Major Google Update

Google recently completed a major update to the search algorithm that is used for ranking results. In addition to the change, Google also performed a full update of PageRank. What does this mean for a website?

PageRank and Your Website

Google PageRank has a major effect on websites by acting as an amplifier for the content on the page. To understand hthe impact of this change, let’s take a look at a simplified example to understand what this means. Lets assume we have a webpage that is about electric motors and we want to market this online.

Google first takes a look at the website and measures the saturation of a specific keyword on a website. This is a measure of how many times a word appears in relation to the rest of the words on the page. A weight is then applied to each instance of the word that is found, depending on where it is located in the page. Google tends to give higher weight to keywords in heading tags (H1, H2, H3) or in the page title. Once these numbers are calculated, Google then assigns the specific keyword a score of how important the keyword is on the page. This score let’s Google know how to compare the importance of the keyword against other websites. A simplified formula for keyword importance is below:

Keyword Importance = (Keyword Saturation) x (Keyword Weight)

Keyword Saturation = (Number of times phrase appears in text) / (Number of all words)
Keyword Weight = (Calculated based on position)
See Onepax Keyword Extractor for an example

Let’s assume that my webpage is targeting the phrase “electric motor”. The keyword saturation is 5.26% and the calculated weight is 10.5% from the Onepax Keyword Extractor. This will yield a keyword importance of 55.23. (multiplying as if they were numbers, not percentages)

Now that we know what the keyword importance score is, we can multiply by the PageRank for the web page. Assume the page the keywords we measured has a PageRank of 3 out of 10, we multiply the keyword importance score by the PageRank. This yields an overall keyword importance of 165.69.

Page Keyword Importance = (Keyword Importance) x (PageRank)

This is a large summarization and estimation of how Google works and for the most part, it is accurate in measuring who will appear first in many search engine rankings.

Change Impact

Now that we understand how PageRank affects specific keyword performance on a web page, an update of PageRank can either has a positive, negative or no effect (assuming no change) depending on how many links a web page has. Since PageRank has a multiplier effect, it’s easy to surge in the lead or fall behind in online rankings.

Need Help Getting Results?

Onepax has helped many websites get the search engine rankings they desire and maintaining them. Using a methodical and persistent approach, we achieve the goals of our clients one month at a time and build results that last. Contact us today for more information.