🔍 What is Initial Ranking for SEO?
Initial ranking is the first assigned ranking value to a web page for a query within the Search Engine index. 📊 Initial Ranking can be changed during the re-ranking process by the Search Engine, according to the changes over time for the document based on internal or external factors.
📌 The initial ranking value for a web document can affect its historical success and discoverability itself. Based on this historical data, the re-ranking scores will be altered by the initial-ranking score irreversibly. Thus, an initial ranking score is important to make a web page document successful and rank it higher on the surfaces of a search engine.
📈 Historical data for a source can affect the initial ranking score for the web page documents that belong to the source. If there is high historical data with positive user feedback 👍, and relevance, quality, and reliability signals ✅, the initial ranking score will be boosted furthermore.
🛠️ To boost the initial ranking score of a website without historical data, topical authority 🏆, and popularity for a query network, broader appeal 🌍, deeper information 📖, and faster topical map completion 🗺️ can be used.
🎯 What is Initial-Ranking Potential for a Source?
Initial Ranking Potential is the potential of a source for increasing its initial ranking value for a topic, query network, or phrase variation based on its historical data, topical relevance 🎯, authority 🏅, and click satisfaction evaluation 👥.
📌 Initial Ranking Score and Potential can be perceived, be affected, and affect the things below, in the context of SEO:
- 🔹 Same textual and visual content 📄 can have different initial rankings within different sources.
- 🔹 The same textual and visual content can be published in multiple sources, and Google can assign one as the canonical version based on the initial ranking score.
- 🔹 Initial ranking score and potential can be increased by updating 🔄 and publishing content more frequently for a certain topic.
- 🔹 Topical coverage 📚, topical authority 🏆, and topical relevance 🎯 are directly related to the initial ranking score.
- 🔹 Source authority, popularity, and reliability-trust signals can affect initial ranking potential.
- 🔹 An initial ranking score of a source can impact the source’s re-ranking process and indexing delay ⏳.
- 🔹 The initial ranking potential of a source can be measured by the initial ranking of a document from a source for a specific, certain type of query.
- 🔹 The initial ranking score can be influenced by Page Speed 🚀, Technical SEO 🛠️, grammar structure ✍️, and overall quality score of the source.
- 🔹 Initial-ranking score and potential can increase after a Broad Core Algorithm Update ⚙️ for a source.
📏 To use and measure the Initial Ranking Score for SEO, the methods below can be used:
- ✅ Auditing the initial ranking of a source for a specific topic.
- ✅ Checking the synonyms, phrase variations, and related queries for the initial ranking of the document.
- ✅ Checking the re-ranking process 🔄, speed ⏩, and direction 🔁 for the document.
- ✅ Comparing different categorical queries and documents for the initial ranking value.
- ✅ Checking the competitors’ initial ranking 📊.
- ✅ Auditing the indexing delay ⏳ for certain topical content.
- ✅ Checking the partial indexing and rendering phases of a document from the Search Engine perspective.
- ✅ Improving the neighbor content 📖, publication 📰, and update frequency 📆 for the information amount on the source for a certain topic and website segment.
- ✅ Decreasing the average web page size 📉 to decrease crawling and indexing costs.
- ✅ Increasing the source’s popularity and reliability, along with its reputation 🏅.
- ✅ Completing a topical map by covering more topical nodes 🗺️ faster than competitors.
- ✅ Improving the source size with unique content 📝, information 📚, and sentence count faster than competitors.
- ✅ Using front-title words 🏷️ for checking the average initial ranking value and potential of the source.
- ✅ A high initial ranking score will decrease the time decay ⏳ for the re-ranking process and its positive direction intensity.
🤖 Why is the Initial Ranking Score useful for Search Engines?
The initial ranking score can:
- ✔️ Decrease a search engine’s time and resource cost ⏰ for the evaluation of a document to rank it.
- ✔️ Google uses Machine Learning algorithms 🤖 to allocate Web Crawling Resources to different sources and source sections.
- ✔️ Initial-ranking scores can be different for different web source sections.
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✔️ The initial ranking score assignment for different website sections includes:
- 🛍️ A search engine can assign a high initial ranking score to an eCommerce website’s specific product pages for specific product types, and features while for the informational content on these pages, different website sections can have a lower initial ranking score.
- 🔗 A search engine can try a source by increasing its initial ranking score and evaluation to see the source’s link proposition value.
- 🔍 A search engine can assign high initial-ranking scores for certain keywords, entities, attributes, or query patterns for certain source sections.
- 🧩 A source section can be determined by author name 🖊️, web page layout 📄, URL or Breadcrumb breakdowns 🏷️, Structured Data 📊, or question-and-answer format of the content.
- 📑 A source section can be evaluated based on external references, whether it is a link 🔗, mention 💬, or referenceless quote from the original source.
- 📅 A source can have a better initial ranking score for specific sessions or seasonal trends based on its source identity or source section identity.
- 🖼️ A source’s initial ranking can be affected based on the visual content, or visual content material for specific site sections. A query can seek a video 🎥, image 🖼️, infographic 📊, or visual explanation and representation. If a source section has more visual content than others, it might have a better initial ranking score for these types of queries and questions.
- ✍️ A source section can have a better or lower initial-ranking score based on the unique sentence count, unique paragraph count, unique content count, grammar errors, writing style, and unique terms, information, facts, prepositions, and structured opinions with numeric values and statistics.
- 🔗 A source can be clustered with other sources based on links, content similarity, webpage layout, or organizational and entity profile features. If a source is clustered with other sources, the initial ranking factor can be evaluated together with other sources.
- 🔄 A source’s different sections can be clustered with different sources. If a source’s news section is closely related to a specific news site 📰, while the recipe section is closely related to a recipe site 🥗, and if the blog and product sections are closely related to other types of sites, the initial ranking evaluation process can be handled by different clustering processes.
📢 To modify the initial ranking score of a Search Engine, a source should target to become the representative of the quality source clusters for specific topics and contexts. 🚀
📢 How to Influence Initial Ranking Score
To modify initial ranking, a source should aim to become the representative of quality within specific topics and contexts. 🚀