If you've been stressing over how to optimize your SEO for RankBrain, there's good news: you can't. Not in the traditional sense of the word, at least. Unlike the classic algorithms we're used to, RankBrain is a query interpretation model. It's a horse of a different color, and as such, it requires a different way of thinking than we've had to use in the past. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand tackles the question of what RankBrain actually is and whether SEOs should (or can) optimize for it.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about RankBrain SEO and RankBrain in general. So Google released this algorithm or component of their algorithm a while ago, but there have been questions for a long time about: Can people actually do RankBrain SEO? Is that even a thing? Is it possible to optimize specifically for this RankBrain algorithm?
I'll talk today a little bit about how RankBrain works just so we have a broad overview and we're all on the same page about it. Google has continued to release more and more information through interviews and comments about what the system does. There are some things that potentially shift in our SEO strategies and tactics around it, but I'll show why optimizing for RankBrain is probably the wrong way to frame it.
What does RankBrain actually do?
So what is it that RankBrain actually does? A query comes in to Google. Historically, classically Google would use an algorithm, probably the same algorithm, at least they've said sort of the same algorithm across the board historically to figure out which pages and sites to show. There are a bunch of different ranking inputs, which we've talked about many times here on Whiteboard Friday.
But if you search for this query today, what Google is saying is with RankBrain, they're going to take any query that comes in and RankBrain is essentially going to be a query interpretation model. It's going to look at the words in that query. It's potentially going to look at things possibly like location or personalization or other things. We're not entirely sure whether RankBrain uses those, but it certainly could. It interprets these queries, and then it's going to try and determine the intent behind the query and make the ranking signals that are applied to the results appropriate to that actual query.
So here's what that means. If you search today — I did this search on my mobile device, I did it on my desktop device — for "best Netflix shows" or "best shows on Netflix" or "What are good Netflix shows," "good Netflix shows," "what to watch on Netflix," notice a pattern here? All five of these searches are essentially asking for the very same thing. We might quibble and say "what to watch on Netflix" could be more movie-centric than shows, which could be more TV or episodic series-centric. That's okay. But these five are essentially, " What should I watch on Netflix?"
Now, RankBrain is going to help Google understand that each of these queries, despite the fact that they use slightly different words and phrasing or completely different words, with the exception of Netflix, that they should all be answered by the same content or same kinds of content. That's the part where Google, where RankBrain is determining the searcher intent. Then, Google is going to use RankBrain to basically say, "Now, what signals are right for me, Google, to enhance or to push down for these particular queries?"
Signals
So we're going to be super simplistic, hyper-simplistic and imagine that Google has this realm of just a few signals, and for this particular query or set of queries, any of these, that...
- Keyword matching is not that important. So minus that, not super important here.
- Link diversity, neither here nor there.
- Anchor text, it doesn't matter too much, neither here nor there.
- Freshness, very, very important.
Why is freshness so important? Well, because Google has seen patterns before, and if you show shows from Netflix that were on the service a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, you are no longer relevant. It doesn't matter if you have lots of good links, lots of diversity, lots of anchor text, lots of great keyword matching. If you are not fresh, you are not showing searchers what they want, and therefore Google doesn't want to display you. In fact, the number one result for all of these was published, I think, six or seven days ago, as of the filming of this Whiteboard Friday. Not particularly surprising, right? Freshness is super important for this query.
- Domain authority, that is somewhat important. Google doesn't want to get too spammed by low-quality domains even if they are publishing fresh content.
- Engagement, very, very important signal here. That indicates to Google whether searchers are being satisfied by these particular results.
This is a high-engagement query too. So on low-engagement queries, where people are looking for a very simple, quick answer, you expect engagement not to be that big. But for something in-depth, like "What should I watch on Netflix," you expect people are going to go, they're going to engage with that content significantly. Maybe they're going to watch a trailer or some videos. Maybe they're going to browse through a list of 50 things. High engagement, hopefully.
- Related topics, Google is definitely looking for the right words and phrases.
If you, for example, are talking about the best shows on Netflix and everyone is talking about how hot — I haven't actually seen it — "Stranger Things" is, which is a TV program on Netflix that is very much in the public eye right now, well, if you don't have that on your best show list, Google probably does not want to display you. So that's an important related topic or a concept or a word vector, whatever it is.
- Content depth, that's also important here. Google expects a long list, a fairly substantive page of content, not just a short, "Here are 10 items," and no details about them.
As a result of interpreting the query, using these signals in these proportions, these five were basically the top five or six for every single one of those queries. So Google is essentially saying, "Hey, it doesn't matter if you have perfect keyword targeting and tons of link diversity and anchor text. The signals that are more important here are these ones, and we can interpret that all of these queries essentially have the same intent behind them. Therefore, this is who we're going to rank."
