How to keep Google Search happy in 2021
Content Hubs, Google Passage Ranking, Featured Snippets, and content from reliable sources are the definitive 2021 SEO trends by Brian Dean
In a week’s time, the world will bid adieu to 2020. What an amazing year it has been so far. Don’t worry I won’t dissect 2020 and curse it.
2020 has been the year of discoveries. One of them is why do we share happiness with the world and hide grief.
When we are happy, we go out and share it with the world. Post it on social media. We write long stories on how a certain achievement or relationship or a material possession has made us happy. Nothing wrong with it. I am no saint.
But what about grief.
We don’t talk about it. I think grief is more personal and special than happiness. That is why we only share grief with very few selected people. These could be friends, life partners, or people whom we trust.
“These are those people who have helped us to be better person.”
That’s why we don’t find the same popularity for grief as happiness.
But be happy if you have people with you who are willing to be part of your grief.
I have been fortunate to have such people in life. I think I am privileged.
This year has also been quite a few discoveries on the work front. One of them is going back to basics and understanding how they are evolving. Search Engine Optimization has been one such topic. I am not an SEO expert but I understand content.
People think that content creation is the biggest challenge irrespective of mediums. But talk to a publisher she will tell you it is not only the creation but discovery. Thanks to big tech like Facebook and Google both of them are vouching to solve problems of small business. But only when SMEs work with them and use their products. In other words, both have supremely fucked discovery.
One of the reasons why publications and marketers are going back to old school and trying to build “Owned Mediums” - Website, blog, and email.
In 2020 I have spent a considerable amount of time understanding Search and how Google owns the space. Like it or not Google is Search.
And this year I discovered Brian Dean, Founder of Backlinko, and his outstanding research work in SEO.
He recently released - “The Definitive Guide To SEO in 2021”.
It is a goldmine for anyone who really wants to understand how search is progressing and strategies for marketers, agency folks, and anyone associated with marketing.
When you click on the guide link, what do you see? The title, clearly defined what the guide is all about (smart snippets), and the entire blog divided into 8 chapters. These are clickable links that provide ease of reading and also serve SEO.
“Dig a grave for your business if it is not mobile optimised.”
Content Hubs make you stand out
In the last chapter or the bonus chapter, Brian provides quick SEO tips for 2021. And my favourite is “Publish Content Hubs.”
Before I share anything take a look at how Mckinsey displays content in hubs. What comes after the digital dash is a special collection sub-divided into major content categories which are basically a collection of multiple blog articles under the category.
Think of it like a book divided into 4 or 5 subsections and each section is a collection of chapters that tell the story. They all connect back to the major theme or objective of the book. Isn’t it beautiful?
Google wants to make the web beautiful and appealing.
Even the definitive guide from Brian follows the same principle - “Content hubs are essentially a bunch of related content that covers a specific topic. But instead of linking together random blog posts, you present them as entries in a single “hub”. And create a hub homepage for the hub.”
These content hubs don’t only stand out for the ease of reading and sharing but hub pages are strategically designed to rank for lots of definition keywords. Brian’s Content Marketing Hub is another great example.
Google Passage Ranking is crucial
In 2001 I discovered blogging. Google Blogspot was an online diary for me. I would write to myself just I would write on paper. No paragraph, no images, no styling nothing.
Don’t you think we should be taught how to style our writing in school? My education system focussed entirely on grammar, sentence structuring, and spelling. But what about making it more appealing, and beautiful. I learned all this when I finally started my earlier startup.
I was also advised that I should put all keywords in the title and first two paragraphs. I saw people writing shit and making money by Adsense. Google also preferred that sort of mentality back then. I never loved the keyword business and I stuck my belief with content and providing value to readers rather than keywords.
In October Google announced a new technology called “Passages.” “Passages allow Google to rank specific, relevant passages from a specific page. Not just the page itself.”
In other words, other than taking the relevance of the entire page Google will take into account the relevancy of a specific section of that page.
Google elaborates: By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle-in-a-haystack information you’re looking for. This technology will improve 7 percent of search queries across all languages as we roll it out globally.
With new passage understanding capabilities, Google can understand that the specific passage (R) is a lot more relevant to a specific query than a broader page on that topic (L).
However, Google will still evaluate the entire page.
“So backlinks, on-page SEO, UX signals, and Google’s other page-level ranking factors will still apply. The only difference is that a single page now has more chances to rank. That is, assuming the page is optimized and organized,” says Brian.
Another reason why Content Hubs are in demand.
So don’t write like essays. Keep in mind that when you are writing on the Internet people are reading it. Make it legible and easy for the eyes.
