Googles New PageRank SEO Indexing Algorithm
No not really, but I wish it were. If they were smart they would... Googles current primary way of evaluating page rank is based on quality backlinks. As you know that can be manipulated. And is manipulated by every Tom Dick and Harry. Why would Google continue to base their quality of search results on this metric? Got me! So what should Google do instead? Or at the very least, how should they supplement their current Page Ranking algorithms? Well Google can already tell who has the unique a quality content. And they can also tell who published it first. And they can also tell who copied it and has duplicated the content. So what Google should do (Google are you listening?!) is change their PR metric to include how many people are stealing your unique and quality content and republishing it. The brazen ones stealing it word for word. And more often simply changing a word or two. Very simple Google. The more people that copy and paste your work, the higher quality it must be, and therefore the higher your page rank should be.
This does two things. It makes Googles Page Ranking system un-manipulable and at the same time further stresses the importance of original content. Which as you may know is a major thorn in Googles side. For as much as I work to push out unique and quality content my page rank sucks in comparison. However, if my PR was instead based off how many people copy and paste my work and re-republished it, some of my sites would have stellar Page Rank.
Doing a search via Copyscape, and depending on the paragraph selected, one of my sites (will go unmentioned) shows anywhere from 20 to 200 sites copying my original work word-for-word. Or at the very least changing a couple "ands" and "thes" around. This ten year old site also has a PR of only 3! Well riddle me this Google. In what world does that make sense? If everyone and their mom is stealing my hard earned work, doesn't that make it quality? In the world I live in, that answer is a resounding YES. Or it very well should be. Lets look at this a different way. If these same people linked to my content instead of stealing it then my page rank would be much higher. But as mentioned, they don't, they steal it. This is the football coach of mentalities. Encouragement by means of negative reinforcement (ie duplicate content penalty), vs the soccer coaches mentality, of encouragement by means of positive reinforcement (ie higher PR). In other words, the original publishers should be patted on the back, in this case given a higher PR, instead of the content stealers just getting a duplicate content strike against them. Positive reinforcement works better every time in all walks of life.
Google knows something has to change. The way in which Google basis its PR has fundamentally changed the landscape of the web. Instead of well written articles it's turned into the land of automated content sites and backlinks from hell. They know this, and therefore have recently changed its algorithm with Panda updates and others to try and battle this web epidemic. Stressing the importance of unique content and penalizing duplicate content. At best this is a bandaid. The only true way of changing the way people manipulate the system is to change the system. Google will probably not hear this. And if they did, would probably not care. But they should! Eric Watson considers himself to be a SEO budding expert and these are his thoughts on the landscape of the SEO world and how to better it.
EDIT: Nick from nickstraffictricks.com has a good idea I just read. Inter-site-link more within your articles and make these links absolute links. This way half the people that steal your content verbatim will also include these backlinks to your site. Good way to hedge your bets.
