Content Strategies and Keyword Search
Think that SEO is a
purely technical process? That web programming is equitable to rocket
science? And that you need to memorize several technology blogs to get
it? Afraid you’ll have to stop sleeping just to find the time to keep
up? Here’s the good news: Google favors the little guy—remember, from
our principles? That’s right; the ongoing search engine strategy is to
weed out the tricksters of the trade, the professionals who look for the
technological back doors and purchased content to conduct SEO. Instead,
Google is continuously looking for ways to reward the actual bloggers
and writers of original, fresh, industry-relevant and expert content. Do
the necessary research and work on this level, and you’re already going
in the right direction.
What Drives the Search Results You Receive?
This should be a very
simple question, but it’s not. Part of the reason is that search engines
won’t list all the factors and their weights because they don’t want to
be taken advantage of by SEOs (again, Google favors the little guy).
Regardless, SEO gurus and software firms (and me) spend a lot of time
researching and writing about how you can improve your rankings with the
search engines. Note that these factors do change somewhat,
particularly as Google releases its updates (in the past, such as Panda
and Penguin—I’ll bet the next one is Paparazzi or something).
Search
engines drive search results via their algorithms. Their algorithms are
ongoing technological interpretations of searches, content—everything
the search engine can use to make sense out of the web—and they use that
to best serve relevant results to searchers. This is a simple answer.
But what all is judged by these algorithms, and what are their weighting
factors? These are the answers Google doesn’t easily let out of the
bag.
Years ago, a team of
university Internet science researchers produced a study analyzing
search engines as beehives. The concept still works today. As searchers,
we have the chance to choose between, and take in, the information
results communicated from the search engines—like information returned
to the hive from the countless bees who have researched surrounding
fields. The more bees who have foraged the same area means more
communication within the hive about that specific area. The fields
beyond where few have gone means less information communicated
within the hive. Similarly, search engines value and serve content both
based on how many people are interested in that specific area of
content (demonstrated by keywords searched) and how many have visited
the specific sites within that field. So if you’re interested in a
specific area of information, the search engine results you’ll receive
will be ranked by a specific site’s available information and how many
other visitor “bees” have already been there and stayed, socially
shared, or responded to said info. And here we get into the quality of
the content, in part gauged by those visitor activities, in part by
“bounces” versus visitors’ length of time on a site.
In other words, if web
searchers land and stay upon a site for a while, they are displaying a
quality of content, an evaluation, whereas those who land on a site and
immediately “bounce” back to the search engine represent a poor quality
of content on the site’s behalf and a poor resulting search engine
ranking. These elements all factor into the probabilities of a site
being communicated in listings by the search engines. And like Internet
trends, more and more bees will trend by visiting one site en masse now
and another one later.
Interested in more on this study “Web search engine working as a bee hive?” See it at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.161.4991.
As an SEO myself, I
have my favorite go-to expert info sources on the web, such as SEOMoz,
Google’s own info resources, Danny Sullivan/Search Engine Land, and so
on. You should know that browser history also affects search results. In
other words, the more I visit those sources online, the more I will be
served such sources in my similar Google searches (when using the same
browser without dumping browser history). This much we know. What’s
interesting is that even with all this, when I search my same browser
for various keyword strings similar to “how do search results get served
to me,” the results strangely include everything from “serving in the
military” to “best restaurant dishes served.” But nothing (at least not
on the SERP page 1) pertaining to my specific queries (note that there’s
nothing in my recent browser history pages visited pertaining to the
military nor serving restaurant dishes). I tried at least four different
questions to get my requested answer. No luck. I say all this to
demonstrate it as the kind of search experience encountered 10 years
ago. It’s just peculiar now. Google is basically saying, “Hey, I don’t
know exactly what you mean, so I’m giving you these results instead.”
This is similar to what it does when you input misspellings; it tries to
correct them for you. Yes, Google is like your mother. Or your spouse.
Regardless,
know that browser history does typically skew your search results.
Given my profession, if I search the word “media,” Google should serve
me more results on “social media” than the news media, television, or
the paparazzi. So as SEOs, whenever we want to test search engine crawls
of keywords or sites neutrally, we should empty our total browser
history (see Figure 1.2
for clearing browsing history in Google Chrome). Be sure that you are
also dumping your cookies (or toss your cookies—really, it’s whichever
you prefer), because cookies do hamper search engine spiders and
consequently alter results (same with session IDs, which are
session-temporary cookies).
Figure 1.2 Clearing browser data.
In addition, when
you’re seeking neutral search engine results, log out of your Google,
Yahoo!/MSN, email, and social media accounts. You probably don’t even
realize that much of the time you are already logged in to your search
engine account, and it is remembering the keywords you’ve searched there
as well as your own web and blog content. Regardless of the computer or
browser, your account history is embedded.
There
are tricks a searcher can use to filter the kinds of search results she
wants. For example, searching keyword phrases utilizing the words “OR,”
“AND,” or “NOT.” And if a user searches phrases directly with full “quotes,”
the primary search results are pages comprising that specific phrase,
with all words, in that order. So if you search specifically for “Four
score and seven years ago,” you will get results with that famous speech
specifically. What you should not get are speeches by Miley Cyrus or
Justin Bieber. Want more? Using a tilde (~) to precede your Google
search keywords will include synonyms to that keyword’s results in your
SERP. It’s helpful if you aren’t absolutely certain of the specific word
you’re looking for to search.
Over the years in SEO,
we talk about contextual search versus semantic or latent semantic
content and indexing. In those grand old days of the startup web, a
keyword was just a keyword. Search results included just that keyword.