Making Featured Snippets work
“Featured Snippets are short snippets of text that appear at the top of Google’s search results in order to quickly answer a searcher’s query. The content that appears inside of a Featured Snippet is automatically pulled from web pages in Google’s index. Common types of Featured Snippets include definitions, tables, steps, and lists,” says Backlinko - SEO Marketing Hub 2.0
Brian has put efforts into answering - How do you get your content to appear in the Featured Snippet?
Keywords research: Keywords that you already rank for and keywords that have a Featured Snippet. How do you find Featured Snippet Opportunities? Ahrefs “Organic Keywords” report.
Snippet Bait: A 40-60 word block of content specifically designed to rank in the Featured Snippet spot.
Paragraph Snippets: Snippet Bait works best for so-called “Paragraph Snippets”. And then there is - List and Table Snippets
Google wants content from reliable sources
Earlier this year when Google announced that it no more wants a faster web but a better web. I was smiling. It reminded me how Facebook once loved clickbait articles and then it banned all clickbait because it wanted to make the NewsFeed better.
During the same time, I chanced upon Backlinko’s research work that analysed 11.8 million Google Search Results.
One of the key findings of the study was - “Page loading speed does not have a correlation with rankings.” Even though Google has used site speed as an official ranking signal since 2010. And in 2018 “Speed Update”, was designed to provide mobile searchers with faster-loading pages.
The study measured the average loading speed across the entire domain. “Overall, we found zero correlation between site speed and Google rankings.”
In his bonus chapter, Brian advises that publish “Research Content.” Obviously, it is loved by everyone and is the best organic way of obtaining backlinks.
In 2020 they published 5 pieces of research content that brought in 22,926 backlinks, 23,217 social media shares, and 262,983 thousand visitors.
INSANE!!!
In SparkToro’s survey of 1,584 SEO professionals, “quality of linking sites & pages” was regarded as the second-most important ranking factor, beaten only by “relevance of overall page content.”
Links matter, and yet... articles are lucky to ever receive more than a single link.
Early last year Backlinko studied 912 million blog posts to better understand the world of content marketing. Specifically, the study looked at how factors like content format, word count, and headlines correlate with social media shares and backlinks.
The report found out that the vast majority of online content gets few social shares and backlinks. In fact, 94% of all blog posts have zero external links.
The report highlighted that when it comes to acquiring backlinks, long-form content significantly outperforms short blog posts and articles. Content longer than 3000 words gets an average of 77.2% more referring domain links than content shorter than 1000 words.
The downside of such work is that it requires time money and experienced talent. But without it, you can’t reliable content and Google wants to serve you with answers from “reliable sources.”
E-A-T or Expertise Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are the three pillars that Google wants its search to be based upon. The 175-page guide talks about E-A-T on page 20.
“Think about the topic of the page. What kind of expertise is required for the page to achieve its purpose well? The standard for expertise depends on the topic of the page.”
Also, be transparent. In other words, tell the world who you are, what do you do, and where do you exist. I have seen so many websites that will only talk about their services but chicken out when you click on the About page.
Google says: “We expect most websites to have some information about who (e.g., what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) is responsible for the website and who created the MC, as well as some contact information, unless there is a good reason for anonymity.”
“Think about the purpose of the website and the type of website information users would expect or demand.”
Finally, Organic Click Through Rate is down
In 2018, Rand Fishkin wrote - “It’s harder to get clicks on mobile, period. The total CTR is ~50% lower than on desktop, which isn’t particularly surprising given Google’s extremely rich results on that platform. On mobile, they work hard to be an “answer engine” far more than a “search results list.”
It’s no secret why: Google is crowding out the organic search results with SERP Features, like Answer Boxes, Ads, Carousels, “People also ask” sections, and more.
So how do you stand out?
Brian says: “Include the keyword in your URL, and use emotion.” Findings are backed by a study that they did in 2019 to understand Organic CTR.”
However, one piece of advice that stands out for me is: “Write meta-descriptions for every page.”
“Make sure your website’s description meta tags are 100% original. And would compel someone to click on your site in the search results. This is a simple 2-minute step that can increase your CTR by approximately 6%.”
After running my startup for 2 years I realised the importance of meta-description. Some said put keywords some said describe it. My experience says that meta-description should be simple that provides a short gist of the page. Be it a page or image meta description is old-school and Google loves it.
“Our research found that traditional image SEO techniques (like optimizing image filenames and alt text) seem to also help with Google Lens rankings. And that high-authority pages and sites are more likely to appear as Google Lens results.”
Brain and Backlinko have been an awesome discovery for me in 2020.
I have ignored some of the growing trends such as “Rise of Visual Search” and “Video’s growth”. But please go through it and keep it in mind while creating your 2021 SEO and Content Strategies.