Is there a better search methodology than linking structures and authority of those links used by Google?

The Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (BOA) is an algorithm based on the estimation of distributions. It uses techniques from modeling data by Bayesian networks to estimating the joint distribution of promising solutions. To obtain the structure of Bayesian network, different search algorithms can be used. The key point that BOA addresses is whether the constructed Bayesian network could generate new and useful solutions (strings), which could lead the algorithm in the right direction to solve the problem. Undoubtedly, this ability is a crucial factor of the efficiency of BOA.

There has been much recent work on optimization algorithms that build probability models based on good solutions found so far and use the constructed models to guide further search. This class of algorithms is called Estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs). The general scheme of EDAs works as follows:
(1) Develop a probability distribution model by using initial population
(2) Sampling step: generate a data set by sampling from the probability model
(3) Testing step: test the data as solutions to the problem
(4) Selection step: create an improved data set by selecting the better solutions and removing the worse ones
(5) Learning step: create a new probability model from the old model and the improved data set
(6) If the termination criteria are not met, go to (2)

“Naive Bayes” machine learning algorithm. It is a well-studied probabilistic algorithm often used in automatic text categorization. Compared to other algorithms (kNN, SVM, Decision Trees), it’s pretty fast and reasonably competitive in the quality of its results.

BOA Procedure
The procedure of the BOA follows:
(1) Set t=0, randomly generate an initial population P (0)
(2) Select a set of promising strings S (t) from P (t)
(3) Construct a Bayesian network B using a chosen metric
and constraints
(4) Generate a set of new strings O (t) according to the joint
distribution encoded by B
(5) Create a new population P (t+1) by replacing some
strings from P (t) with O (t), set t=t+1
(6) If the termination criteria are not met, go to (2)

Here is the algo in a bit more detail

Creates a new Algorithm::NaiveBayes object and returns it. The following parameters are accepted:

purge

If set to a true value, the do_purge() method will be invoked during train(). The default is true. Set this to a false value if you’d like to be able to add additional instances after training and then call train() again.

add_instance( attributes => HASH, label => STRING|ARRAY )

Adds a training instance to the categorizer. The attributes parameter contains a hash reference whose keys are string attributes and whose values are the weights of those attributes. For instance, if you’re categorizing text documents, the attributes might be the words of the document, and the weights might be the number of times each word occurs in the document.

The label parameter can contain a single string or an array of strings, with each string representing a label for this instance. The labels can be any arbitrary strings. To indicate that a document has no applicable labels, pass an empty array reference.

train()

Calculates the probabilities that will be necessary for categorization using the predict() method.

predict( attributes => HASH )

Use this method to predict the label of an unknown instance. The attributes should be of the same format as you passed to add_instance(). predict() returns a hash reference whose keys are the names of labels, and whose values are the score for each label. Scores are between 0 and 1, where 0 means the label doesn’t seem to apply to this instance, and 1 means it does.

In practice, scores using Naive Bayes tend to be very close to 0 or 1 because of the way normalization is performed. I might try to alleviate this in future versions of the code.

labels()

Returns a list of all the labels the object knows about (in no particular order), or the number of labels if called in a scalar context.

do_purge()

Purges training instances and their associated information from the NaiveBayes object. This can save memory after training.

purge()

Returns true or false depending on the value of the object’s purge property. An optional boolean argument sets the property.

save_state($path)

This object method saves the object to disk for later use. The $path argument indicates the place on disk where the object should be saved:

  $nb->save_state($path);

restore_state($path)

This class method reads the file specified by $path and returns the object that was previously stored there using save_state():

  $nb = Algorithm::NaiveBayes->restore_state($path);

Bayes’ Theorem is a way of inverting a conditional probability. It states:

                P(y|x) P(x)
      P(x|y) = -------------
                   P(y)

The notation P(x|y) means “the probability of x given y.”