So, in essence, RankBrain is helping Google determine what signals to use in the algorithm or how to weight those signals, because there's a ton of signals that they can choose from. RankBrain is helping them weight them, and they're helping them interpret the query and the searcher intent.
How should SEOs respond?
Does that actually change how we do SEO? A little bit. A little bit. What it doesn't do, though, is it does not say there is a specific way to do SEO for RankBrain itself. Because RankBrain is, yes, helping Google select signals and prioritize them, you can't actually optimize for RankBrain itself. You can optimize for these signals, and you might say, "Hey, I know that, in my world, these signals are much more important than these signals," or the reverse. For a lot of commercial, old-school queries, keyword matching and link diversity and anchor text are still very, very important. I'm not discounting those. What I'm saying is you can't do SEO for RankBrain specifically or not in the classic way that we've been trained to do SEO for a particular algorithm. This is kind of different.
That said, there are some ways SEOs should respond.
- If you have not already killed the concept, the idea of one keyword, one page, you should kill it now. In fact, you should have killed it a long time ago, because Hummingbird really put this to bed way back in the day. But if you're still doing that, RankBrain does that even more. It's even more saying, "Hey, you know what? Condense all of these. For all of these queries you should not have one URL and another URL and another URL and another URL. You should have one page targeting all of them, targeting all the intents that are like this." When you do your keyword research and your big matrix of keyword-to-content mapping, that's how you should be optimizing there.
- It's no longer the case, as it was probably five, six years ago, that one set of fixed inputs no longer governs every single query. Because of this weighting system, some queries are going to demand signals in different proportion to other ones. Sometimes you're going to need fresh content. Sometimes you need very in-depth content. Sometimes you need high engagement. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you will need tons of links with anchor text. Sometimes you will not. Sometimes you need high authority to rank for something. Sometimes you don't. So that's a different model.
- The reputation that you get as a website, a domain earns a reputation around particular types of signals. That could be because you're publishing lots of fresh content or because you get lots of diverse links or because you have very high engagement or you have very low engagement in terms of you answer things very quickly, but you have a lot of diverse information and topics on that, like a Dictionary.com or an Answers.com, somebody like that where it's quick, drive-by visits, you answer the searcher's query and then they're gone. That's a fine model. But you need to match your SEO focus, your brand of the type of SEO and the type of signals that you hit to the queries that you care about most. You should be establishing that over time and building that out.
So RankBrain, yes, it might shift a little bit of our strategic focus, but no, it's not a classic algorithm that we do SEO against, like a Panda or a Penguin. How do I optimize to avoid Panda hitting me? How do I optimize to avoid Penguin hitting me? How do I optimize for Hummingbird so that my keywords match the query intent? Those are very different from RankBrain, which has this interpretation model.
So, with that, I look forward to hearing about your experiences with RankBrain. I look forward to hearing about what you might be changing since RankBrain came out a couple of years ago, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
If you have not already killed the concept, the idea of one keyword, one page, you should kill it now
Gianluca stands up and starts a 24h, 56 minutes and 45 seconds standing ovation.
Jokes apart - disclaimer: mine is just an opinion - I always considered RankBrain as a patch to the overall concept of Hummingbird itself.
If we remember the many things written back in 2013, we should remember the post Ammon Johns wrote (Hummingbird - The opposite of Long-Tail search; the link is to its archive.org page, because the Issoosi site returns a 404 :-/ ).
In that post, Ammon wrote:
Hummingbird isn’t about long tail search. It’s entirely the opposite. Hummingbird is about taking long-tail, highly unusual and verbose searches, and serving them results as if they were clear short-phrase searches. It is applying semantics to the actual search query, and processing that, prior to actually running the results.
I think we can agree that how Ammon defined as Hummingbird looks a lot to what RankBrain is defined by many of us now.
Last June, then, I had the opportunity to talk face to face with Gary Illyes about RankBrain. Ok, we can disagree with what Gary says, but to the direct question "How to optimize content for RankBrain?", his answer was very simple and reasonable: "Write naturally". I know, it seems the classic Googler answer that says nothing, but in reality it's a phrase that actually tells more than those simple two words.
Us SEOs (me first, I admit it) tend to overthink, but in the case of RankBrain we should, instead, try to think simple (not simplistic) and look less to patents and more to how people conversate, because that is what Google is trying to emulate.
Human conversations (even soliloquies) are made of explicit and implicit elements, the implicit elements determining in big part the meaning of the explicit ones.
I am glad you talked about the importance of Personalized Search for RankBrain, because I believe it is an essential element for determining the context and the intent of a query. We should remember that Google (as well all the personal assistants like Siri and Cortana), even despite of its progress in voice recognition and search, still is not able to understand the "tone of voice", the rhetoric behind a query. For this reason, in order to paint the most relevant search results for each query I do, it must know everything about me.
Personalization is what can make that the common query "What are the best things to see on Netflix?" can present to me a movie centered SERP and to another user a series centered one (or, maybe in your case, an independent cartoons centered SERP).
From the things we know of RankBrain, it is - as you said - a query interpretation algorithm, hence, even if we can't specifically optimize for RankBrain (no RankBrain SEO exists), what we can do is helping Google understand better the content of our site, which what I defined as "Optimizing for meaning/Parsing" in my last post https://moz.com/blog/wake-up-seos-the-new-new-google-is-here-2016.
That is the real reason why Semantics, in the sense of structured data, good architecture and topical research, hubs and closeness are so important IMHO, as well as being directly or potentially relevant for the personal search history of the searchers.
Query interpretation and the importance of understanding the meaning of a query in a given context and for a given intent is what determines the correct retrieval of information from the index.
Once retrieved the sources of information (the documents), all the other signals (freshness, engagement metrics... especially the watch and dwell metrics et al) are used in what we could consider as the last part of the RankBrain algo, and they are - possibly - the "ranking" factors of RankBrain, the things that makes RankBrain paint a SERP instead of another so that A ranks higher than B and C for a query and B outranks C and A in another.
However, we should still remember that others algorithms play an almost equally relevant role in painting the SERPs as - using a very fresh example - Penguin.
Thanks for checking out this week's Whiteboard Friday, all. This week, my questions are:
1) Have you changed anything in your SEO tactics (or strategy or processes) since Rankbrain's rollout and expansion (Spring 2015)?
2) Have you got any great examples of queries where Google is clearly prioritizing some ranking inputs or algo elements over others (e.g. where links matter less but content matters more, or where links and anchor text seem to still overwhelm every other factor, including the content's relevance/usefulness)?
Look forward to your feedback!
I have tried to conduct a micro-test on related queries for a customer and, although I can't give the queries here, I have noticed what follows:
- smaller queries (aka very broad topic) in my results have shown mostly results prioritizing
domain authority
link diversity
related topics
- longer queries (aka very specific content Inside the determined topic) have shown results prioritizing
keyword matching
freshness
engagement
Don't know if this is helpful at all, but I thought it couldn't hurt sharing it :)
Keep up the amazing work!
Arianna
Interesting... I'll have to keep an eye out for that. It would make sense that longer queries would be more susceptible to Rankbrain since there's more content in the query for Google's interpreter to work with.
"tahiti weather". Links don't matter as much, content matters a lot, page title doesn't matter much at all.
Hi Rand,
To an equestrian a horse is a large 4 legged animal, to a carpenter, a horse has 4 legs, but it doesn't live in fields or chew hay. to a gymnast a horse is something I believe you do vaults upon; with RankBrain context matters, and making sure you capture that context is possibly a key to optimizing for this machine learning approach.
In a Google Q&A that I unfortunately missed, Andrey Lipattsev, from Google told us that Links and Content were the two ranking signals ahead of Rankbrain as determined by Google Search engineers.
Rankbrain as a query rewriting approach tries to understand the meaning of words with queries, within the context of the words they accompany within those queries.
When Bloomberg presented Rankbrain, the idea of word vectors was included in that introduction.
I've recently come across a variation of a machine learning process from Google that involves word vectors; and it has led me to something I've already known - that context is essential and important.
To optimize a page for rankbrain:
If you write about horses, keep in mind whether you are writing for equestrians, or carpenters, or gymnasts: your page is going to vary greatly based upon whom you perceive your audience to be.
(edited for better reading)
Hi Bill, the Q&A you cite is this one https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/06/webpromos-qa-with-googles-andrey-lipattsev-transcript/ (and Rand was one of the people Q&Aing Andrey, along with Eric Enge and Ammon Johns, if i remember well).
Thank you for editing my post, Gianluca. That was a good Q&A, and it was originally my question, I had thought people would want to know that if Rankbrain was the third most popular signal at Google, what the first two were. Ammon Johns asked the question for me; I missed the session, after having to fly home for a family emergency.
Hi Rand,
Another great session of white board friday, you are right there is nothing like RankBrain SEO as such, people are trying to manipulate rankbrain wherein they wish to rank higher on queries. However, the purpose of rankbrain is to keep updating itself (and results ) and giving out the best results by trying to understand / interpret search intent.
You are right the freshness of the content would matter, and that's the reason we find Quora coming up in lot of keyphrases phrased as Questions. Quora is the best example of what should be done to rank on question related keywords. I expect more and more question phrases related keywords to be captured by quora and similar website (or may be Moz and Q&A section ).
