Aug 18

Aug 18 Your Website Content: Don't Hide It With Out-of-Date Practices

As a business owner, you may not have time to keep up with all the changes search engines like Google make every day. But if you and your SEO practitioner don’t keep up, you’ll fall behind.

Your content on a web page won't get noticed.

Search engines are using increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) to search the web for the best answer when someone asks a question (query). Google search is moving from an information engine to a knowledge engine. That means the aim of what you do on your website is to connect data. So, when it comes to optimizing your web pages for search engines, you want to think of information, not keywords.

Teach Search Engines About Your Business

Search engines examine your web page for data. When you write content, search engines look for named entities. Those are things and they can be a person, place, or thing, and even a concept.

Each entity is a topic for your written content. You have one main topic for each page. But within the content you will have related entities. When writing, you can think of these as synonyms and sub-topics that help your reader understand the main topic.

Things Not Strings

You've probably heard of keywords. Your website used words that search engines would recognize as being there on your site. It counted those keywords. The more you used a keyword, the more emphasis search engines gave that page.

Artificial intelligence has changed the game.

Now, artificial intelligence looks for things. These things are known as entities in SEO.

The late Bill Slawski wrote a detailed description of how entities work at SEO by the Sea, if you want to learn more.

Once AI identifies the entities on a web page, it looks to see how the various entities on the page are related. Then it looks to see how those entities are related to the other entities on your website. Think of each entity you mention as a data point. AI collects the data points and looks for relationships among entities.

AI doesn't stop searching on your website. Once it has identified the entities on your web page and website, it looks at how the entities mentioned on your webpage relate to all the other mentions on the web of each of the entities you mention.

In other words, AI is collecting data on each entity from websites all over the internet.

The connection of relationships is mind-boggling in scope. The AI compares your use with French, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and any other language. The fact that a search engine selects your web page with your entity mentioned is impressive. The search engine believes that you provide the best answer to the web searcher's question.

Shifts in SEO Practices

SEO continually changes, so keeping track of these shifts in emphasis can help search engines discover your website as an answer.

Search engines will understand your entities, how they relate to each other, and how your content answers potential customers' questions if you write so that your customers understand.

If you write for your customers, search engines will know what you are saying.

Content Then

Previously, content mills were available to purchase content "stuff" to add to your website. Content "spinning" services were available that would change the content wording and post it in lists to build backlinks. Some of this content was so bad it did not make sense when read. The idea was content filled with keywords and more content.

It was during this time when you could write just about anything, and you had to use keywords in your text so search engines could find you—so many keywords in the title, so many in the first paragraph, a few in the body.

Language on websites became stilted and often cumbersome, making text difficult to read for the exact people you wanted to reach. The tactic worked for search engines but not for people.

AI has changed all that. The number of websites on the internet is now over a billion, and many of these sites are in your industry. Your content should focus on answering questions for your customers.

Content Now

Now your content has to focus on one topic at a time for each web page.

Use relevant words to your topic to elaborate: the subtopics that are grouped within your main topic. If your subtopics are directly related to your main topic, search engines will be able to focus on the main theme (topic) of that page.

AI evaluates content by how easy it is to understand and how logical your content is, leading a site visitor to a logical conclusion.

It Isn't Just The Content Words

Search engines aggregate a number of factors as they look at your content as possible answers to online queries. It isn’t just the words.

Search algorithms weigh a number of factors when determining high-quality content experience. These include;

Format
Industry relevance
Easy to read
Text broken into sections with headlines
Sentence length
Paragraph length
Relevant graphs and charts
Relevant images or video
Layout
Links

Search engines expect you to know what you are talking about. Content should reflect your business, its products and services, how you serve customers, and clearly communicate information related to online searches about your industry.

Topic Optimization

Make sure Google understands what topics you want a page to answer a query. You should include at least the main topic in these elements:

Post title - Place the topic close to the title beginning. Google values the first words in the headline more.

URL - Your page’s web address should also include the topic.

H1 Tag - The header 1 tag, or title tag. Make sure the main topic is in the title.

The first paragraph - Reassure the search engine by using the topic at the beginning of your written content. The search engine understands this is truly the page's topic.

Meta-title and meta-description tags - These are code elements for the page. Search engines use these two code elements for displaying their listings. Meta-titles are displayed as the search listing's title, while meta-descriptions describe the text on the page. The topic is further explained using both of them.

Image file names and ALT tags - Search engines see the file names of images. Use the topic in the file name. Alt tags are text browser displays for the image. It is part of the image code, which helps search engines understand images.

Semantic Topics - Because search engines understand the relationship between topics, synonyms help describe your topic. These semantic sub-topics (synonyms). Add them to ensure your page does not show up for irrelevant searches.

The sub-topics differentiate the topic in the context of your page. A search engine can learn what the difference is between the lion animal, the Detroit football team, or the local pub as the main subject of a page.