A large scale diffusion of search engines, essential tools for surfing the Internet, makes SEO (search engine optimization) a core activity for the growth of any web business.
In view of this simple observation the Qbr.it staff has assessed SEO activities as  a concrete opportunity to expand our community.
However, it is no secret that the engine behind just one plain white page containing a “text box”, a “search” bottom and the word GOOGLE, is anything but simple.
 Each individual research, even the most trivial request for information, is backed by  complex mechanisms that allow to retrieve almost instantly  a list (SERP), that may even  contain millions of results,  ordered on the basis of relevance to the keywords.
But how exactly is the order of the results presented to the user established?
This question has multiple answers and but few certainties. The automated mechanisms carried out by the search engine (ranking algorithms) are various and very enigmatic (because the objective of the search engines is to provide a “fair” selection of results). 
Speaking of  Google, the most popular (as well as the most advanced) internet search engine, we have, managed to obtain valuable information on some of the algorithms used for SERP sorting.
 
The most renowned, albeit obsolete algorithm, is PageRank. This algorithm measures, with an index that goes from 0 to 10, the popularity of a webpage according to the number of links from other pages and their popularity. This concept (link popularity) is fairly intuitive and stems from a simple view of everyday life:  how do you determine whether a person is popular? A person can be considered popular if  many other people talk about them, and that person’s popularity increases as the popularity of the people doing the talking increases. 
As mentioned above, Page Rank is outdated; although  still surviving through Google, its importance has significantly decreased. TrustRank, on the other hand, the algorithm introduced by Google  in 2005 is prevailing.
Again, we are faced with a simple and intuitive consideration. A webpage is as authoritative as are the pages that link to it. And clearly,  our definition is incomplete unless we identify pages of undisputed authority on which to base our “trust”, which, through a cascading effect will extend to  all web pages according to  the theory of six degrees of separation. In order to resolve this deficiency, Google has manually picked (and is still picking) pages/sites of undisputed authority, defined hubs or seeds, to represent the starting point for the Trust process. 
With TrustRank, Google has revolutionized the value of the links that are no longer evaluated according to PageRank , but on the basis of reliability and therefore “trust” in the  page it links to.
Moreover, the TrustRank was subsequently improved to beat spam with the introduction of Distrust or BadRank. The underlying concept of this algorithm is the TrustRank concept applied in reverse: a reliable page will never link to a spam page; however, spam pages such as trust pages,  will tend to link with each other. It follows that outbound links of a webpage  are evaluated  and if they are directed to spam pages, the page they  link to gains Distrust, decreasing its Trust. 
The algorithms described above produce,  for each web page and on the basis of each single search, a numerical value, which in the case of PageRank is public but in the case of TrustRank, is not measurable, however…
The SEO adventure of Qbr begins in September 2007.   In 6 months Qbr.it and Qbr Magazine were gained a PageRank of 6 and 5, respectively. But today, as explained above, it makes no sense to think only in terms of PageRank. So the question is this: Today, are  Qbr.it and its magazine “Trust”? Can we somehow assess the TrustRank?

While it is not measurable in terms of numbers it is possible to get an idea by taking into account a number of factors. Let’s take a look at our Magazine, for example. We can evaluate SEO results by considering the following:
Spider Frequency: as of now, each article appears in the Google index and/or  those of other engines every  5 / 10 minutes, I believe this frequency is reasonable based on  RSS FEED.
Placement of new contents. articles dealing with issues, perhaps previously addressed by reliable sources (Ansa.it, Repubblica.it), get a good placement for major search keys, even in total absence of backlinks,  and are on average,  positioned within the first 15 results.
The number of daily visits due to SEO activity: There are currently over 4500 daily visits.
Maximum number of visits to a single article: 20,000 visits in 5 months.
 
These results, though not absolute in nature, make it clear that the SEO activities carried out by Qbr have produced positive effects in just a few months: we can talk about a real success considering that neither Qbr.it or Qbr Magazine sites are designed to be 100% “SEO friendly.”
 The prospects for the future, from this point of view, are very different. The platform of our new social network Ciaopeople.com was designed and developed also according to SEO activity  and this will enable us to openly face the double challenge:  transfer the excellent results obtained by Qbr.it to a completely new site  and simultaneously give way to a SEO activity on an international and extremely ambitious level … where do we want to go, how and when we will get there… we shall say in the next posts.

Diego Borrelli
SEO Strategist

Bookmark to: