Here is a big SEO secret you need to know, Its not all about keywords anymore. Its not all about link building anymore. Its not all about technical BS anymore. As a matter of fact, because the technical aspect can be gamed so easily, they play a smaller and smaller role in the Google ranking process

Machine learning and AI have come a long way. You see, for big search engines like Google, they are getting better and better at determining what people are actually searching for. In the past, to determine if a page fits the criteria for a search, they would look for the keywords match on the page. If they found enough keywords in the page, hey would determine that that page is relevant for the search and surface the page on the SERP

These days, you could search for pretty much anything and there is a good chance Google will know what you mean.

A short experiment

Here is a short experiment that you can actually try right now. Open up YouTube. For those who may not know, its owned by Google. Assume you have forgotten the name of your favorite music video and try to come up with a short description. In my case, I am going to search “girl on piano on the road”.

Here is the kicker, Google actually knows I am searching for the song “Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton.

As you can see Google is actually quite smart. It manages to know based on the short description what I am looking for. And you will note that, the video was not optimized with the keywords “girl on piano on the road”

So how does this affect SEO?

Its all about humans

This is the big SEO secret you need to know.

Ranking on Google is a very coveted goal. And because of this, people often tend to try to cheat. They try to game Google. And on of the ways that they try to game Google is by manipulating keywords.

You may find an article that is stuffed with keywords and owner has paid for backlinks, but it is not the best page out there. This artificial gamed page, may often times outrank good legitimate page that are way better.

This was annoying. At least it annoyed me.

Hence the investment into AI.

It is meant to reward good web page creators who make content for human beings. It reduces the signals that can be gamed by people in order to get an unfair advantage.

Just create good helpful content

This is also a really big SEO secret you need to know. These days, a lot of the technical BS of the past are unnecessary. All you have to do is to create good content, that is original and Google and the search engines will play their role

So how do you create good content?

Good content is determined by its usefulness to the reader. In my opinion, Good content has the following characteristics

Original

Summarizing content on the internet is quite easy. And many fall prey to this trap. They just do a Google search of the topic they want to write on and write their version of the first few results. This results in a lot of repetition online. As I mentioned above, Google knows what your content is about. If there are other pages similar to yours or answering the same questions, then the probability of you ranking is next to nil.

You can read this article to learn how to do original research.

Free of errors

Eventually everyone falls prey to this. You see, in the rush to create content and meet the adequate content velocity, we get careless and mistakes appear. This could be simple spelling mistakes or just factual inaccuracies.

This hurts your brand and credibility thereby affecting your E.A.T (Expertise Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness)

Would you really believe an article was written by an expert if its full of spelling mistakes?

Work on your personal branding

Other factors also play a role in your success online, chief among them your perception. Google has gotten so smart that it can tell a lot about you. This Google does by paying attention to what others are saying about you.

So you better manage your perception really well. You need to know what others say about your brand. What are the reviews like for example? The better the reviews the more trustworthy you seem.

Be consistent

This is also a big SEO secret you need to know. I struggle with this a lot. Sometimes life just gets in the way. But we shouldn’t forget our precious websites. I mean, they are our source of livelihoods. If they are not currently, we have hopes they will be. So its good to be consistent both for your readers and for the algorithms.

Freshness is an important factor in SEO. One that I have witnessed personally. A while ago, we ranked number one for a certain keyword. This happened because, among all our competitors, we managed to maintain a decent content velocity. Meaning we published more frequently than our competitors.

As soon as we stopped, got complacent and stopped being consistent, we began to lose our traffic. This is not only because Google stopped ranking us first but also, the repeat traffic started to ebb. I realized that most of the people who visited our website, loved the fact that, there was always something new and fresh. Once that stopped, there was no reason to keep coming back.

So take that lesson from me. Consistency is what will help you beat your competition. One page published is like one extra bullet in your arsenal to deal with your competition. And like I mentioned, its something, I have seen time and time again.

There are so many productivity tools like Trello that you can use.

Be passionate

It doesn’t matter how hardworking you and your team may be, eventually exhaustion and challenges will come by. This is when passion takes over. It is passion that will keep you going. Remember, these days you need hundreds, if not thousands of web pages to get decent traffic. That is a tall order. And it may take you months or even years, only passion will keep you going at some point

If you want help with SEO you can reach us here.