If Blue Corona Determined the Ranking Factors…

We’re all pretty familiar with the factors that search engines used to determine which websites come up on top. Both Google and Bing have published extensive Webmaster Guidelines detailing the best practices to help search engines find, crawl, and index your site (as well as the best practices for getting your site penalized).

Whether we like the guidelines or not, we follow them because, well, that’s how we put bread Chipotle on the table. But as the first “Casual Friday” blog post on the Blue Corona blog, we thought it would be fun to share what some of our team members WISH that the search engines would take into consideration when ranking websites. As you can see below, some of them took it more seriously than others:

What factors do YOU wish impacted search engine rankings?

“I would penalize sites with pop-ups!”
-Katelyn McKinley, Blue Corona Fashion Icon 

“Google will soon be able to scan author images and detect teeth whiteness. This is for user experience purposes. The whiter the teeth, the better the ranking for the author’s posts.
“They haven’t yet gotten to the point where they can detect the quality of your tan—but they’re working on it. It’s all for a more beneficial user experience.”
-Rish “Show Me Your Teeth” Tanna, Chipotle Enthusiast 

“Klout score! On a serious note, I think there are a few factors to this. Click-through-rate, average time on site, average visits/page, website conversation rate, “effectiveness score” (does the website solve the problem that the person has), and links from human-directed link sources (not just garbage directories) should be factors for staying ranked.”
-Tyler Yost, President of the Blue Corona Book Club 

“Websites with brunette CEOs (brown hair don’t care).”
-Emily “Did You Get My Email” Light, Hot Pocket Eating Champion 2013 

“Websites that are user friendly and have lots of pictures/infographics would rank higher. Also, websites that are pink would rank the best!”
-Jill “Yeah You Like That” Singhuas, Lexie Bond’s unpaid intern

“Taco bell coupons. And an instrumental version of ‘My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme From Titanic)’ playing in the background.”
-Lexie Bond, Founder of the ‘Free Blog Job’ Campaign

“With the future of online continuing toward complete integration with social media, it would be interesting if search engine rankings could collaborate more with social networks that users have joined. That way, Google (or Bing) would not just consider a particular user’s preference history when ranking, but also know what the user’s close friends, fans, and followers desired through similar search intent.
“It might make SEO and predicting search engine behavior more difficult, but it would help in keeping the websites’ and search engines’ focus on creating content and result pages for the user.”
-Hannah Nelson, Voted Most Likely to Rule the Queen City

“I wish the funniest sites would rank the best.”
-Alanna Potosky, Blue Corona’s Resident Dating Expert

“ONLY FLASH WEBSITES.”
-Tara MacDaniels, Dances Better Than You

And By Far the Most Disturbing Response….

“I want Google to watch my every move online and record all of it in a massive database. Then Google could run an algorithm which learns SO much about me that they’ll know what I want to see before I even know.
“I want search results to be so accurate and predictive that when people ask me my opinion on something, I have to Google it to find out. In the future, I’ll use Google for more than just getting directions and buying clothes and getting the best plumber in town. I’ll have to Google answers to personal questions, because the internet will know me better than I know myself. By then, I won’t even want to search anymore. It will take too long.
“I think computers will just take blood samples every time you need to use it, and they’ll provide the answer you need in exchange for human blood. “It’s gonna make SEO pretty tough, but I think we can all agree it’s worth it.”
-Will McQuain, Taylor Swift’s #1 Fan 

Looking to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings?

While we’re waiting for search engines to come up with the blood sample-ranking technology (seriously Will, so creepy), let Blue Corona improve the number and quality of leads you’re getting from the Web the old fashioned way—sign up for our Internet marketing services today.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you improve your search engine rankings or recommend next week’s Casual Friday topic.