Marketing CLARITY Podcast
Marketing CLARITY Podcast
Google Search Essentials: An Explanation
Google Search Essentials are important to small business marketers because it's a comprehensive guide provided by Google on how to use their search engine to its fullest potential. Formerly known as Google Webmaster Guidelines, Google Search Essentials has been released to help marketers and content creators understand Google's approach to search in three key categories: Technical Requirements, Key Best Practices, and Spam Policies.
Today, on the Marketing CLARITY Podcast, I break down the three categories and best practices related to creating the best content for your audience AND for search.
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Did you enjoy this podcast? Please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen). It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really helps the show get discovered by other people looking for marketing help. Plus, I love reading reviews!
For show notes and to listen online: https://www.marketingclaritypodcast.com
➕ Join my FREE Marketing CLARITY Community full of tips, strategies, and how-to’s related to marketing, content creation, sales, and social media.
➕ Are you wandering around in a marketing fog? My Marketing CLARITY Guide can help! Learn more at http://getmarketingclarity.com/
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Welcome to the marketing clarity podcast, this show that definitely remembers to delete that search history. On this episode, I am talking about Google Search essentials, what is it? And what you need to know, for your business website. Let's get peddling. My name is Ross Herosian. I'm a marketing and content coach and I work with small businesses and solopreneurs. To help clear the digital marketing fog. Find out how I can deliver to you customer clarity, content, clarity and company Clarity with my marketing clarity program at get marketing clarity.com. So Google just recently rolled out what they're calling Google Search essentials. And this is replacing what was formerly called Google Webmaster Guidelines. They say because webmaster is a dated term, right and doesn't include all the content creators who want to see their content, create or rank in search results. So webmasters, essentially, like Dungeon Master is out. And they are just saying, hey, if he if you make stuff on the web, here is what you need to know as it relates to search. Now, they've released this in three different categories, technical requirements, key best practices, and spam policies. And I'm going to go through each one of these relatively quickly, but at the level, that is still going to be very helpful to you. Because there is, you could spend a day going through a lot of this and deep dive in but you don't got a day. You got however much time you've dedicated this podcast. So let's roll technical requirements. Here's all you need to know about technical requirements. The good news is, is that by doing nothing, most sites pass the technical requirements according to Google, you know, that's whether it is on Wix or on Squarespace, or on WordPress, you know, for the most part, unless you've gone in and messed with things, which you probably have not your site is probably meeting the technical requirements, according to Google. So that's good news. Right? Okay, good. Now, let's talk about key best practices. So here are some of the I think the big takeaways related to key Best Practices inside of the Google Search essentials. So first, use keywords people would search for, and place them in prominent areas, such as titles, headings, and alt text. Okay, so keywords that are relevant to your business, but also that overlap of what are words and phrases that people may be using, related to search, you're gonna want to put those in titles and headaches. Okay? The second thing, and this is a biggie, I'm gonna spend the really a bulk of our time on this, this episode, in this category, create helpful content. Now, this comes on, you know, right after Google's, quote, helpful content update that came in August of 2022. And, you know, here are the things when we're talking about helpful content that needs to be defined, obviously. So let's talk about all the pieces, the parts that can kind of make up helpful content. So the first thing is you're going to want to write for people and not for Google, a very common mistake people make and also this is kind of one of the holdovers, if you will, from people who do SEO, and they're still clutching to the old ways, right? I'm using air quotes there is that they're writing specifically for Google, and they're not writing for people. And Google smarter than that now. Okay. So you have to ask yourself, Is this designed to attract people from search engines, rather than being made for actual human beings? That's important, right? Right for people, not for Google. So part of that comes with how mechanized if you will it is how voice it is, you know, if you read it, and you're like, this kind of seems clunky or doesn't really flow or it's these are existing kind of how I would if I was explaining it in person, this is not how I explained it, then tweak it. Okay. Are you adding value Okay, adding value is the key component of search. And Google understands that in a number of different ways how much bounce rate if people land on your page, and they don't find it helpful, they go back. That means maybe that wasn't particularly helpful, how long they spend on your page, right? Do they click other links on your site? These are all signals that relate to value. You know, I