Disclosure : I am active contributor on Quora and Moz Q&A.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Vijay
Yeah - Quora does a great job of earning in-depth, (usually) high quality content contributions, and because of that, has earned Google's good graces on the engagement of the site. That wasn't always the case, though. When Quora had that really intrusive sign-in wall that had high bounce rates, I think Google didn't like them nearly as much, and actually hurt the site's rankings (at least, according to the SimilarWeb/SEMRush data at the time).
Hi Rand,
I agree, the earlier structure of Quora was confusing for search engines as it would lure the users to the website using and then ask them to sign-up/sing-in. Lately, they have been able to rank far better on many question phrases (long and short keywords) with high competition. For Example, they even rank for phrases related like "best seo providers" , which is not a question but a search term.
Thanks,
Vijay
It's worth mentioning that Google is not as good on this when it comes to foreign languages, especially the smaller ones. For English and probably many of the bigger languages this might be how it works.
But I have always consider how Google worked on an international/English level to be a sign of what will come, even if it in some cases seems to take a lot longer than expected.
Yeah - great point and I should have included that in the video. Google isn't nearly as good at this process in non-English languages, though my understanding is that French, German, and Spanish are getting there (other languages less so).
I agree. My experience is SEO as well as rankbrain signals seems different for non english languages. In fact for some languages the vowels may look similar and the keyword meaning could be different. I think here is what is happening (for both english as well as other languages)
1. A query comes in
2. Google serves the list of pages (with some default algorithm) 95-99% of the time and 1-5% of the time serves a different list. I have noticed some of my totally new pages which would otherwise were on 51+ rank, once in awhile getting ranked and clicked.
3. Google watches/records the CTR on these experimental pages to see which ones humans are choosing. Use that feedback to update the default ranking factor algorithm. And the number of pages included in the 1-5% are different each time.
So the system learns how humans are reacting. If CTR is higher for a search phrase, the link definitely moves up in ranking "For that user" if he/she is logged in. And perhaps there is another factor which combines input of all users to find the optimal query.
I tried searching for same query over and over again while logged in google account, found the page I wanted and always click on that page (it was initially on 10th page) and noticed the rank of the link improved. But as soon as I logged out that effect vanished.
So for a new query google has not seen before , you may rank. But over a period other humans naturally will help google to figure out what rank makes sense to humans. And that is what I think essence of rankbrain is.
OMG RAND! First of all, awesome shirt, second, I can't believe you made this whiteboard Friday about Rank Brain, I was just talking about this yesterday. I started a 30 day challenge (30 videos & blog posts in 30 days, I'm also giving up alcohol for 30 days) and I wanted to make a video on Rank Brain and this answered pretty much all my questions. You guys are awesome!
Thanks! I like that shirt, too :-) And glad to hear that the timing was useful for you. I promise I didn't read anyone's mind to come up with this topic.
White Board Friday hits another bullseye. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on RankBrain.
Hi Rand
I get it what your saying to demonstrate your point today, another helpful WBF article.
But where does this all fit when you consider an ecommerce product page? Take a site that sells hedging plants and fruit trees. The product being sold is a 'Hebe Topiaria'. What strategy does the site owner take here based on what you are suggesting?
When hummingbird first came out it was suggested that you apply actual questions into your content on the page.
Has your team or anyone found that, if you do this, like, taking the questions you searched on about Netflix or me looking to search for 'where to buy Hebe topiaria shrubs?' that you would get more success with the page because it comes closer to complying with a)meeting with what hummingbird is seeking from the page, and b) using questions followed by content that answers those questions, we then get some ranking recognition 'sort of' because we are also doing our best to comply with what we are told to do in relation to rankbrain?
It begs the question how should one look at freshness with regards a product page? Because the website owner sees this particular product page having to sell sell sell to bring high margins and it become a good revenue generator. But lots of smaller business owners struggle to get decent rankings for their product landing pages.
Hi Brian - just to be clear, I'm not saying freshness is important on every page or for every query. In fact, I'm saying exactly the opposite! Sometimes, freshness isn't important at all and Google will weight old pages that have earned lots of links, or stale content that gets great engagement more highly. For a product page, I'd worry most about answering the searcher's conscious and unconscious needs. Amazon's clearly nailed this by producing deep pages of content about each produce - lots of photos, lots of reviews, lots of seller options, lots of product information, lots of alternative things to buy and bundling options - they've nailed the product page experience.
For more on this topic, check out Paddy Moogan's excellent post from a few years ago.
Thanks very helpful
Hi Rand!!!
Interesting post !!! And the truth tell me all this and think "So the most important thing to do SEO properly does not depend on my work, but the user you want me to look or not ..."
