educational

Google and Themes

In our terms a theme can be many things, such as a color scheme or subject matter, but in Google's terms, a theme is the subject matter - the topic. The topic is what the web pages are about. A jewelry website's pages are about jewelry of various kinds, therefore the site's theme is jewelry. Each page might be about a different kind of jewelry. The theme of a page about bracelets is bracelets and the theme of a page about necklaces is necklaces, but the overall theme of the site is jewelry.

Like many top search engines, Google likes themes to the extent that they influence a page's rankings. People often wonder why their PR6 page can't beat a PR4 or PR5 page in the rankings for a particular search term. There are a number of reasons for it and one of them is the theme of the sites or pages.

Our website (webworkshop.net) is a good example. At the time of writing this particular page, the site contains only five pages, and Google has indexed all five. There are a few medium PR inbound links to the site and a link to one of the pages from DMOZ. The result is that four pages have PR4 and the DMOZ linked page has PR5. It's a tiny site and yet it beats pages with higher PagRanks on larger sites. Why? Because the whole site is about PageRank. It has just one topic or theme. Even the front page, which isn't specifically about PageRank, includes the word "PageRank" several times. It isn't ranked at the very top for the search term "pagerank" (#12 as this is being written) but the ranking could be improved even with such a tiny site as this one. Some competing sites include other topics which dilute their PageRank content or theme. That's one reason why lower PageRanks sometimes beat higher PageRanks.

If I were to add a few pages about something completely different, say hotels, then the overall 'PageRank' theme of the site would be diluted. It wouldn't be one thing or the other, and its "PageRank" rankings would suffer. Yes, its PageRank pages would still be heavily themed but the overall site theme would be diluted. In the jewelry site example, each page is about a different kind of jewelry; necklaces, bracelets, rings, etc. and the overall site theme is jewelery. But it isn't necklaces! If another site came along that covered only necklaces, it's theme would be necklaces and for "necklace" type search terms it would have a good chance of beating the jewelry site in the rankings. It would depend on a number of factors, of course, but the theme is one important factor.

Most sites don't cover one precise topic such as PageRank or necklaces. They tend to cover general topics such as search engine information or jewelry. But there is something we can do to improve the theming in these sites and make the most of their pages' themes.

Suppose that the jewelry site deals with bracelets, rings and necklaces, and each of its content pages talks about all three product groups. What is each page's theme? What is the site's them? The product groups have been spread through the site and pages in a sort of generic fashion, so each page would be rather weakly themed towards necklaces, rings and bracelets. None of the three product groups would be strong in any of the pages. The site's theme would be much the same.

Now suppose that the site has a number of pages that only deal with necklaces, another group that only deals with rings, and a group of pages for bracelets. Each page is now strongly themed towards necklaces, rings or bracelets. No dilution occurs in any of the pages, so each of these pages would fair better in the rankings for its particular theme.

Linking And Link Text
We can go further: By arranging links between the pages in each product group so that necklace pages link to necklace pages, ring pages link to ring pages, etc., and by using the link text properly, we can strengthen the theme of each page.

Google attributes the link text to the page that it is linking to. So the link text, "handmade bracelets," is attributed to the page that it links to. If the page is about handmade bracelets, the link text strengthens its 'handmade bracelets' theme. To see how significant the link text is, a group of people linked many pages to particular target page and all used the same link text phrase. The target page had nothing to do with the link text phrase. It didn't contain it and it wasn't about it. Nevertheless, the page made #1 in Google for the link text phrase. The method became known as "Google bombing".

So to theme a site that deals with various products, split the site's pages into various product groups and make links, with the right link text, between the pages in each group. The pages from each group can all be in one directory but I would make a sub-directory for each group and name the directory according to its product. Link from the site's index page or from a sitemap page to one of the pages in each group. From that page, all the other pages in the group can be found via links between them. If a product group is large enough to contain several sub-products, then split it into sub-products and apply the same idea with them.

This article has been about themes. But themes are not the only factor in the rankings. PageRank is the basis of them, and the topic of a future article. Stay tuned!

Copyright © 2024 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More Articles

profile

VerifyMy Seeks to Provide Frictionless Online Safety, Compliance Solutions

Before founding VerifyMy, Ryan Shaw was simply looking for an age verification solution for his previous business. The ones he found, however, were too expensive, too difficult to integrate with, or failed to take into account the needs of either the businesses implementing them or the end users who would be required to interact with them.

Alejandro Freixes ·
opinion

How Adult Website Operators Can Cash in on the 'Interchange' Class Action

The Payment Card Interchange Fee Settlement resulted from a landmark antitrust lawsuit involving Visa, Mastercard and several major banks. The case centered around the interchange fees charged to merchants for processing credit and debit card transactions. These fees are set by card networks and are paid by merchants to the banks that issue the cards.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

It's Time to Rock the Vote and Make Your Voice Heard

When I worked to defeat California’s Proposition 60 in 2016, our opposition campaign was outspent nearly 10 to 1. Nevertheless, our community came together and garnered enough support and awareness to defeat that harmful, misguided piece of proposed legislation — by more than a million votes.

Siouxsie Q ·
opinion

Staying Compliant to Avoid the Takedown Shakedown

Dealing with complaints is an everyday part of doing business — and a crucial one, since not dealing with them properly can haunt your business in multiple ways. Card brand regulations require every merchant doing business online to have in place a complaint process for reporting content that may be illegal or that violates the card brand rules.

Cathy Beardsley ·
profile

WIA Profile: Patricia Ucros

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Ucros graduated from college with a degree in education. She spent three years teaching third grade, which she enjoyed a lot, before heeding her father’s advice and moving to South Florida.

Women In Adult ·
opinion

Creating Payment Redundancies to Maximize Payout Uptime

During the global CrowdStrike outage that took place toward the end of July, a flawed software update brought air travel and electronic commerce to a grinding halt worldwide. This dramatically underscores the importance of having a backup plan in place for critical infrastructure.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

The Need for Minimal Friction in Age Verification Technology

In the adult sector, robust age assurance, comprised of age verification and age estimation methods, is critical to ensuring legal compliance with ever-evolving regulations, safeguarding minors from inappropriate content and protecting the privacy of adults wishing to view adult content.

Gavin Worrall ·
opinion

Account-to-Account Payments: The New Banking Disruptor?

So much of our industry relies upon Visa and Mastercard to support consumer payments — and with that reliance comes increased scrutiny by both brands. From a compliance perspective, the bar keeps getting raised until it feels like we end up spending half our time making sure we are compliant rather than growing our business.

Cathy Beardsley ·
profile

WIA Profile: Samantha Beatrice

Beatrice credits the sex positivity of Montreal for ultimately inspiring her to pursue work in adult entertainment. She had many friends working in the industry, from sex workers to production teams, so it felt like a natural fit and offered an opportunity to apply her marketing and social media savvy to support people she truly believes in and wants to see succeed.

Women In Adult ·
opinion

Understanding the Latest Server Processors

Over the last decade, we mostly stopped talking about CPU performance. Recently, however, there has been a seismic and exciting change in the CPU landscape, due to innovation by a chip company called Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Brad Mitchell ·
Show More