SEO after Google RankBrain Update

RankBrain introduces an element of Artificial Intelligence into Google’s SEO algorithm that tries to figure out the context of the content on any given site.  It is a step away from keyword density and is Google’s response to the challenge of trying tounderstand the content and its value as a whole,for search engine users.

SEO is of two types: on-site and off-site and has strong connections with content marketing.  Both types of content should be well-written and relevant in order to drive more traffic and social shares across multiple media sites; and also engage more users.  Some benefits of content marketing are discussed below:

1. More visibility in search engines

Google indexes every page that you add to your blog or website,but that doesn’t mean that the more pages you add the more traffic your site will get.The thing is, the more quality pages are indexed the more opportunities you will get to rank for more search queries.

2. More on-site content

The more time you spend on content marketing indicates the more content on your site. This suggests that your customers will have more reasons to stick around, more favourable circumstances to become familiar with your brand, and more trust, that in turn will lead to higher conversion rates.

3. Higher domain authority

With the writing of higher quality content, the perceived expertise, relevance, authority and trust of your site will increase. Your website’s domain authority will definitely increase if the content earns more inbound links from third party websites.

4. Increased social traffic

You can post your content on your social media platforms in order to increase your exposure. This will enable more users to see and read your material; and not only that, the users can also share your content with their friends, thereby increasing your circle of followers.

How RankBrain can affect your SEO

As with content marketing, defining your keywords has always been the first step in developing anSEO campaign. You must look for keywords that are relevant to your business and which the customers are searching for. This is the foundation of a successful SEO campaign. Your campaign will be doomed from the beginning if you are targeting wrong keywords, or targeting keywords that the customers are not searching for.  It’s also essential that your on-page content and incoming links both target the same keywords to some extent (a site selling luxury cars with incoming links that all describe it as a charity that looks after dogs won’t rank well for either ‘luxury car’ or ‘dog charity’.)

Before RankBrain was introduced, the software engineers of Google would create a mathematical algorithm in order to determine search rankings. Until an update was made, that algorithm would be a constant. However, that algorithm is constantly changing with RankBrain. The SEO campaign in 2016 needs to be more adaptable to changes in the landscape of search engines, keywords still play a role but quality is more important.

Google have said that they take over 200 factors into account when considering where to rank websites (view an interactive infographic of the 200 SEO factors), these include numerous signals measuring the quality and quantity of incoming links, the quality of on-page content and the number of times keywords are included in a range of different locations, to name a few.

Intention is everything

Nowadays, search engines have the ability to see how people are interacting with your website. They can check if people are going back and clicking on the results, or if they are looking for the answers they are searching for, when on your website.

Size matters

Longer informative articles, with around 1000 to 1500 words, are likely to perform better in search results, particularly for scientific or more technical queries. Since long articles are getting more traffic andachieve higher page visit duration – they rank better too.

Another alternative is to create infographics or present information in some other creative format – combining images and text, doing thorough research, making articles unique or funny all help with your SEO.

Optimise for mobile

Nowadays, people prefer to read news on their Smart phones , tablets etc.So it is really important to make sure that your website has a responsive design and good page load speed.   Google have also recently released Accelerated Mobile Pages, giving fast loading pages that fulfil various other criteria an extra boost in their search results for mobile visitors.

In conclusion, it can be said that Google’s new feature RankBrain will definitely continue to develop over time. As a consumer you might not notice theses changes, but they are important to the average relevance of a search results page, and also, it has the ability to dictate the future development of search algorithms.