If I was to say “Printing” to you what would you think? Would something like this come to mind….
Or this…
Relevancy is a funny thing as the English language is one of the most complex and semantically meaningless languages on the planet full of double meanings and quirky grammar rules that completely change the relevancy of a sentence. Add to this, companies and individuals (like me) making mistakes and you have a mini nightmare for any would be search engine imagine if you had to create a relevancy system that dealt with multiple languages. Is relevancy something we can mathematically determine or and art form only humans can master?
Let’s look at some of the big stumbling blocks in creating a relevancy engine.
- Apple – a computer company, a piece of fruit, A design company etc
Question which is the odd one out? Apple, Acorn, Orange or Pear
Answer is of course - Orange all the rest are or were computer companies.
Another question if I wrote an article on fruit which then linked to a sales page on the new ‘Mac Book Air’ would it be relevant in the eyes of a search engine?
Still not convinced
Even in Venice the Art work is not always relevant
Venice has been home to some of the stunning masterpieces of the art world and many pieces have been set there but does this mean Venice should be associated with Art is Venice relevant to art or art relevant to Venice? The key to relevancy would be or should be context, this site should not rank well for hmm lets say Venice Etchings as a keyword if it did it would be something of a mockery to a relevancy based search engine. As barring a passing interest in the subject neither I nor this domain holds any relevancy to Venice, Art or indeed Etchings in any context except those outlined on this page.
Can you guess where this is leading?
- Joe Blogs – How do I make my site rank well Mr SEO person
- SEO person – You need lots of highly relevant content and links from pages that are relevant I would suggest you start a blog!
- Joe Blogs – ok that sounds sensible but getting relevant links from relevant pages on other sites sounds like a lot of work
- SEO person – Don’t worry we have payment plans
Most people assume Google and the other search engines are much more complex then they really are remember the engineering mantra KISS (Keep it simple stupid) when you’re the largest search engine on the planet your view point of simple might be different from you or I but the principle is the same.
Buying Venice art for what it is
When people buy a painting, etching or print they do it for possibly 3 reasons, some one told them to, they liked the painting or they thought it was an investment. When looking for relevant links on pages of relevant content people do so for the same reasons. Most people are doing it because people told them to, a few are doing it as a long term investment both in terms of traffic as well as search engines. Hopefully the rest are doing it because they like the content on the other site and hope to get a link from such a great place.
Relevancy for search engines is a pipe dream that doesn’t exist, relevant anchor text is one thing but relevancy across a page or domain is not required for the link to pass juice. Relevancy of content is vital if you wish to reach out to a readership and convince them to follow a link. In our above scenario how many people are likely to go from fruit bowls to Apple Macs?
Disclaimer: before some one jumps up and down Venice Etchings is not one of my clients but the designer is a friend and hopefully this little demo will work well.
So you’re simply saying, keep it simple. in other words, build your site for humans, the bots will come too.
I’m saying that Google can not tell the difference between a site that sells Spam rolls and one that is selling email lists to spam by content alone.
But that said the reason to get links on relevant pages to your own content is not for search engines (who don’t care as long as the anchor text works) is to attract relevant visitors.
Get links on relevant sites not for search engines who don’t care, but for visitors who do care.
Well, Google can, if one of their humans check it.
so in other words, get links for people. it all ALWAYS boils down to doing whatever you do, for people. am i right in this?
Human first, bot second
This of course is only the case if a human is going to come into contact with the page which for many SEO techniques might not be the case but that is a different post.
Certainly no point in finding relevant content and potential visitors for a page you don’t want people to visit.
I always find it interesting the odd-ball and seemingly unrelated terms my sites often rank for in the SERPs. I have often received a great deal of traffic for a word or phrase that appears only once on a page. Add in Adsense to the mix and it truly displays the fallacy of a computer being able to determine relevancy and word meanings.
I have a website about learning to use the web which has a page about using HTML to program marquees. I mostly get Adsense ads for LED signs. I also learned from that page that in some parts of the world a ‘marquee’ is a tent.
I do however, see these mismatches as an opportunity. The one phrase wonder was easily turned into an article which currently sits at #1 for that phrase and receives a nice bit of traffic (it is the most visited page of the site). A spelling error on my part led to even more traffic and with a little research I learned that most non-native English speakers spell it that way. So, of course I added a paragraph that exclusively used that spelling and drove even more traffic to the page.
While my marquee page drives me batty, I see the other non-relevant results as an opportunity. If Google ranks my non-relevant page well for a single phrase on a page - there’s weakness among the sites that should be ranking for that phrase. That weakness can easily be exploited by crafting a page directed to that phrase. So, I do agree that search engines will never be able to match humans for true comprehension of word meanings; but, I don’t mind it a bit when they basically hand me a #1 ranking on a silver platter.
I touched this subject just recently in my Towards a New Definition of SEO post: Google also can’t answer questions, in contrast to upcoming Powerset or already existing Lexxe. So as long as search results are not based on meaning bit rather on matching patterns relevancy will be secondary.
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