When you’re considering the importance of databases, and by extension page quality measurements, in the mix of SEO, it might be helpful to equate it to something more familiar — customer service. What comprises good customer service is not any one thing. It’s a conglomeration of different factors — greetings, attitude, helpfulness, and knowledge, just to name a few — that come together to create a pleasant experience. A web page quality score is the same. The difference with a quality score is that you’re measuring elements of design, rather than actions of an individual. For example, some of the elements that are known to be weighted to develop a quality score are as follows:
- Domain names and URLs
- Page content
- Link structure
- Usability and accessibility
- Meta tags
- Page structure
It’s a melding of these and other factors — sometimes very carefully balanced factors — that are used to create the quality score. Exactly how much weight is given to each factor is known only to the mathematicians who create the algorithms that generate the quality score, but one thing is certain: The better quality score your site generates, the better your search engine results will be, which means the more traffic you will have coming from search engines.

PageRank is one of those mysteries that may never be completely unraveled. Volumes have been written about it, but probably the only two people in the world who understand it completely are Larry Page and Sergey Brin. That’s because it was their brainchild. PageRank actually started as part of a research project that Page and Brin were working on at Stanford University. The project involved creating a new search engine that ranked pages in a democratic fashion with a few weights and measures thrown in for accuracy. Hence, the term. (What else would you call a ranking system for web pages that was developed by Larry Page?) The interesting thing about PageRank is that although Page and Brin conceived the idea and created the algorithm that arrives at a PageRank, it didn’t belong to them. Stanford University actually owned the patent on the PageRank algorithm until Google purchased the exclusive right to use the algorithm for 1.8 million shares of the company (which were sold in 2005 for $336 million).

PageRank is a method by which web pages are ranked in Google search results. A combination of factors create the actual rank of a web page. Google explains it this way:

‘‘PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the Web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘‘important’’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘‘important.’’’ In other words, it’s a mystery. A page that has more links (with equal votes) might rank lower than a page that has a single link that leads to a ‘‘more important’’ page. The lesson? Create pages for visitors, not for search engines.
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We‘ve talked a lot about spiders and pinging, but just what do spiders see when they come to your site? Unlike —human“ visitors, spiders are looking for links. In fact, they are not looking at your site at all œ they are just scanning through your HTML code! However, the spider is looking below the surface and scanning to find HTML links. The HTML in the Link field as well as the HTML in the content field will be noted by the spider, But that is not all! The spider is also looking at the rest of your blog and checking out the HTML in the template. So, keep in mind, that for the blogging and pinging method to work, you have to optimize the blog for spiders. And that is exactly what you are going to learn to do, see like a spider!

Most of you are now saying, —Yea, so?? I can get my site indexed now. What‘s the big deal?“ The big deal is that blogging and pinging gets your site indexed almost immediately AND it is FREE!!! If you have any experience trying to get a site indexed and listed in the major search engines, then you know that it is frustrating and very difficult to get done in a reasonable amount of time. After working hard to get your site together, collecting and writing content, worrying about keywords and keyword densities, you are not even close to finished. Now comes the even harder part! Now you have to submit, by hand, your site to all the major search engines. And finally, you get to wait.
That‘s right, you have to wait for the spiders to come index your site. This could take weeks or this could take months. There are some methods that will help bring along the spiders a bit faster, but these take lots of time and effort and money. And still, you can‘t be sure that the spiders will come fast enough. Blogging and pinging solves this problem. You can guarantee that spiders will come to your site and that you will get listed in all the major search engines with minimal effort and no money œ in about 48 hours!!!

How does it work? The largest search engine, Google, owns Blogger.com. This is the site we will use to help you create your blogs. Google sends their search engine spiders through Blogger.com to find new content.
When you blog the content on your site, an extremely easy process the URL of the page you are blogging is automatically attached. That way, when Google‘s spiders come along, they —see“ the URL. If that URL isn‘t listed in the Google database, the spiders —run right over“ to the URL and check it out! Imagine that the URL found on the blog is YOUR site! Rather than wait for weeks, months, or even up to a year, you can get YOUR site listed immediately! Google themselves will tell you that they would rather —discover“ new URL‘s by finding links than get them via submission. So, why not blog and ping and give them what they want!! Another good piece of news is that once Google has your site, other search engines that use Google‘s feed will put you on their site, too. And it all happens at lightening
speed! Another technique you will learn is how to get Yahoo to send their news spiders your way. Just like Google, Yahoo is looking for fresh content. And once they pick up your site, so will others. Finally, these articles will show you how to ping other services like Technorati and blo.gs. So why would you want to be on these sites? One word: traffic. Services like Technorati spider your links in real time. If you show up on someone‘s Technorati link list for their site they‘re likely to visit your site to see what you said, increasing your exposure.

There is a new duo in town called Blogging and Pinging. It is not a new comedy team or even a singing group, but a new way to attract visitors to your website and make more money. Blogging and Pinging is a marketing tool that can make anyone a viable website owner. Let‘s start with a definition of a blog. Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. Ok, so what about pinging? Originally, a ping was a program that bounced a request off of another computer/server over a network or the Internet to see if the remote computer was responding. That same program is now used as a method of informing others that your blog exists and also let‘s them know when a new post has been made. When you put the two together, blogging and pinging, you get a technique that is extremely effective at getting ANY web site, no matter how big or small, indexed by the major search engines.