And it makes more sense, google does not want anything that does not interest the user, so it is about giving fresh content that reviltalice
Good Weekwnd!!
Thanks Luis - yeah, I think it's not just about freshness, but potentially about any element that Google might trigger as being more or less important to a particular query. The challenge is whether they (and Rankbrain) can understand the search terms and the query intent successfully and then whether we (SEOs) can match up the right signals that Google's likely weighting higher or lower for a particular search.
Regarding the weight of Freshness, albeit I recognize it's importance, I think it can relevant only depending on the intent of the query, because not all queries implies it's need.
We can also think that if RankBrain (but we could think at the same Hummingbird) interpretes that a query deserves Freshness, then it will fire que QDF element of the algo
Right...the kind of query is going to determine which factors get weighted more heavily, is what Rand's saying. And I'd expect Google is figuring this out by click patterns. As another example, think about a query like "Kenmore refrigerator part number 1234567". In this example, keyword matching is going to be VERY important, and freshness, domain authority, and engagement not so much.
I suspect a lot of really fresh traffic may end up today at Netflix for the new Luke Cage series. I suspect that Google can probably identify that one based upon a large number of links and bursty recent traffic about the series mentioning it and netflix, under both a link analysis of the Web, and a co-occurrence matrix that connects the venue with the series
https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=luk...
I may binge watch the series this weekend myself.
I'm kinda thinking about doing that myself Bill... Great minds :-)
Going to have to rewatch this... Got distracted by that EPIC shirt!
Hi Rand,
No one would be able to explain it better than you!
One question about the freshness of content: what about in-depth articles that actually never expire and are actual even after two years of their publication? For example, some tips/ tricks articles, or travel posts.Do you recommend removing the date published for such articles? Or any other advice to make the content appear fresh?
No Edmond, I generally wouldn't suggest gaming the system like that. There are cases where you can update old content to make it fresh, but that involved actually updating the content, not just the date.
Also, to be clear, this WB Friday isn't about freshness per se -- that was just an example of how a query-interpretation system might boost or lessen particular ranking elements based on what was determined to be important. More broadly than freshness, I'm trying to illustrate that Rankbrain means that a page/site might rank for different reasons in different results depending on what Google deems important to that query.
Hi Rand,
Thanks a lot for your advice.
About WB Friday, I understand that it's not actually dedicated to the content freshness, just had that question.
Thanks!
I'm assuming Google may not be very fussy about fresh content on services pages. As services may remain same. Also usually brands avoid engagement like comments etc on the service pages so even that's even engagement is also another factor that can't be done for SP.
Cool article ! Love the Terminator theme. Hope that Google doesn't terminate my SEO job :) Anyway, you mentioned links and how they will lose impact (if I understood correctly). However, they are an important factor for users given that bloggers are also users. Should Google then ignore signals from other bloggers even though some website is not still popular with the general public?
I like how you said at the beginning here that RankBrain is a horse of a different color, which requires a different way of thinking than we've had to use in the past!
p.s. btw, the shirt was a nice touch Rand :D
Great Info.. Yeah, Now a days it's actually un predictable to know which Signals are Important for the Keyword that we target. Of course, most of the Peoples says, Ux, Freshness, and content Depth, even though, those are important We still need to Focus on Link Diversity, Anchor Text variation and Natural Link building Methods to do Rank for the Targeted Queries.!!!
Great video Rand! The way I understood Rank Brain was that the first query had no impact and web pages continued to rank the traditional way. However the second similar query performed by the user could trigger Rank Brain.
For example if the 1st query is "Best Netflix Shows in 2016" and later the user performs the second query "Best Netflix Shows to Watch". I'm assuming Google will show results similar to the first query and majority of the results will be similar to what showed up in the first search.
Any thoughts??
Hey Rand,
This is so far my favorite whiteboard Friday since I started watching maybe a few years ago. There's a lot to be said and understood when it comes to RankBrain and I think you nailed it. We have to start looking at the big picture and realize which parts of the core ranking system we are talking about. RankBrain is part of the artificial intelligence used by Google. I see many comments talking about page level factors like content but I don't see how they affect different layers of the system. I think Google has separate layers that understand, sort/index pages, that calculate rankings and that filter spam as shown in their own explanation of how search works.
Thanks for the detailed insight into RankBrain here Rand. Keep up the good work, I will take some of your points on board and start implementing them into our SEO strategy.
Hi Rand, another interesting post. In my opinion fresh and interesting content is the key, (of course you need good SEO on page, etc), but if you are the first or one of the firts in publish the content that the public will search you will be a winner
Thanks for sharing
Thank you
Good day!