In this case, we want to know the probability of a given category given a certain string of words in a document, so we have:

                    P(words | cat) P(cat)
  P(cat | words) = --------------------
                           P(words)

We have applied Bayes’ Theorem because P(cat | words) is a difficult quantity to compute directly, but P(words | cat) and P(cat) are accessible (see below).

The greater the expression above, the greater the probability that the given document belongs to the given category. So we want to find the maximum value. We write this as

                                 P(words | cat) P(cat)
  Best category =   ArgMax      -----------------------
                   cat in cats          P(words)

Since P(words) doesn’t change over the range of categories, we can get rid of it. That’s good, because we didn’t want to have to compute these values anyway. So our new formula is:

  Best category =   ArgMax      P(words | cat) P(cat)
                   cat in cats

Finally, we note that if w1, w2, ... wn are the words in the document, then this expression is equivalent to:

  Best category =   ArgMax      P(w1|cat)*P(w2|cat)*...*P(wn|cat)*P(cat)
                   cat in cats

That’s the formula I use in my document categorization code. The last step is the only non-rigorous one in the derivation, and this is the “naive” part of the Naive Bayes technique. It assumes that the probability of each word appearing in a document is unaffected by the presence or absence of each other word in the document. We assume this even though we know this isn’t true: for example, the word “iodized” is far more likely to appear in a document that contains the word “salt” than it is to appear in a document that contains the word “subroutine”. Luckily, as it turns out, making this assumption even when it isn’t true may have little effect on our results.

New Google Image Search adding a left bar with added search options. Here is a screen shot of this in action, and it actually works pretty well, notice I asked for red picks of penguins and thats what has been displayed in the search results.

WordPress SEO Tip #20  Don’t Block the Search Engines!

First and foremost: make sure you’re not inadvertently telling the search engines to go away! Believe it or not, some WordPress installations block the search engine bots by default.

From your admin panel, go to Options > Privacy and make sure its set to I would like my blog to be visible to everyone.
Bonus Tip #1 – Are Comments Enabled?

Some WordPress users restrict comments to registered users, or disable them entirely. While this may be appropriate in some situations, in most cases comments are a very beneficial factor, and a defining mark, of a blog.

Comments engage your readers, help you get more fresh content SEO brownie points, and give search engines another reason to come back frequently.

Here’s how to fully enable comments:

1. Login to the WordPress administration center
2. Click Options on the menu bar
3. Is Users must be registered and logged in to comment checked? If so, consider unchecking it.
4. Click Discussion on the submenu bar
5. Make sure the following are checked: Allow people to post comments on the article and Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)

WordPress SEO Tip #19  Does Your Blog Have a Topic?

Some of us would prefer to have a blog where we talk about anything that comes to mind: cars, movies, photosynthesis, dust mites, you name it.

In and of itself, such a blogging style isnt wrong; however, you can leave search engines clueless as to what your blogs about and thus for what search queries your blog should appear. And some of your readers might get annoyed in the process as well.
WordPress SEO Tip #18  Ensure URL Canonicalization

If your blog posts are accessible from more than one URL, you could end up with:

* Search engines confused as to which URL to display in the SERPs.
* PageRank split between multiple pages.
* Duplicate content penalties.

Starting with version 2.3, WordPress takes care of this and makes sure your content is accessible from only one place. So if you use an older version, either upgrade to the latest version of WordPress.
WordPress SEO Tip #17  Check for Valid XHTML

Most code errors are minor, but the more serious ones can cause content misinterpretation by search engines, lower rankings, and rendering errors.

WordPress itself produces valid code, but errors can crop up from two other common sources:

* Poorly written plugins or themes
* User-created coding errors (in the blog posts themselves, or through theme customizations)

First check your site for errors. If an error is found, look at the surrounding content to determine the source of the error.

If a plugin is the culprit, fix it if you’re good at that sort of thing (the beauty of open source!), or send a quick email to the plugin developer and let him or her know.
WordPress SEO Tip #16 – Don’t Leech Link Juice!

