Or, why ranking is not just about keywords.
Recent changes in Google’s ranking algorithm have made it plain that Google is now, more than ever, placing infinitely more importance on the value of web content than on its pertinence.
I regularly need to explain this difference to new clients whose vision of SEO is often still based on the idea that the more keywords a page has the more value it has. They get obsessed with keyword lists and density, and are constantly re-working and optimizing their page texts but not getting better ranking because they have not worked on giving them value.
So, let’s look at what we mean by ‘pertinence’ and ‘value’ and then look at what we need to do.
What is pertinence?
This may seem obvious, but in a nutshell pertinence means how well-suited the content is to a particular search intent. If someone is looking for a new car, they are probably not going to launch a search with just “new car” as that would display a lot of search results that don’t correspond to the type of car they are looking for and the kind of transaction they wish to initiate.
People usually search with a more specific query that better shows their intent; for instance they might use “Audi A3″ or, better still, “buy Audi A3″, “lease Audi A3″, or “cheapest Audi A3″.
Pertinence is very important; we need to tell Google specifically what each page is about. When Google sees “lease Audi A3”, it knows exactly what the user wants and can retrieve pages whose content is pertinent to that, based on its analysis of what the text in the page is saying both literally and conceptually. It will look for the things (the entities) it can recognize and how prevalent they are in the page in all the right places. Some of the page elements it will look at are:
- The page <title>
- The <h1> tag
- The general text of the page and how it is organized into sections with <h2>s and <h3>s
- Titles and captions of lists and tables
- The names, captions, titles, and content of images, and how the images relate to the text around them
- Media embedded into the page
- The context of sibling pages and parent pages
- Schema.org structured data
- The anchor texts of links to that page from other pages
- Recognizable entities (people, companies, products, events, publications …)
So, why not just put the keyword a huge number of times everywhere in the page? This practice – known as keyword stuffing – used to be common and resulted in pages that were horrible to read, with no value for the user.
As a result, Google put a stop to that by weeding out the spammy content. With its increasingly sophisticated language analysis algorithms (that can even ascertain if one person is writing all the content or several different people) Google can detect texts that have obviously been written solely for the purposes of SEO.
To illustrate pertinence, let’s stick to our Audi car, but now, it has suddenly started leaking coolant and you need to get it repaired. You start asking around for a mechanic.
At this stage of the process, pertinence is more important. You could ask around for just any garage, but it’s not sure that they do repairs and then, even if they do, maybe not for foreign brands. Instead, you need to make your request more specific (i.e. using pertinent keywords) to find the best-suited garages for what you need.
Once done, you now have a list of garages that repair Audis, but which one do you call? In the real world, the people you ask for recommendations would make value judgements about the quality of the mechanic’s work, their level of knowledge, their reputation, and their service.
This is exactly what Google tries to do, deciding which of its most pertinent results it would recommend above all the others. It ascribes a value to each result and ranks them accordingly.
What is value?
While pertinence can be easily calculated, which is perhaps one reason why people get so focused on keywords, value is much harder to measure. The very recent Google leak provides a slew of information about the 14,000-plus bits of individual data that Google stores about websites and their content, but it gives no indication of the relative weighting, and therefore value, that it places on each attribute.
Therefore, we can only really rely on what Google representatives have stated publicly and what has been observed with statistical analysis. Its vision of the value of web content can best be summed up with the acronym E-E-A-T, or Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trustworthiness.
How can we boost E-E-A-T?
This is a vast subject and numerous articles have been written about it, but here are a few pointers:
Schema.org structured data
This is the first stop and the quickest and easiest to put in place. Schema markup allows us to make it clear which entities (people, companies, products, etc.) we are talking about and connect them with any useful data that helps to demonstrate E-E-A-T.
For a company, we can markup their company ID numbers, legal address and telephone number, links to their social accounts, and other details like the founding date, owners, and fields of expertise.
For people we can give specific identifying information, social accounts, education, experience and how they are linked to their company.
For products we can provide a host of information about the product offer itself, in which categories the product belongs, customer review ratings, and so on. This all helps Google to identify the entities with 100% confidence, which is already one step up the ladder and also helps to get rich snippets in Google search results.
Schema.org markup can be inserted manually in the HTML code or using one of the plugin add-ons such as Yoast, Wordlift or Rank Math.
[Ebook] Technical SEO for non-technical thinkers
User reviews and ratings
These are a powerful way to build E-E-A-T, in particular in terms of trustworthiness. A lot of sites have their own internal reviews but, as they are open to being manipulated and faked, search engines have far more faith in third party reviews such as TrustPilot and Avis Vérifiés, and their own systems, like Google Reviews.
Building up a solid base of good reviews (but not with 5.0 stars for all reviews, as that looks really suspect) and responding in a positive helpful way if the review is negative is a great way to build trust, as much in the eyes of potential customers as for the search engines.
Backlinks and mentions
These are especially important for demonstrating authority and expertise. They are also possibly the hardest aspect to manage. Backlinks are difficult to quantify in terms of value, but some SEO platforms like SEMrush do provide a tentative Authority Score.
Before going any further, I’d just like to point out that buying hundreds of inevitably low-quality backlinks is not a viable long-term strategy as they end up being simply ignored by search engines (as clearly stated by Google’s John Mueller) and are a waste of time and money.
Writing quality, useful content (see below) on your own site encourages people to cite it as a reference and share it with others, or even just mention you or your company by name.
You can also write articles on other people’s sites, get invited to events and podcasts (with a mention on those organizations’ websites), answer questions on pertinent forums, get mentioned in the same paragraph as other authoritative people or companies, or host your own event that may be mentioned online by others. All of this demonstrates that others consider you an authority in your particular field.
Useful content
Some of the most recent Google core algorithm updates have been aimed at promoting “useful content”, which as its name suggests, is content that has no padding, no SEO fluff, just information that is truly meaningful and useful for the user.
It could be details of a product or product range, the answer to a specific question, a how-to process for a specific problem, an article with an in-depth look at a particular topic, with graphs and illustrations, maybe with videos too, and cites sources and provides links to outside resources.
Look at each phrase of the content and consider if it is providing some value to the reader.
That’s exactly what I did while writing this article. It’s better to have a couple of sentences containing real information than to have those two bits of information drowned in a whole page of SEO gunk.
Having said that, a longer, more detailed page will obviously be given more value than two sentences, as long as it all has value. Including tips, tricks, advice and talking about feedback from your customers’ experience also increases value. Make sure that the author of the content is clearly identified and that it is linked to a profile page with full Person Schema.org markup.
Wrapping up: pertinence doesn’t work without value
One final example: I have absolutely no knowledge or experience of repairing Audi cars, but I do have years of experience of web development and SEO, so I could very easily create a highly-optimized, superbly pertinent website selling myself as an Audi mechanic.
But, it would not stand much of a chance of getting well ranked by Google because it has no value – there is absolutely nothing out there on the web attesting to any expertise or experience on my part, no reviews, no references, or that I even exist as a company.
That is an extreme example, but ask yourself: what information have I provided that shows I know what I am talking about and shows that other people consider that I am authoritative and trustworthy and that I provide a good service? That content has value!