Thank you Rand! WBF is very helpful, to be honest I'm learning many things here in moz.com.
Anton
One Keyword one Page Gone Along time ago but this RankBrain is some what that needs to be studies more ... i think.
Thanks Rand, great piece as always. RankBrian the interpretation model algo and one word one page nomo good points.
For those who want to read the full translation in Italian, here is the link www.ideawebitalia.it/seo/8863/
HI Rand,
I am a bit late to the conversation but I think you will value some of my ideas. It seems like AI (Artificial Intelligence) is something that Google is betting on (just watched a Singularity University talk) and if Google is betting on it then maybe the SEO community should too. Do you think this is something Moz will develop in the next couple years? I imagine something like a SEOers RankBrain as part of Moz's toolset.
Thanks
Oh my god! Are you going to your events with those kind of shirts? Tell me you are!! Could we choose the one for the next whiteboard friday video? :P
So I think in the end we all go back to the content + user experience: think about our users and what they are looking for and offer them a good content. Thinking through that we'll find out whether we need to have a fresher content or we should focus more on the link building part.
If I were Google I would like to be able to ask the user directly right in the moment they are typing and say "hey user, all right, you typed this phrase but WHAT IS really what you are looking for?" and then I'd be able to offer them exactly what they need.
So as I was saying, if we think about our users, their needs, their queries and what the heck they want (despite those keywords the typed) we will create exactly the right content needed and will without thinking set up all the characteristic for our site to rank better than the others. But I insist, if we think about our users we won't need to think too much about what signals we need to focus on, because we will have adjusted them according to our user's needs.
Hope it helps.
Cheers
David
Hi Rand,
Another great article
I wish you provide more about seo for non english websites ( Arabic for example )
As my self an SEO i saw such informative post after a long time. We live in a semantic world and RankBrain has to work within that framework too, so identifying keywords that are relevant, have high monthly search volumes and relatively low SEO competition is still an essential part to SEO. Thanks Rand!
Hey Rand,
Brilliant as always...
An out of the scene question - where do you get your shirts?, would love to have some of similar collections into my wardrobe...:)
very usefull for step up get trafics. Thank you
Great video, puts things into perspective, especially for someone who haven't paid enough attention to more recent SEO trends.
If anything, this emphasizes user intent and puts it before everything else. Given your examples, it seems as though figuring out intent, can help us figure out what signal deserves more attention.
As for the one keyword per page, and how it doesn't carry enough weight nowadays... It is probably not a coincidence if we observe the shift in how Google shows related and very close keywords, i.e. the data has a trend of becoming ever more blurry and vague (probably signaling to SEOs what not to focus attention on anymore).
Rand! Go watch Stranger Things!!!
So, as simply put, RankBrain, is machine learning query and intent, and then from that, distributing a different weighting system on the ranking factors based on what RankBrain learns from its interpretation of queries and intent.
ex: this query is for this intent! -> therefore, this specific weighted ranking factors set will work to satisfy the user! Done. Learn. Move on.
Yeah - I think you've nailed it! The complex part, of course, is trying to figure out what Google's actually weighting with any given query, and when multiple queries share intent vs. don't.
I really like Eric Enge's analogy using a search example of "beating Super Mario without a walkthrough" (he explains in this episode of Here's Why...). With elements like RankBrain in the Google algorithm to determine the semantics of a search, sites might see less traffic but it will definitely be more qualified. This is where writing good content comes into play. If you are answering all the appropriate questions for users there shouldn't be a problem.
Actually that example is from Gary Illyes and used by Eric in his posts ;-) (pd: I like a lot Eric, but credit is credit)
Broadly, I agree with this. Both philosophically (Making content that's good for the user) as well as from a practical standpoint.
But how can we reconcile this with SERPs that look significantly different? For instance, 3 queries about Netflix opened in a cookie-less browser on desktop, with tracking disabled:
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+netflix+shows
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+show+to+watch...
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+are+the+best+...
All of these are seeking pretty much the same answer, and the SERPs are quite similar. The rich snippet has a host of TV programs on Netflix, and it's more or less the same for each query. The #1 spot is the same across all results, a nice article from Uproxx.
However, the first query gives us another Uproxx article in position 2 about Netflix original series. In the second and third queries, this article is nowhere. Uproxx takes up most of the non-rich-snippet real estate above the fold for query 1, and loses out on a significant amount for queries 2 and 3.
DigitalTrends's article is more consistent. They rank #3 twice and #2 once, and they always show up above the fold at least to SOME degree.
News articles show up after the 4th position result for the first two queries, but just above the last result for the last query. For queries 1 & 3, an article from The Telegraph is used. In query 2, we have an article from HarpersBAZAAR.com
Even weirder is that just changing a plural can get notably different results:
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+show+to+watch...
