. The positions of websites depend in part on what is found all over the internet. And in the case of coca cola, their first position is the result of only what was found on the internet. (i.e. The word coke can not be found on the home page of coca cola.)

That means it's not really about some sort of "relevance score", but more about how well you´re known. And I seriously doubt that you can build a brand that will become better known than coca cola.

Peter, it seems that you've missed the first SEO lesson - relevance score is what the search engine measures for a web page versus a given search query. SERPs show results (web pages) by the descending order of their relevance scores. The relevance score calculated by Google's complex algorithm is a consolidated score, with no upper limit, of partial scores, some representing qualities of the page and some representing the qualities of inbound links.

So before you teach us "the reality of what Google does" read at least the relevant page in Wikipedia, or better still read an introductory course to search technology.

Being # 1 at Google for the search query coke is determined by being associated with a number that is higher than anyone else's. That number goes up constantly in indirect response to the number of new links and, if someone at Coca Cola wishes so, the inclusion of the word coke in the page's text or metatags. (It can also go down, as a result of the harmful work of some SEO technician.) But there is absolutely nothing in principle that can prevent any other page from achieving an even higher number by all available means.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by emanuelh

Peter, it seems that you've missed the first SEO lesson - relevance score is what the search engine measures for a web page versus a given search query. SERPs show results (web pages) by their descending order of their relevance scores. The relevance score calculated by Google's complex algorithm is a consolidated score, with no upper limit, of partial scores, some representing qualities of the page and some representing inbound links.

So before you teach us "the reality of what Google does" read at least the relevant page in Wikipedia, or better still read an introductory course to search technology.

Your telling Peter to learn SEO from Wikipedia, sorry that is just not right, LOL

You still haven't explained what or how this "relevancy score" is figured out.

Please tell me your not talking about keyword density?

[emanuelh]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Your telling Peter to learn SEO from Wikipedia, sorry that is just not right, LOL
You still haven't explained what or how this "relevancy score" is figured out.
Please tell me your not talking about keyword density?

Relevance (not relevancy) score is the most basic term of SEO. But I'm not surprised to find out that so many practicing SEO technicians have never heard of it and cannot therefore imagine the hidden reality behind what the eyes can see.

What makes it easy in one case (search query) to advance from # 11 to # 10 in Google and practically impossible to advance from # 11 to # 10 in another case? The invisible relevance score gap! It might be one point in one case and ten thousand points in the other, though the gap in rankings is one number for both cases.

Moreover, the pages shown above yours may raise their relevance scores at a rate that is higher than the rate at which you raise the relevance score of your page, and you'll never catch up despite all the work invested. All rankings stay the same but the client is told stories about a recent algorithm shift.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by emanuelh

Relevance (not relevancy) score is the most basic term of SEO.

Again please explain what relevance score is and how it is figured out since none of us here know what you are talking about. So far you have just stated how important it is and no one but you know what it means.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by emanuelh

Peter, it seems that you've missed the first SEO lesson - relevance score is what the search engine measures for a web page versus a given search query. SERPs show results (web pages) by the descending order of their relevance scores. The relevance score calculated by Google's complex algorithm is a consolidated score, with no upper limit, of partial scores, some representing qualities of the page and some representing the qualities of inbound links.

So before you teach us "the reality of what Google does" read at least the relevant page in Wikipedia, or better still read an introductory course to search technology.

Being # 1 at Google for the search query coke is determined by being associated with a number that is higher than anyone else's. That number goes up constantly in indirect response to the number of new links and, if someone at Coca Cola wishes so, the inclusion of the word coke in the page's text or metatags. (It can also go down, as a result of the harmful work of some SEO technician.) But there is absolutely nothing in principle that can prevent any other page from achieving an even higher number by all available means.

That first SEO lesson I know just fine. I usually give that lesson to people that aren't on a level yet that they can understand the link structure of the web, pagerank, anchor text relevance, aging factors, internal link structure of a website, etc. etc. etc.

And to give you an idea, after understanding all the technical factors, which basically means having an understanding of how a search engine works, the next step is understanding why they work the way they do. That's where a lot of people get lost.

[inertia]

Just jumping in on this "relevance score" thing.

Originally Posted by emanuelh

And not only the algorithm is secret, so are the relevance scores of each listing in its SERPs. SEO workers can only watch the rankings, a reflection of the descending order of relevance scores that contain no information on the size of the relevance score gap between two adjacent listings

What you are saying is - Google judges search engine positions on relevance. The number one site in the SERPs is the most relevant (in Googles eyes) for the search phrase. If thats what youre saying then thank god ive been building relevant content and links for people! Phew! That is, after all, the basic of basics.

When describing "relevance score" you summed it up nicely in an earlier post. Our "relevance score" comes from our ranking. If we are 5th then (in googles eyes) we are the fifth most relevant site.

[SEO]

Here is a quote from Dave Taylor regarding "Relevance Score" (Dave Taylor is a lecturer with "Stompernet"): Site reference: Tech Support Questions? Ask Dave Taylor!

