Dumbing down algorithms!

byUltimateless

3.3K followers

Updated 8 years ago

Here is a tutorial for people who are confused by SEO's, Keywords, etc.

Disclaimer: I am not an authority on this, so people who do this for a living may find holes in my logic. This is more to do with understanding algorithms in order to make better use of them, and of course there will also be better information on the net.

My history: I have programmed in Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, C and Basic. I have dabbled in HTML, IDE and a few other things in setting up Arduinos', Raspberry PI and Beaglebone Black. All computers work in machine code, the ultimate programming language.

I won't cover AI (Artificial Intelligence, this post is already too long)

Algorithms are formulas which programmers use to define actions on a computer.

If we take a string of numbers: 364202853205245219269. I could write a program that would sort out the 2's from the rest of the numbers, add them together and then decide what to do with the total. I could tell the computer that if the total is more than ten (>10) to send a message that says "Well done!" or if the total is less than ten (<10) type the message "Sorry you lose!"

Okay that is very basic stuff. Now let us see how algorithms work with your Keywords.

Let's say you know how to build a brick wall. You might use the post title: 'How to build a brick wall'. Lucky for you, 534 people per month are looking for 'how to build a brick wall'.

The competition is low, so you have a good niche here.

So google looks at your title and goes, oooh this looks interesting, let's take a look at his/her sub titles and see what more they have to say on this.

Now you are smart and you put in there, 'how to build a brick wall with mortar', sticking to your main title. So google sees a bit of repetition and goes okay this person may be an authority on building brick walls, and goes to your content and checks if you mention it a few more times.

But wait! In the old days you could just keep repeating the same thing over and over and you would get ranked highly. They used to have algorithms that would say if 'how to build a brick wall' is >5 we will rank them highly. Not any more.

Now they have to weigh up what you've written against their criteria, which might go, to 'build a brick wall' this person needs to mention: cement, mortar, bricks, water, trowel, foundation, etc. Then we might consider them an authority.

Then they might have an algorithm that says, if they mention sexy, we might have to think twice and put this blog into a different category. So you say, I built a sexy wall, the wall looks sexy, and before you know it your post is not as useful as google first thought so you get demoted. So they may have a string of words that could bring your ranking score down.

So lets say you do write a very informative post on how to build a brick wall. You include pictures (For pictures to be rated by google you need to put a description in Alt Text, because at the moment they have a hard time trying to figure out picture logic). So have relevant pictures with relevant titles: Mixing mortar (if that is your picture) Levelling wall etc.

You finally get traffic and there are people outside with their cement, gravel, trowel bricks etc, and they look at your website, but you start with how beautiful the Great Wall of China is and you show pictures, then you show pictures of your finished wall. This is when the person flicks to the next website because they want a 'how to' and although you may go into that in your last paragraph, your customer has moved on.

So not only has your title got to be relevant, the first paragraph needs to reaffirm your title so that if that is the only thing they read, they get your message and may thank you for it.

Then you get some comments on your site. Google will have algorithms which sort out which comments on your site would make your site worthy of top position. So if someone says, I have used your formula of cement/sand/gravel and have found it worked perfectly for my wall. That is a useful and relevant comment and will help you rise above the rank and file.

If you get lots of: I love your website, or fantastic job or wow I never would have believed this was possible. This will not be favourable to your website. Although, in the beginning, if that's all you get, you need them. Google will take useful comments and say, yes, people are interacting with the subject at hand. So the smarter websites may remove 'empty' comments so they can rank higher, not being rude but they need to make a living as we all do.

AI is a whole different ball game.

So the story I am trying to impart is: Make sure your title is good, your content relates to your title and don't stray off on tangents. I could say my dog loves our new wall and I am growing tulips next to the wall, but these will detract from what the blog is about.

I know this has been a long one and I hope you have benefitted? I know there is a whole lot more to this but I wanted to keep it short because I know several people will have fallen asleep and be looking for the next interesting post.

Now if you are able to channel 1,000's to your website, that is a whole different ballgame.