think this is one of the questions that Google asked is, does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again, to get better information from other sources? So if you are trying to answer a specific question, address a particular issue among your audience? When they are done reading it, do they feel like they need to go back to Google? Because their question wasn't answered the question or the query that you're going after is not answered? If they do, you need to continue to work on that content. Okay. Here's another one. Are you writing to a particular word count? Because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count, which they don't, by the way, okay. And this is kind of this has also been one of those big evolutions, because Google better understands language now, and a big misunderstanding, is that just by in itself, longer content ranks better. It does not. Now, if it is longer, more in depth content that addresses a question that adds value and answers a question, then yes, of course, longer versus shorter is going to do a little bit better, but by in of itself, just because if something is long, but it's super fluffy, like there's a lot of crap in there, that's not relevant. That doesn't mean it's going to rank so. So trust me when I say, size doesn't matter. That's what I've been told by people, but by Google, not by people, definitely not that, but by by Google has told me that and they they have come out and said that. So it's about answering the question, providing as much useful information as possible. And if you can do that, and it's only two paragraphs. Okay, that's better than two paragraphs of actual substance, and then six paragraphs of fluffy crap you don't need. Okay. So the, you know, these are, this is a lot of the unpacking, if you will, of the key best practices as it relates to creating helpful content. Okay. Now, of course, Google has what's called Eat. They don't specifically live by this, but it's definitely one of the things that they promote. And eat stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. So, you know, you want to help users the content, you know, you want to. So you want to come across as an expert, but but really, you want to talk about things that you know about, right? We don't want to make this that you're just fibbing left or right, because that's not how it works. And then when it comes to trustworthiness, this also is tied to our other sites linking to you, are you linking to other sites, kind of what? What's hanging out and happening in your internet neighborhood, if you will, that gives Google again, those signals that you are trustworthy. Okay. So that is the key best practices. And now I'm going to round out this Google Search essentials with the third component, which is spam policies, and much like technical here's the good news. By doing nothing, you are probably not committing any fouls related to spam policies. So here's some things that they list. And you probably don't even know what the hell they mean, cloaking doorways, keyword stuffing, you might know that one, that's where you're just jamming in a certain keyword in there. And it doesn't even make sense. Like let's say you want to rank for marketing agency and tricycle creative is the best marketing agency among all the marketing agencies in the United States. And as a marketing agency, they really provide a lot of great services that other marketing agents oh my god, no one talks like that. That is ridiculous. That is keyword stuffing. Sneaky reader X. You probably don't know what that is, you're probably not even doing it. Scan and fraud. Okay, now here's the thing. If you're listening to this, you wouldn't know if you're scamming and frauding people, so knock it off. Knock it off. You're ruining the internet for everyone. But again, you're probably not scamming and frauding. Now, one other thing you can check out if you are curious is Google also provides an SEO Starter Guide, it is quite bulky. Okay. There may be a lot of things you don't understand in there. But if you do want to check it out, I will link to it in the show notes at marketing clarity podcast, so you can check out that link the other round Everyone gather round, gather round quiet. Sheesh, sheesh, Max, put down the scissors. Thank you very much. Let's talk let's let's What Did We Learn on this episode? Okay, first, fresh, Constant Content is critical to improving your SEO. And that is through a blog. So if you don't have a blog, you need one. Right? But of course, just starting a blog isn't enough. You need to have what? Well, useful content. So the second thing we learned, you need strategic content that answers questions, and is relevant to your audience. Right, just creating a blog full of content that's not relevant to your business, or to your audience or to your customers. That's not the way to move the needle on SEO. And the other thing we learned today is that technically, are on the technical side, maybe I should bet for that. You probably aren't doing anything wrong. But you could be doing more. And that's where hiring a SEO specialist like myself, or someone else but I, you know, I do SEO and I'm here and you're listening to me. So you know, like me. And also if you're struggling with creating your content, while again, that's why I'm sitting in this chair, I can help you. That is where my marketing clarity program comes in. And you can learn all about that about how I help you get customer clarity about how I help you get company Clarity, and finally, how I help you get content clarity, all that by going to get marketing clarity.com