One characteristic of WordPress blogs is the sidebar, which is typically present on every single page. Do you really need to be passing link juice from every single one of your pages to every single one of those links? If the answer is no, consider adding rel=nofollow to the less important ones.
WordPress SEO Tip #15  Use Images in Your Posts

Not only do they increase visitor attention and retention, they give you an opportunity to use keyword-rich alt attributes, title attributes, and filenames. Plus it’ll give your blog visibility in image search engines.
WordPress SEO Tip #14  Does Your Theme Use Header Tags Correctly?

* The blog title, or your main keyword should be in an <h1> tag.
* If your subtitle is keyword-rich, you can put it in an <h2>; otherwise I recommend putting it in a non-header tag like <div>.
* The post titles should go in <h2> tags.
* Sidebar section titles should be <h3> tag or non-header.

Unfortunately, some themes (including the WordPress Default Theme) put the sidebar section titles in <h2> tags. Although this makes sense from a strict structural point of view, it also gives irrelevant sidebar headers (Categories, Archives, Meta, etc.) equal weight with your SEO-important post titles.

To sum it up: Use a theme that utilizes header-tags properly, or try fixing the theme you have.
WordPress SEO Tip #13  Use Pinging

A ping is a this site has new content notification that invites bots to visit your blog.

WordPress pings one website called Ping-o-matic by default, which in turn pings others. You can also add additional services by going to Options > Writing in the admin panel. (For example, the pinging URL for Google Blog Search is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)

Another Bonus Tip: Once a post is published, WordPress issues pings whenever the post is edited. Try to cut down on after-publishing edits to avoid being considered a ping spammer.
WordPress SEO Tip #12  Install the Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin

XML Sitemaps are search-engine-friendly directories of your blogs posts and other pages intended to help search engines spider your site. Though pioneered by Google, theyre supported by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com as well.

The Google XML Sitemaps Generator for WordPress makes creation of these sitemaps easy and automatic. It also lets the engines know when you post new content.
WordPress SEO Tip #11  Avoid Sponsored Themes

There was a debate in the WordPress community not too long ago on the topic of sponsered themes. These themes include paid links (usually in the footer) than can suck PageRank and possibly result in a Google paid links penalty.

Stick with WordPress theme directories that dont include sponsored themes, like the WordPress Theme Viewer.
Bonus Tip #2  Write Right Post Titles

SEO isnt everything: once youre high in the SERPs, you need action words to prompt clickthroughs.

Put keywords in your title if at all possible, but not if it’ll compromise the click-trigger action title.
WordPress SEO Tip #10  Use Traditional SEO Techniques

A WordPress blog is a website too, so the traditional SEO techniques still apply:

* Use important keywords in the title and throughout the post, but don’t overdo it.
* Bold your keywords when it makes sense.
* Develop links to your blog.

WordPress SEO Tip #9  Use the Power of the Slug

Ever wondered what the Post Slug on the Write page was? Its the text that goes in the URL when you have Pretty Permalinks enabled (see tip #2).

By default the slug is a sanitized version of the post title. However, if your title is overly long or keyword-sparse, you can change the slug through the Post Slug box.

Yet Another Bonus Tip: The SEO Slugs plugin can take out common words like you, is, etc. out of the slug for you automatically.
WordPress SEO Tip #8  Use Timestamping to Stagger Fresh Content

Search engines and visitors love fresh blog content on a steady, regular basis. But for a lot of us, creativity comes irregularly: 10 post ideas one week, none the next.

Enter timestamping. When writing a post, click the plus sign next to Post Timestamp. Set a date and time, and the post will publish by itself whenever you specify.

Search engines will keep coming back, and visitors wont be inundated with a ton of new posts all at once.

Hint: If youve timestamped a post, dont click the Publish button, since thatll publish your post immediately regardless of your timestamp. Instead, select Published under Post Status and click the Save button.
WordPress SEO Tip #7  Use Tags for Free Keyword Boosts

WordPress 2.3 and above include a tags feature that lets you assign keywords to your blog posts. Once you start using them, then since each tag gets its own webpage, youll be generating a ton of your own themed, keyword-oriented internal backlink pages.
WordPress SEO Tip #6  Integrate Social Media

Adding social media links/buttons like the ones above makes it easy for visitors to promote your quality content (hint, hint). Social media is a great way to build links naturally as well as drive targeted site traffic.