Google, in continual advancement, started analyzing our keywords based
on the overall context of the total keyword phrase searched, and
likewise for the copy it indexed. Google was attempting to interpret the
meaning of the keywords.
Today, with semantic
analysis, Google associates synonyms, as well as searchers’ own
orientations, to serve specific semantic content results for matches.
Theoretically, it’s possible for a searcher to receive results including
only synonyms of his keyword phrase, without his keywords in the
content at all. For me, this is what makes my own search dilemma at the
start of this section so fascinating. Google should have known, given my
keyword phrases and search history, that I didn’t care about “serving
in the military” or “serving the best restaurant dishes.” Typically, it
knows. But, no worries, it’s just semantics.
All these factors go
into the search engine’s analysis of the searcher, for the targeted
results served. But the search engine also examines the quality of the
websites being served in the results. For example, if a web user is
searching for “bees and flower pollination” there may be a website with
half its content about this theme. But if the other half of content is
completely unrelated, perhaps about the sport of curling in Quebec,
Canada, then there is confusion and lesser quality, and consequently
poorer rank for the site (on either content theme). I can’t tell you how
many unrelated websites I’ve come across where half the content is
about Canadian curling. It’s a bloody epidemic.
Yet another example
of poor quality of content on a site would be bounce rate. If the vast
majority of web searchers land on a site but “bounce” back to the SERP
in under 30 seconds, this is another indication of poor web content
quality (or a misrepresented content theme). Assessing factors like
these, the search engines assign “trust” and “authority” scores to
websites, and again, the higher they are, the better the rank and search
results.
Attributes of Search Engine Results Listings
Most web
users—93%, in fact—begin their web sessions with a search engine. (Wow,
that’s a lot!) So it’s pretty clear that the search engine results page
(SERP) is where the rubber meets the road. Do your optimized results
appear there? How high, and how many of the following items were
included to aid the optimized listing? Figure 1.3 shows an example of a SERP.
• Cached page: I consider cached page results to be one of the more temporal aspects of the SERP (see Figure 1.4).
Five to seven years ago, Google served and emphasized results on the
SERP with the option of clicking through on a listing to its “indexed
page version.” This would bring up an older version of the specific web
page or blog post result, showing highlighted instances of your specific
keywords. Today such results are far less relevant, but still
accessible (via clicking the arrow below the primary listing link). For
one, website content is continuously updated—especially blogs (hint:
think about this for your own WordPress blog) and indexed pages are
always at least a couple of days old. However, due to semantic content
and results, as previously discussed, a highly relevant web page or blog
post result may use synonyms rather than your specific keywords.
• Editorial results:
For certain educational or informational keyword searches, Google will
serve primarily editorial results, meaning news and educational content
rather than corporate or product promotional content. Why? Because, for
whatever reason, Google interprets the keyword phrase this way. This is
part of the reason that the best top-level domains (TLDs) are .edu. It
is also a reason why you might want relationships with .edus for SEO—and
ideally, inbound links! See more on inbound links further in this
chapter).
• Sitelinks:
So you’ve searched for something such as a specific university or
hospital. It comes up number one in Google, and below its link and
description you see additional subpage links of the site listed below in
organized columns. For example, refer to the “Apple” listing in Figure 1.3.
These are sitelinks. If you can achieve them, you want them. At the
time of this writing Google chooses whether or not to serve them with
your listing, but the better optimized your site is, the older it is,
and the more traffic your pages receive, the more likely you are to
achieve sitelinks.
• Local/reviews channels/maps:
You’ve seen these: you search for a restaurant, or a plumber, and
immediately a list of “pins” appears beside a small preview of Google
Maps (refer to the Apple Store locations shown in Figure 1.3). Not only do these pins visually jump out at you, but they are “local” to the area you are searching, or the area from which
you are searching. And they have stars—reviews or ratings. This type of
vertical-results content holds a lot of weight and is a phenomenon of
the web today. Read more on vertical results in Chapter 3.
• Ads:
PPC, SEM, CPA (pay-per-click, search engine marketing,
cost-per-action)—all these are different acronyms that surround the
mystique of paid ads. On the search engine results page, these typically
appear on the top and/or to the right (see Figure 1.5).
Here’s the question: When you search in Google and see both these and
traditional organic listings, which do you click? There’s an entire
chapter in this lovely book devoted to PPC (Chapter 10, “PPC and Advertising”). You can enjoy more on paid ads there!
• Authorship:
In your Google accounts, such as your Google+ account, you can flesh
out your whole profile, add your photo, bio, and so on. This is huge for
WordPress because when you sync your WordPress blog with your Google
accounts, and assign yourself as the author of your site blog posts,
this information shows up in the Google SERP. And now this rich data
will boost you in Google rankings as well (see Figure 1.6).
There
are many different stats which can be interpreted differently on the
effectiveness of organic or SEO search results versus advertising click
throughs. To answer this question for yourself, look at the industry you
work in and data supporting its effectiveness in digital marketing.
Resources such as PewInternet.org and niche industry associations are good places to seek such data.
• Rich snippets:
Rich snippets are a broad term signifying organic search results with
more data, reviews, or content options than Google’s typical description
for the web page in the SERP. (See Figure 1.3 for ratings in rich snippets. We’ll get more into this in Chapter 3, but you can also visit www.schema.org.)
• Images and video results:
The usual media search channels include YouTube, Google Images, and
Flickr. But even in the standard SERP, images or videos can appear among
the regular text listings, thanks to good SEO practice. Google can
extract these images from your website (WordPress or otherwise) and
video from YouTube. Google is not alone with all of this. Bing is a
master imitator. Bing also shows images and other rich snippets in its
SERP (see Figure 1.7).
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