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+shows+to+watc...
"Master of None" shows up in the rich snippet without the need for scrolling on my 1366x768 monitor for query 1, but not query 2 (it's just a little over). Uproxx's "50 best" article and Digital Trends "the best tv shows" articles trade places between positions 1 & 2. TechRadar's article on netflix shows drops from position 4 (just below the fold) in query 1 to position 7 (1 full page below the fold) in query 2.
That enormous text block is a set up to say - DA, Link Diversity, and Freshness aren't changing in the 0.5 seconds between my queries, and keyword matching SHOULDN'T make such a large effect. What makes these tiny changes have such a huge effect?
Weird. I see a lot of consistency in those queries. Same goes for the plural ones. They're not "exactly" the same, but if you take the top 10 in order, the differences in rankings are maybe a position or two, and there's only the introduction of maybe a couple or three new domains in each. I'd call that extremely similar, and certainly, it wouldn't change my approach of using a single piece of content to target multiple keyword phrases.
To look at the most noticeable result, Uproxx's "22 Best Netflix Original Series Right Now, Ranked - Uproxx" is position 2 in the first query I linked, but it doesn't seem to show up even in the top 100 for the 2nd & 3rd queries. KW explorer shows that it's not in the top 9 results for those queries either.
On the other hand, "50 Best Shows On Netflix: Good TV Series Ranked - Uproxx" is position #1 for all three of those queries.
This sort of phenomenon runs counter to conventional wisdom. I trust RankBrain to associate these queries with the same user intent & audience, but Google is indicating otherwise. Has the machine learning made an association here that isn't inherently obvious, or is some other factor contributing to this article's inconsistent showing in the SERPs? When I pitch my next Netflix-related content strategy, how do I make sure it's going to be like Uproxx's "50 Best Shows [...]" article, and not their "22 Best Netflix [...]" article?
Great post Rand! I couldn't agree more.
Interesting. How long do you typically spend on these blog posts? They're always so in depth and digestible! Thanks.
Good Afternoon Rand,
A very good and intriguing article. It certainly makes you rethink ones strategy.
As a small company we have tried to increase our exposure and how much google like us through a number of ways snippet code, product reviews, blogs, video content, as well as making sure that our site seems authoritative through creation on on site help + info articles etc.
Using your "Best Netflix..." example and applying it to ourselves it is interesting that a page which albeit be for a major newspaper appears top along with a number of 5-6 year old generic document pages.
These top ranking pages don't appear to be updated or edited so are stale in comparison to our content and have limited related content or ways to engage with the page.
It seems strange that although we seem to be ticking the boxes what we would have expected to see as a result of rank brain amongst other things hasn't taken hold.
If you're not seeing a lot of consistency (mostly the same handful of sites and pages in the top 10) between various queries that you think have the same intent, it might be the case that Google thinks those queries have different intents, or has seen different searcher behaviors on them.
Hi rand
I am huge fan of your white board Friday topics. this is going to help me a lot in my projects. I have one question if you can help me with ,I am working with one of my new client and I am confused about few things if you can help me :
1) they have 20-30 sites on 1 Hosting server with same Address, Telephone details, Does this effect working on single project, Back links etc
2) Does google penalize this strategy of placing same niche projects on 1 hosting server
3) If I am working on 1 project back links then If it supports my other project or Does google penalized my projects in any way.
Kindly help me , I am waiting for your Reply.
Hi Amber,
I suggest you to post this question in the Q&A, where you can find tons of people ready to help you.
Yes! Thanks Gianluca :-) Q+A is perfect for this.
Rand thats a paid section, I think, If you can help me Here It would be great.
Thankyou Rand and Gianluca Fiorelli for guidance , Let me share my problem over there.
Hi Rand,
Great article as usual.
I have one doubt though. You said google counts DA as important factor. Will you say the same when it comes to improving backlink profile of your website? Means earning links from high DA and avoiding backlinks from low DA sites (even these sites are being updated regularly with relevant content). Because I read quote from Dean Brian stating that when it comes to earning backlinks, he does not pay attention to website's DA. He only checks if the content is relevant and site doesn't looks spammy. So it is sometimes confusing that two experts are having opposite opinions on same topic.
Actually, Brian and I totally agree on that point. I covered it in this WB Friday on link building myths.
What I'm saying is that Google may weight the authority of a domain differently in rankings for different queries. That's not Moz's DA score (which is just an attempt to predict how Google might interpret the domain's overall link equity), and it's not hurt by having links from low DA sites (in fact, it's helped, just not as much as by links from high DA sites).
