Description

Google changed its search engine ranking equation again. Well, let me rephrase that: They REPLACED it.The way they rank websites has changed considerably. Google claims this is the biggest change since 2001. How does this affect you? What changes must you implement now?
In this video, Eric explains the change and gives actionable steps you can take to retain or improve your ranking. He demystifys Google’s technical explanation of the change so that any website owner can understand and react appropriately to this update.

Transcript

Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! Hey I am Eric Spellmann with Spellmann & Associates. And today’s topic is gonna be a key one because it involves how you rank on Google. It’s all changed folks. So get ready.
First before we get into this, some of you may not even know how Google works. So let’s go over it. Google has what we call Spider-Bots. Little computer programs that crawl around the web, that’s why we call em Spider-Bots, and index every word of every web page, or at least all the important words or the concepts. And basically they store these in a big database.

And then when people do a search, Google simply looks back through its database to see which of those pages have the concepts in this case or words that match. And then it presents those. Now that’s all simple. Where it gets complicated is how Google ranks one site over another. In other words, how Google considers this page more relevant for that phrase than say another.

Relevancy is tied to hundreds of variables. In fact the last time someone interviewed Google about this, they claimed to have almost 200 different variables in how one page is ranked over another. Now keep in mind no one knows what those variables are, except for a few key people who work at Google.

One of em is named Matt Cutts. And basically when people ask Matt how can they make their web page rank higher? His answer is always the same. Basically he says if your page is relevant to a human, chances are it will be relevant to Google for that phrase. In other words people, Google is trying to make their search engine more human in how it looks at pages.

The algorithms like I said, are completely top secret. The reason I reiterate that is that if you get a call from someone promising to get you to number 1 in Google for anything, hang up immediately! No one can guarantee you that because no one knows the actual algorithm. And also Google changes the algorithm on a regular basis.

Patterns are emerging though. And that’s how many of us, in the SEO world can help our customers. It’s not that we completely throw up our hands and give up. Basically, we’ve noticed that when we follow Google’s rules, Google rewards us with better ranking. And so that’s why getting with a good SEO, who follows what we call white hat techniques is key.

Conversational search is the big thing. Remember I said in the whole title of this, the 1 technique you must understand is conversational search. It is all changed. A little while ago, Google released what’s called the Humming Bird update. And when people asked Google about this update they said this is a complete engine replacement! They didn’t tweak the algorithm, they replaced it!

In fact some key people at Google said this is the biggest change in how Google looks at websites since 2001. Folks, this is huge! It’s a brand new engine and how Google looks at your website is different.

Once again, you’ve got to look at the content on your page and decide is this relevant to a human? In other words, does it make sense to a human? So many times SEO experts simply look at keywords. That’s how it used to be done. Certain words, certain density, but now it’s all changed. Google is trying to see meaning in sentences, large groups of words. And then having those rank for relevancy.

Context versus Keywords is the key. If you only remember one thing from this video, remember that Google now looks at context, not keywords. Google looks at the entire paragraph, it looks at the entire article, it looks at the entire website and says what is this all about? What is the topic? What is the subject? Just like a human would!

So what should you do? Based on this new engine, what should you do? Well the key is CONTENT! Google wants content! And when I say content, I mean text. But not just random things, it’s got to be unique. So many people will go and find a good paragraph somewhere on the internet and copy it.

Even if they have permission to do so, you should NEVER EVER copy content from somewhere else. And the reason is because Google will only give the first website to have that content the credit. Everyone else gets nothing! And in fact if your entire website is simply copy and paste from other pages or somewhere else, you get no credit at all and Google might even hurt you a little in their ranking.

It’s got to be conversational. It can’t be some research project where you are putting this word next to this word and then so forth. It’s got to be conversational. People when you go to Google and you type “How to Rank Well on Google”, why do I show up number 1 or number 2? It’s because I’m conversational. It’s because the transcript on that page is conversational.

I didn’t attempt to make it number 1. It’s simply a word-for-word transcript of what I was saying. Conversation works! You’ve got to look at your website the way Google looks at your website. It’s got to be conversational, and not just conversational. I tell people it needs to be operating at around the 6, 7 or maybe even 8th grade level. There’s certain criteria that need to be in it that will aid you with Google.

Also, Google looks at the frequency of updates. You can’t just dump a whole bunch of new content on your website and think Google’s gonna rank you well. And then a year from now, do the same. Google is looking at how often you put content on there.

So not only does it have to be unique, not only does it have to be conversational, but Google needs to see a pattern of you adding these kinds of articles, this kind of content on a regular basis. And Google will reward you for that.

As always, if you have any questions let me know. Some of you must be wondering “Eric there’s no way I can write those type of articles on that frequent basis. I got to run my business.” Well, that’s where companies like mine come in.

There’s other companies out there too, that can help write content for you that follow these rules. If you’re curious about that and how it may help, give me a call at 806-353-0004 or visit my website ericspellmann.com. Once again I am Eric Spellmann; I’ll see you in cyberspace.