Google is one of the companies that has made a name for itself by using big data. The company was founded on the PageRank algorithm, which collected data on all of the links that websites had received across the Internet and incorporated that into its ranking algorithm. Although the algorithm was a huge improvement over previous search engines, it was still an inadequate solution. Google needed to use more sophisticated big data technology to improve their SERPs and avoid low quality link spam.
Machine learning has played an important role in rectifying the challenges that Google faced, as it strived to bring the highest quality search results to its users. They used TensorFlow, an open source algorithm that uses machine learning to help rank webpages for various search phrases. Here are some benefits of machine learning approaches like this one:
- They can look for factors that help you determine how to tell whether a webpage is high quality. This helps them rank websites based on other factors. They may use customer behavior in algorithms, such as the time people spend on a website and their bounce rate. By looking for correlating factors with these metrics, they can rank sites better.
- They can get a better sense of whether brands are engaging in unnatural link schemes.
According to serp champion, the second factor is one of the most difficult for many marketers to grasp. They struggle to understand that Google is becoming better at recognizing strange anchor texts and obvious link building schemes.
How is Google Fighting Link Spam With Machine Learning?
Google has found a number of variables that help them identify link spam. These include:
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- They look for low quality sites that have lots of unnatural links coming from them. They are able to look for patterns with the sites that link to these sites, as well as the websites that they are linking to.
- They are becoming more adapt at finding websites that use lots of unnatural links to them.
- They are better at finding strange link footprints by analyzing IP addresses, directories and other factors that help combat link spam.
Google still relies on old fashioned strategies to fight link spam, which includes asking for people to report link spam, as Matt Cutts, the former head of spam prevention discussed. However, machine learning is becoming more effective. They discussed this in detail a few years ago.
Marketers Must Adapt to Google’s Dependence on Machine Learning to Fight Link Spam
What does this mean for marketers? How can they strengthen their link profile naturally, so they don’t trigger the spam filter?
The trick is to earn quality links through real practices, such as guest blogging and syndicating content to news sites. SEO guest posts or guest blogging is when someone writes a post on another person or brand’s blog to build relationships with others (the individual you’re writing for), gain self-exposure (you’re introduced to their audience), and build links (essential for SEO building).
Guest posting is a natural way to build links for companies in various industries. Whether you’re a blogger, large corporation, or small business owner looking to elevate your brand organically, here are four tips on how to guest post, so that you can drive traffic back to your site. Here is an overview of how this process can work:
- Write for Relevant Sites. Before Google updated its algorithms, you could boost your pagerank and get higher rankings by posting content on any website. This is no longer the case, because its machine learning algorithms are better than ever at finding contextual relationships between websites. You need to make sure your site is related.
- Keep Anchor Text to a Minimal. The machine learning algorithms have also discovered that marketers using link spam use a lot of unnatural anchor text. You want to use natural or branded links in your content.
- Consider Your Audience and Create Original Content. You also need to make sure the content is relevant to the site to get it posted.
- Use Other Link Building Strategies. Google wants to see a diverse link profile. Otherwise, you can trip machine learning algorithms that notice you are using a clear strategy to get links.
Google’s Machine Learning Algorithms Fight Link Spam, So Marketers Must Know How to Respond
There are a lot of ways machine learning is changing our lives. It is making search engines results better than ever by removing link spam. However, this is confusing for marketers. They need to find ways to make their link profile look more natural. The good news is that these strategies will help put them over the edge.