The much-respected Rand Fishkin has written a fascinating post on how some of the key factors in Google’s ranking system have changed over time.

How Google’s Rankings Algorithm Has Changed Over Time

Rand believes that the so-called “Raw PageRank / Link Juice” has fallen quite dramatically over the years, while the “Trust / Authority of Host Domain” has risen dramatically.

He has a nice chart in his posting that clearly communicates his theories on the rise and fall of four different SEO factors.

Yet read the comments below his post, and you start to see the inevitable dissection, over-analysis and uber-theorising.

“If there’s less reliance on anchor text, would you say there’s also been an increased reliance on the context of the link, ie the keywords around the link itself?”

“I no longer think about writing those pages with a 3/4% keyword ratio or to please anyone other than the visitor.”

“Raw PageRank/ Linkjuice + Anchor Text Links = Trust/Authority.”

Here’s the problem. Too many people are unhealthily obsessed with factors that they can’t control, understand or really use to their advantage.

We all know that the original PageRank concept was inspired, but there are people out there who check and record their “pagerank” on a daily basis. It’s like taking your blood pressure on an hourly basis, and wondering if a sudden spike is because of what you ate for breakfast.

The fact is that if your website has history, and if you’ve always optimised it using content and common-sense, you’ll do well in the search engines. It really is (usually) that simple.

If, on the other hand, you follow people’s theories and interpretations on how to ‘get around’ the latest Google dance, frantically applying new techniques and strategies across your website/s, sooner or later you’ll trip over your own feet.

A good dancer can dance well to any type of music. And a well setup website with good content will perform well in the search engines. Usually.

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