* Share This is a very popular social media all-in-one plugin.
* If youre a FeedBurner user, you can use FeedFlare to add action links, including social media ones, to the bottom of your posts.

Lots of social media sites provide code you can use to generate buttons like those above. Grab your own code from:

* Digg
* Sphinn
* StumbleUpon
* Mixx
* Scoop

WordPress SEO Tip #5  Implement Deep-Linking

Here are several great ways to implement deep-linking on your WordPress blog:

* Within your posts, link to other posts on your blog and use important keywords in the anchor text.
* Install the Similar Posts plugin, which inserts a list of related posts youve written to the bottom of each of your blog posts. This process will create aged deep links and increase visitor retention.
* Display your most popular posts in your sidebar using the Popularity Contest plugin. Gives your most popular posts tons of internal links, and helps your visitors find your best content.

WordPress SEO Tip #4  Make Scrapers Work to Your Advantage

Most of us would probably be upset if someone used scraping (automated content stealing) to publish our laboriously-written posts as his or her own.

But with a little work, you can make the scrapers work for you, not against you.

Heres how to do it, courtesy of EarnersBlog.com:

If you use WordPress its very easy to take full advantage of these sites linking to you, all you need to do is create links back to your content within your feed.

What youll need for this:

* Cave Monkeys Full Text Feed Plugin
* Solo Technologies Add Related Posts to your Feed Plugin

These plugins simply show your entire post in your feed & also add some related posts in your feed only (which will also increase the amount of people in your feed reading more than 1 post).
Now, everytime anyone scrapes your blog via your RSS feed & republishes it theyll be deep linking to 5 or more of your existing posts. Bingo.

WordPress SEO Tip #3  Install the All-in-One SEO Plugin

Like the name implies, this plugin covers a lot of the bases.

* Puts the blog name after the post title, giving your keyword-rich titles more prominence.
* Allows you to override title and meta tags on your homepage as well as your individual posts.
* Lets you add noindex to your category and/or tag pages to avoid duplicate content.
* And more.

A must-have for serious WordPress SEO.
WordPress SEO Tip #2  Use Pretty Permalinks

Sure, you may already use Pretty Permalinks, but are you using the best possible permalink structure?

For those of who dont use Pretty Permalinks, its a must-do for WordPress SEO. Permalinks, in essence, are the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. Pretty Permalinks put slugs (which should contain keywords  see tip #9) in your URLs instead of the default numbers.

To enable or change them, first login, then go to Options > Permalinks.

The two options you do not want are Default and Numeric. Here are my suggestions for picking a pretty permalink structure:

* Date and Name Based: The problem with this is that your posts are several extra directories deep, which can decrease relevence in some search engines. However, such a permalink structure can nevertheless be desireable if your blog is news-oriented or date-sensitive.
* Post Name Only: If your blog covers one topic that has no subtopics (which, though possible, is unlikely), select Custom and type /%postname%/
* Category Based: If your blog covers multiple topics, implement category-based URLs. (You have to look into the Codex to find information on category-based URLs, so many WordPress users probably dont realize that this option exists!) To implement it, select Custom and type /%category%/%postname%/

WordPress SEO Tip #1  WordPress Secret: Use Category-Based Permalinks for SEO Siloing

Heres the big finale. Problem is, this tip is so important (and lengthy) that it really merits its own post.

Heres a teaser: it entails implementing the powerful siloing technique on your WordPress blog through a combination of plugins, settings, and strategies.
Conclusion

Okay, so it was actually more like 23+ tips instead of 20. I certainly hope you gleaned a useful strategy or two in your quest for WordPress search engine optimization. If you enjoyed this post, please social it, email it, link it, or leave a comment!