Doesn’t Google Just Love It’s Users?
They do. A LOOOOT.
So much so, that the only way to fully display this agape love they have for their users, is by screwing up every marketers life.
I mean seriously, weren’t users happy with the Google search results before? When did Google ever try to show you “Vennu Mallesh — It’s My Life What Ever I Wanna Do” when all you wanted to do is find Restaurant’s Near You.
Thank the heavens, that never happened. Google gave us exactly what we asked it.
We were happy, but Google being the Rockstar they are, had to bring out the big guns to please you even more.
This Big-ass canon behind Angus Young, in Marketer’s verbiage is “RankBrain”, which is also now a pain-in-the-brain of every Marketer alive.
In the year 2017, RankBrain made a huge impact on people learning about SEO. Rookies like me who were so eagerly tracking and piling up the never ending list of google’s guidelines to finally get hold of all ranking factors, stopped dead at their tracks. I’m not even making this up.
Here’s my inconsequential accomplishment.
An updated list of Google’s Guidelines.
So, what does Google want?
You see, in happier times, Google utilized its basic algorithm to determine which results to show for a given query.
It had a set of Guidelines (incomplete list above) which when followed upon, helped marketers to rank a particular page in google search results.
Post-RankBrain, it is believed that the query now goes through an interpretation model that can apply possible factors like the location of the searcher, personalization, and the words of the query to determine the searcher’s true intent.
By discerning this true intent, Google wants to deliver more relevant and accurate results.
Just to be clear, in no way i’m suggesting that say, getting links from good quality sites to rank well is insignificant.
As competition for the top pages in google search results increased so did the number of factors that affected a page to rank.
It is the proof of credibility of a good website and it takes EFFORT to build up such a list high quality links. Not everyone and everyday can we marketers create viral content that just picks up and runs on it’s own.
But now with this new “brain” in control, we are going to need to do a lot more than just filling keywords and building back-links.
Here are 3 things marketers need to consider because of Rankbrain.
- SEO Marketers now need to divert all their efforts into determining the type of content that best serves users’ needs.
Different rankings signals would apply to different queries and with no fault of our own, we would have to make changes accordingly. - Another role played by an SEO Marketer is to build a brand’s reputation as a resource trusted by search engines and human users. But with RankBrain in place we would first have to figure out on what basis would we be building the reputation?
Would it be for freshness, for high user engaging content, for diversity of links earned or for in-depth exploration into our niche. Over time, our domain must build a reputation based on the signals it wants to serve. - Also, modern SEO would combine all synonymous keywords/phrases into a single piece of thorough content that incorporates natural language, including variant keyword phrases that reflect the way humans search and speak. [moz.com]
The 3rd point pisses me off the most. If there were no “google guidelines”, we would have been writing user based “contextual” content in the first place. By this I mean — I would have given Rajesh(My Persona), a list of “Weekend Getaways from Bangalore, India” when he searched for “Weekend Getaways from Bangalore, India, just by adding a few keywords
Why would I want to add intentional keywords in places I don’t want to? Why would I add doorway pages, that are specially optimized for targeted keywords and designed to rank high for particular queries ? Just why?
To end the rant, each of us needs would have to bring their A-GAME with each piece of content and if you want your brands to rank then hail Brain Power!
Brains Out!