Hi Rand,
So Rankbrain wants us to squeeze similar content into one page. So lets say I am making 5 different pages for Jobs for Ruby, Jobs for Python, Jobs for Java etc. The intent behind anybody looking for a job could be a specific domain or a guy may possess multiple skills. So does this mean I should put them into one page and if I do, what is the way to do it. Because as it appears this algorithm might not work for a lot of searches. What to do for cases like above?
Wrong... in your example the intent is not so broad, because a devs specialized in Java and not Python will specifically look for "Jobs for Java".
If you were targeting "Jobs for Developers" (or something similar), then you should talk about the jobs for the different languages, because they all are topically related and relevant to that main theme.
In my opinion, all the optimization must be customer query focused and that can only be achieved with having information on the page which is important and relevant for customers queries.
If only that were so... The content on the page is definitely NOT the only factor Google uses, and simply optimizing one's content will not ensure high rankings. Links are still a big part of the algorithm, and we believe engagement is, too.
I have noticed recently that Google is increasingly giving me results that sacrifice relevancy for other signals.
For example, do a search for “best thrillers on Netflix”. In my UK SERPs, there are at least two results that just talk about “the best movies on Netflix” and where thrillers are only mentioned casually on the landing page. On page two there are plenty more results talking specifically about thrillers, which I would have preferred to see.
My hunch is that once they get more data back from Search Quality Raters they may need to adjust the degree to which RankBrain tries to be smarter than the person performing the search.
Good Morning Rand! As always, extremely useful information. I was searching information about BrainRank and didn't understand well. I'm glad you said at the end of the video that it is not an algorithm, but I interpret this like a helpful tool.
Rand, I have a question for you: you talk about the signals and that we might have a high domain authority, some times not, a high engagement, some times not. You talk about freshness, but I didn't understand well.
How can I know I'm doing something "fresh"? It is just about the date when the content was created?
In particular, I've had excellent results optimizing de "Long Tail SEO", H1, Titles and Link Building, but obviously there's more to learn. Once again, thank you !!
What a terrific explanation about RankBrain’s function of weighting signals depending on the type of search or intent. I feel like this is something that can get obscured when SEOs start thinking and talking about it.
Using the example of ‘Netflix Shows to Watch’ pushing freshness to the proverbial front of the signal line is a very helpful way of thinking about it.
It’s sort of fun to speculate about what other signals would be important for different searches and intents!
Thanks for getting the wheels turning as always, Rand!
Hey Rand,
Great Whiteboard!
Thanks for dispelling the one keyword per page myth. I still hear people saying that is the best way to go.
PS You should definitely check out Strange Things, it's quite good!
Hi Rand,
What makes you so sure "Content Depth" is a thing? I don't think G actually cares about the "depth" of the content but that the content actually fulfills the query. If "depth" was a thing, then wouldn't sites like RetailMeNot be considered "shallow" content?
When I say "depth" I mean "how deep does this content need to be?" For coupon sites (a great example), the content really just needs to be the code itself, whether it works, and what it does. For queries around the history of a region, vastly deeper content is almost certainly needed. I believe Google absolutely adjusts the weighting of "how deep" by query intent or query type.
Good point. Thank you!
I think it is wise to have a feedback form on every single page of your content (even without the necessity to put in the email address - only a text form field and a submit button) just to encourage people to write you something. I think Google will see that people are engaging (through Analytics) and give you some extra points for that.
Rand, you make this so easy to understand. You have a gift. Thanks again for another great WBF!
Hi Rand,
Another great White Board Friday! I always learn something watching these.
Thank you! :)
Love all the WBF's and this one is also not an exception. Thanks for sharing valuable information.
Great Video! How do you determine if a search query is different enough to warrant its own page. For example:
pendant lights
black pendant lights
pendant lights for kitchen
Would you be better of creating different pages for these? Or are they closely related enough?
Thanks!
It's all about searcher intent. The *intent* of those three queries is different, and IMO, you could either create one page to serve them all or create multiple pages that serve each. E.g. a central "pendant lights" page for that query showing all the options you have. A page featuring only the "black" pendant lights if you have a good selection of those. And a third page that's "kitchen" focused and filters the selection of pendant lights you have to only those that work well for that purpose (hopefully with lots of photos and details about why they're a match for kitchens and what does/doesn't work well for kitchens).
I think the phrase "Content is king" should be replaced by "Serving the searcher's intent is king"
Hello Rand,
I concur, the prior structure of Quora was mistaking for web indexes as it would draw the clients to the site utilizing and afterward request that they join/sing-in. Of late, they have possessed the capacity to rank obviously better on numerous inquiry phrases (long and short watchwords) with high rivalry. For Example, they even rank for expressions related like "best seo suppliers" , which is not an inquiry but rather a pursuit term.
Much appreciated,
Jhon
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