Why Your Website's Pages Need to be High-Quality, Trustworthy, and Relevant.
And why web page content quality is more important for ranking than keywords.
On this page:
In Episode 4 of How Search Works, Gary Illyes of the Google Search Team emphasizes the topic of how Google Search delivers up the search results users rely on. The key area of importance for any site owner is ranking, and in the video he highlights that "largely depends on the relevancy of the results to the user."
Making web pages relevant.
But just what does that mean, and what do we need to do to make website pages as relevant as possible to our visitors?
I've written before on the importance of making sure your website pages are of the highest quality possible and deliver value to your visitors, but sometimes it is useful to expand on the topic so we can see a bigger picture of things.
Serving your visitors in the best way possible.
The biggest message on this from Google is that website content is not about keywords, it is about serving your visitors in the best way possible. This is quite a step change from how many site owners and SEO firms view things.
Often when new clients are starting they will send us a list of keywords they want to rank higher for. While it is good to know what the keyword strategy is, getting the desired Google ranking is no longer just about optimising a page.
Website content is now the horse pulling the cart.
If you take an analogy of the horse and cart, for a long time the target keywords were the horse pulling the content along the way you wanted it, now they have swapped around. Your website content is the horse, the keywords are riding along in the cart with hundreds of other factors such as visitor location, visitor search history, visitor intent, website speed, mobile friendliness, usability and so on.
Get into the mindset of your website visitors.
So back to the question we asked near the start: how do we make website pages more relevant? There could be many answers to this, but a good starting point might be to get yourself into the mindset of your website visitors. Imagine they are reading your page content. What questions might they have that need answering? How can you solve their issues and help them see the solutions? Can you ensure they leave your website feeling they have had a fulfilling experience?
Finding answers to these and other relevant questions, will help you craft web page content that fully supports your visitors and benefits ranking as well.
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