People in search constantly talk about the pragmatic, concrete changes they can make to a website to increase its ranking in Google. Whether it’s optimizing the H1 tag, integrating keywords throughout the body content, or performing alt text optimization for your images, all discussions focus on the elements which correlate to relevance and therefore improved rankings in the search engines.
For a robust, long-term, and scalable understanding of SEO, it’s important to think about why these changes reflect relevance. Google prioritizes these specific elements because it’s a way for them to quantify relevance. In the end, the Google algorithm is simply an attempt to code information quality into rules. To ensure that your website is always proactively engaging in SEO and not just reacting to algorithm changes (à la Panda), it’s important to understand the philosophy behind Google.
Today’s tip focuses on the concepts behind the algorithm and provides you with an understanding on how Google rates websites.
1. Relevance – Relevance is a continuum. Websites can be rated as Vital, Useful, Relevant, Slightly Relevant, and Off-topic.
2. Relevance and Spam Are Different – Relevance is a rating while spam is a flag. A site can be useful but spammy or irrelevant but spam-free. Content pertains to relevance, but spam is about tactics and intent.
3. Most Likely Intent – Google wants to serve people exactly what they are looking for, fast. This means that dominant interpretations of queries get prioritized over other potentially relevant results. For example, an online organic apple sales stores should rank well for the term ‘apple’, but it won’t be within the first three spots.
4. “Vital” Results – some queries which correlate to official entities (a company an actress, a politician) can have a vital result. Google pushes these “vital” results to the top of the search engine results page. However, keep in mind that social media profiles for companies can NEVER be considered vital.
5. Useful Goes Beyond Relevance – Google thinks that pages need to be more than just useful to satisfy the user. The best websites are highly satisfying, authoritative, entertaining, and/or recent.
6. Local Intent Can Be Automatic – Generic queries like “ice rink” should return local results since ice rinks in other parts of the state or country are not relevant. Expect Google to infer intent more and more as local becomes more salient in the way we search for information.
7. Landing Page Specificity Matters – Specific search terms should have a page which only describes that content exactly. Broader search terms perform better if the user lands on a page with a list of multiple options.
8. Ads Without Value Are Spam – If a page exists only to make money, the page is spam. This means that if your website doesn’t serve the user valuable content, a service, or a feature but racks of ad views, you will be penalized.
Reflect upon these insights to understand how Google rates websites and stay on the cutting edge of the search landscape. For more information about Google’s ranking algorithm and SEO Strategy, please contact your Search and Social Team.