Right from its start, Google has constantly been tweaking its search results algorithm to offer better results to its users. When someone’s users include almost everyone using the internet on planet earth, it isn’t an easy job. From PageRank to Hummingbird, and Panda to Phantom, Google changes have been directed at better user experience. One common thing that companies and their marketing departments hear is that they need ‘Create high-quality content!’
Understanding Content Marketing alone isn’t sufficient to fully understands Google’s mission. For this, you need to delve a little deeper into how search engines work, how they constantly evolve, and how it affects SEO and marketing. While that is 100’s of the article, we can still discuss some points that will benefit content teams at companies to help better their SEO services and strategies to win Google Love.
Google removed public access to its keyword tool with its Hummingbird update. This was a clear indication of their intent on users creating superior content in place of keyword stuffed jargon.
Earlier in 2010 and 2011, Google’s Panda and Penguin updates too emphasized that quality content (and inks) are one of the key factors for ranking on top on search engine results. Google went on to make statements such as these:
All these statements clearly indicated the importance of quality content and suggested that Search Engine Optimization companies avoid trying to trick Google with their SEO practices. Google understands that people try to trick to rank on top, disguising as SEO strategy but hardly offer any real value to the people reading and utilizing that content. In the fourth point above, Google is clear that website optimization should be serious marketing and not a tricky game.
It is important to
When you are doing this, you will be able to create quality content that is going to be true and will resonate more with your customers.
Google wants beautifully woven stories that engage customers, but SEOs want to write high-quality content wrapped around the keywords that can help them in ranking higher on search engines. They are desperate to tell the search engines what they’re doing while still creating useful and meaningful content.
SEO folks should get over the SEO tricks they were using and focus on creating high-quality content. They should choose quality over shallow keyword focused content and abide by the changing trends, to remain competitive!
Did Google fell in love with Quality Content? Or Did it just grow and start understanding sentences better more than just some keywords?
Well, whatever the answer may be, but one thing is for sure that Google has realized the value it has in people’s lives, and it is doing the best to deliver great experiences. One of their spokespersons stated that their objective is to give back all the knowledge that it has gathered over time. To make search query results quicker and resonating, it is using several algorithms. Google now understands that some marketers misuse content to merely wrap keywords and mislead their audience. To ensure that people get the most personalized answers, they are emphasizing on creating and using quality content that is written to answer the search query from people.
For Google, user search queries and their answers are business, and they don’t think of just paid ads but their way of ranking web pages to stay strong in the longer run.
Google’s algorithm iterations are done to make search engine results more user-friendly and sense the purpose of the search based on collecting information like location and search history.
For example, you cannot rank on Google anymore by just including a few keywords; now, you must ensure that you have words, phrases, and definitions that help to create a better persona of your product or service to Google.
Another example is how looking for the definition of something has changed over time. Earlier, you needed to search for a dictionary website, visit it, type in the word for which you want the definition and wait for a few minutes for the result to come after processing through all the data present there. But now, you just type in your word in the URL tab, and you already start seeing its definition even before completing to type it.
These two examples show how the changes in Google’s search algorithm have helped people in making their work quicker. Google is now focusing at ensuring that the speedy results are as good as the long-processed ones, in simple words, it is ensuring to keeping the deliveries with same quality even when speeding up the processes and results.
Google has leaped forward and is offering voice-based search results. It is ensuring to keep the experience good and even better for voice-based search users.
To hack the search results, you must ensure that your content is full of quality in terms of answering questions, providing information, sharing insights, entertaining and still being mindful of what it is delivering based on the analytics-driven from user behavior.
With searches going voice, you need to ensure that you are writing compelling stories answering the questions of all kinds of people.
Google is committed to providing best user experiences, and any practices that are going to create a bad experience or frustrating experience for its users will be monitored and ruled out in upcoming updates, so as a marketer you should be ready to focus more on quality content than playing with just a few keywords! The more you are going to keep the content user-friendly, the more it will become google-friendly and get you on top positions of search engine results page.
Pranav Thakkar is a social media executive at Cibirix. He’s one of those social media guys who is constantly on their cell phone researching social media trends to bring greater results for our clients. He loves to brainstorm ideas, and also loves a nice cup of tea. Pranav enjoys looking at things from a different angle, and also enjoys brewing original ideas from scratch. His work at Cibirix focuses on creative concept designing, including formulating social media strategies and video concepts for our clients.
In his free time, Pranav likes to travel around, try new food, and enjoys spending time with friends and family.