4 Pillars of SEO
If you have seen any of my previous videos or webinars, you will have heard me speak about my 4 pillars of SEO that should be part of any website’s SEO strategy: Bot Accessibility, Relevance, Authority and Quality. For this issue’s article, I would like to hone in to the second pillar, relevance. Is the content on your page considered relevant for the search query? For both the search engine AND the searcher.
All searches performed by users begin with a query or search “string” – the words you type into the search bar. Once you enter those words into the search bar Google will then evaluate all of the pages it has in its index to determine if it is relevant for the query the searcher entered. It will then present the resulting pages to you on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
This begs the question of how exactly does Google and other search engines determine what is and is not relevant? It all begins with the content, mostly the copy, on your web page.
Since 2012 Google representatives started to tell webmasters to think about “Things, not strings”. What does this means? It means that Google is looking to understand better the context of the page and not just the content of the page. The search engine is attempting to understand our pages in the context of the entities that are already in its database. What Google is telling us, is not to focus on the string (i.e. keyword) you are optimizing for, example “DUI Attorney in New York City”. Instead, focus on understanding why a user is searching for that phrase, what are they really looking for and providing them the answer or information they need. If you approach the process from that angle, you will begin to understand better the pronouncement Googlers often make of, “just make great content”.
It is NOT about trying to write for search engines. It is about writing for users but with search engines in mind. It is all about giving your content a greater level of topical depth and breadth – no matter who reads it. This is what I suspect Google representatives are eluding to when they tell us to, “Build great content”.
Relevance – What does “plant” mean?
I would like to break this down a little more with an example. If I say the word “plant”, what do I mean? This word that can have different meanings. Am I speaking about horticulture? Do I mean a houseplant, tree, bush or weed in my garden – or maybe it is a verb and I am referring to the act of planting one of those things in dirt? Maybe I am referring to a factory. Perhaps, I am discussing a spy within an organization. You simply do not know without the proper context.
Now let take this same example and I say the word “plant”, followed by the words “Detroit Michigan” and “Ford Motor Company”. Immediately you understand that I am referring to a factory. Specifically you know I am referring to an auto manufacturing plant. Why? Simple, because I used other relevant words. Words that gave greater context to the first word, or in our case, the search string.
In the “old days” of SEO, you simply had to place the target keyword on the page as many times as possible. Whoever was able to stuff the keyword onto the page the most, without triggering an automatic or manual penalty, would win – i.e. rank at the top of page #1 on Google.
Example: Attorney, attorney, attorney, attorney
Over the years, things got a little more sophisticated. You could not simply use the same keyword repeatedly – Google had gotten wise to this trick. You had to include variations of the keyword: singular, plural and phrases containing the keyword. If you really wanted to be clever, you might include a synonym or two.
Example: Attorney, attorneys, attorney in NYC, lawyer
It all begins with content
What I am suggesting is that we need to go a lot deeper than that example. What I want you to do is build a deeper level of semantic meaning to your copy. That’s, just a fancy way of saying give your page more context. Understand the search intent of the searcher and you can build your page around that intent. We need to build the page copy’s topical depth and breath. Yes, Google is still looking for the search phrase within the page copy but it wants to understand the context of this page as well. They are trying to match the page with the searcher’s intent.
More content often equals better organic rankings
Many of us have seen ranking correlation charts. These studies typically show how more or less of a specific factor appears to correlate with greater rankings. SEM Rush has a great correlation study that they have been producing almost every year. In addition, in the yearly study it is always shown that more content seems to correlate strongly with higher rankings.
What this leads to is folks building “mega-pages”. Thinking that if they simply place more content on the page it will magically rank better. Companies have spent countless dollars to simply, “put more content on the page”. I am suggesting that Google has gotten much more sophisticated than simply counting words on a page. If we dug into these content heavy pages, I suspect the reason why these pages rank is that they typically contain (either knowingly or unknowingly)the important context on the page – topical depth and breadth.
The good news I am here to tell you is that you most often DO NOT need to write pages laden with over a thousand words. Most of your existing pages could rank very well if they simply had the depth and breadth that Google expects to exist for the topic.
Developing Your Page’s Context
Do you remember the example from earlier? What does the word “plant” mean? Once I started using other words, in this case “Detroit Michigan” and “Ford Motor Company”, you understood I was referring to an auto manufacturing plant and not a houseplant or spy. You understood my context because I used relevant words in conjunction with my target keyword. Google’s algorithm is likely doing the same thing. It is still looking for keywords but it is simply not just looking forth target keyword. It is looking for other phrases that it knows should exist along with your main subject, in this case “Automotive Plant”.
Helping Google Understand Your Context
When optimizing content I usually group the supporting words I need into one of three buckets:
Match Words – As the group name implies these words are all synonyms or abbreviations of your target word. They essentially mean the same (i.e. match) as the main keyword and can be used interchangeably. To find what Google considers a match is simple. When you perform a search for your target keyword, you will see that Google places these words in bold on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). In our example, we will see that Google highlights “Auto Factory”, “Automotive Manufacturing” and “Car Plant” as well as others.
Related Words –These words sometimes contain synonyms but may not. Whereas the first bucket contains interchangeable words, this group starts to give greater meaning to intent. The can be found in under Google’s Related Searches, Auto Complete and even in the People Also Ask. This group is telling you about what to write. What searchers are trying to learn or discover. In our example you would find “Assembly Line”, “Automotive plants near me” and even “Automotive plant closures”
Co-Occurring Words –Lastly, these are words if used by themselves would be no better than a single keyword, but these terms are what Google believes should come up in a conversation about this subject. These can be found using tools like LSI Calculators and personally, I like using Google’s own NLP (Natural Language Processing) tool. In our example, you would get terms like “Ford Motor Company” & “Detroit, Michigan”. Just these two phrases alone tell you exactly what I am referring to and I didn’t even have to use any synonyms or related terms – that’s how powerful these words can be for Google.
I have found that this is the key to building highly relevant content. It is not just about using the keyword anymore. You need to include synonyms, related phrases and now even co-occurring words as well. However, always remember. It is NOT about trying to write for search engines. It is about writing for users but with search engines in mind. It is all about giving your content a greater level of topical depth and breadth – no matter who reads it. This, I suspect, is what Google representatives mean when they say, “build great content”.
Taking Action
Here we are, at the end of the article. We may have learned something but more importantly, we need to put to use what we have learned. We now understand what Google likely means when they say “Strings, Not Things” and “Write Great Content”. Let’s take this knowledge and put it to action. There are many places you can use this new content optimization: blog posts, products pages, service landing page, category pages and even press releases. I suggest using the following outline:
- Break up your content into groups by priority.
- Create an inventory of pages for each group.
- Identify the target keyword(s) for each page.
- Research as we discussed in the article.
- Rewrite your page copy and optimize as needed.
- Then simply repeat until you are complete.
Of course, this is not a quick and easy project but few things worth doing are quick and easy. The goal is not to have a perfectly optimized site. Quite honestly, as Google’s algorithm changes regularly I am not sure it is possible to have a perfectly optimized site. The goal is to be able to quantify what “great content” looks like to a search engine. This is how you satisfy the “Relevance” pillar of your SEO site strategy.
As always, if you need help setting up or executing on this process feel free to reach out to me for help