Things Not Strings - A Simple Way To Know What Google Wants From Your Content
Is Google content with your content?
Google is becoming increasingly sophisticated in understanding the nuances of language through AI and machine learning.
This has important implications for us as business owners and how our potential clients find us online.
This is relevant to any online commercial interests using organic search marketing from eCommerce sites to a business website showcasing products and services.
For instance-most people who are familiar with the term SEO will probably know about keyword research and how important it is for your site's visibility. But simple DIY keyword research that a lot of business owners use today is outdated and will not get the results you hoped for.
Why? Because Google now uses cutting edge technology such as AI and machine learning to model what we are trying to convey and the meaning of it, this is called natural language processing and helps Google to understand the context behind our content.
Their aim is to provide the best content possible in response to users' queries. to that end Google bases its search results on user experience and who can provide the best answer to that query.
Increasingly it rewards sites that cover the whole topic rather than posts that just focus on one or two keywords at a time, this will become even more prevalent as their technology gets more sophisticated.
Therefore, as content producers, we need to move with the times and improve the way we do our research to keep up with how Google ( and other tech companies) work in order to maximize our website's potential and to develop high-quality original content that customers engage with, but which is also good enough to get to the top of Google.
To do this we need to concentrate not on keywords, but on entities, or, to put it another way, "things, not strings". Put simply, Google is trying to make sense of context and relevance using its artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
At this point, you might be freaking out and still struggle with old school keyword research methods without having to slug it out with robots too. But there is an easy way to understand what Google wants.
Even though there is a slew of tools that you can pay for to do this more efficiently you can also do it for free and I am going to show you how.
There is a great little hack you can use to shortcut your research in half and help your content shine above all of your competitors with everything that Google wants from you as a content producer...
...and it's actually really simple.
- Carry out keyword research in your normal way... you do keyword research, right?
- Take each of the keywords you've chosen and type them one by one into the search bar
- For each keyword instead of "All" results, choose "Images" option in the top menu.
- Take note of the image groups Google is showing you along the top, which should be related to your main keyword and gives you an idea of what entities Google understands as being related to your top-level keyword.
- Include those keywords into your article and aim to cover the topic and not just the keyword.
- Your content should aim to be comprehensive yet concise, but to improve on the content which has already been published online (i.e. ranking in the top 3 spots).
The key to getting the most out of your content is understanding how Google understands what you’ve written. When it comes to keyword research, start by doing it in a normal way and then take each of those keywords but use the hack above to get a broader understanding of the topic. This should help you produce a comprehensive article covering the topic without just focusing on that single keyword alone.
If this sounds intimidating, don't worry! we are here to help should you need to. If you want to get to the top of Google, but don't know what to do, you can take this free quiz and get your own personalised report and guidance on what you need to do to get there. >>>Take the scorecard