QUOTE :
Position on the search results page is based on what I call your Relevance Score, a formula that's calculated by Google's search engine to figure out in quantified terms how relevant your Web page is to the given search term and how authoritative your site is overall (to break ties). Note that this is different, and pretty much unrelated to your PageRank, though most SEO people are pretty obsessed with their PR scores, unnecessarily so in my opinion.
Given the existence of Relevance Scoring, it's clear that if you knew exactly what formula Google used, you could create Web pages that were perfect matches, with the right words in the right places, the right ratio of key words to non-keywords, the right HTML tags, etc. Then, though you couldn't guarantee the #1 spot, you could certainly move to the front of the pack, far ahead of sites that aren't paying attention to what Google's looking for.
The sad news is that no-one outside of Google knows how they calculate Relevance Scores (even if they say otherwise) so we're left guessing and experimenting. And that's where things get a bit dicey...
END QUOTE:

"Relevance score" takes into account many factors... A few which may or may not include:
Relevant keywords, Relevant keyword density, Relevant title tags, Relevant description, Relevant H1 key words and phrases, Relevant bold key words and phrases, Relevant italic key words and phrases, Relevant keywords and phrases used in site wide links, Relevant websites linked to and from, Relevant keywords in both inbound and outbound links...

Relevance may also be calculated by; the amount of time a visitor spends at a website, what the visitor does at the website, where the visitor goes after visiting the website, the country of origin of website and browser, the name of the domain, the name of the page, and many, many other factors come into the "so called' relevance equation....

Some of the worlds top SEO's claim that for every piece of the algorithm puzzle that webmasters manage to "please Google algorithms" with they get a "point" in their "relevance score".

So... theoretically...

It would be possible to outrank "Coke" for the search term "coke"...
(although... in my opinion... it would be stupid to try...)

[incrediblehelp]

LOL, not sure where everyone is going here with this relevance score crap, but websites that are NOT relevant rank higher than those that ARE relevant ALL OF THE TIME on Google.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

websites that are NOT relevant rank higher than those that ARE relevant ALL OF THE TIME on Google.

But doesnt this mean that Google has decided it to be more relevant?

[Peter (IMC)]

It seems that few realize (or understand) that popularity is used in the so called "relevance score".

[emanuelh]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Again please explain what relevance score is and how it is figured out since none of us here know what you are talking about. So far you have just stated how important it is and no one but you know what it means.

I repeat: it is the basic concept of search technology! Think of a simple search algorithm that reads one hundred text documents and counts the number of occurences of each word in each document. The results are stored in an index.
Input comes in the form of a search query. The search algorithm compares it with the index and creates a search results page that may look like:

search query = widget
# 1. document # 12 = relevance score 7 (7 occurences of widget in document)
# 2. document # 96 = relevance score 5 (6 occurences of widget in document)
# 3. document # 4 = relevance score 4 (5 occurences of widget in document)
# 4-100 documents # 1-3, 5-11, 13-95, 97-100 = relevance score 0 (0 occurences of widget in
document)

Note that the documents are arranged by the descending order of their relevance score.
Note that the relevance score gap between the documents ranked # 2 and # 1 is two points, the relevance score gap between the documents ranked # 3 and # 2 is one point, and the relevance score gap between the documents ranked # 4 and # 3 is four points.

A real search algorithm such as Google's does not show documents of relevance score zero; it does not show the number of the document in the index (because the user does not need this information); the consolidated relevance score of each page is calculated by the very complex and secret search algorithm from in-page qualities and from qualities of inbound links.

Most important: real search engines do not show the actual relevance scores because by observing their fluctuations in response to optimization one can understand how the secret search algorithm works!

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by inertia

But doesnt this mean that Google has decided it to be more relevant?

Google likes to leave a lot of these decissions to the "democratic nature of the internet". The Google search results are a reflection of the public opinion about a website. Of course this public opinion is based on the related links that point at it. And related is based on the combination of the search query, the content, the anchor texts, the content of the pages that contain the links, age factors, and some other things.

[emanuelh]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

LOL, not sure where everyone is going here with this relevance score crap, but websites that are NOT relevant rank higher than those that ARE relevant ALL OF THE TIME on Google.

It's surely going towards raising grave doubts about the competence of the moderator.

[emanuelh]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Google likes to leave a lot of these decissions to the "democratic nature of the internet". The Google search results are a reflection of the public opinion about a website. Of course this public opinion is based on the related links that point at it. And related is based on the combination of the search query, the content, the anchor texts, the content of the pages that contain the links, age factors, and some other things.

Google's complex algorithm has to maintain compromises between "pure" relevance and resistance to manipulation by SEO workers. For instance, popularity, the number of visitors of a website might reflect its relevance as judged by human minds but it is also a factor that is so easy to manipulate.

For an illuminating interview read http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/bu.../03google.html .

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by emanuelh

It's surely going towards raising grave doubts about the competence of the moderator.

Take it easy now, you´re new here and are behaving like you know everything. When being asked a real question about what you consider what a relevance score is, you seem to avoid answering it. And when you finaly do you say:

... relevance score of each page is calculated by the very complex and secret search algorithm ...

Which basically means you don't know, and you automatically assume that just because you don't understand it, nobody can understand it.


You claimed in the first post you made in this thread that SEO is not a technical job. Yet, you seem to treat it as such very strongly.

Let me give it one more try. It is extremely difficult to rank higher than coca cola for the keyword "coke" because coca cola is such a powerful brand which has coke as it's nick name. It is practically impossible to create a website and optimize it to rank higher for that keyword. Technically and theoretically it is possible of course.

By the way, did you notice there are sitelinks as well in that first position for the keyword coke? What does that tell you?