(upbeat music)
- [Brad] It seems the question on everyone's mind these days
is what's the future of SEO?
And in the last couple of years,
we've seen a switch to mobile-first indexing,
a mobile speed update,
which makes page speed a ranking factor,
and we've even seen featured snippets waiver
in how frequently they appear.
But the biggest change came several years ago
when Google made a major update to a portion
of their algorithm, dubbing it RankBrain,
and this is still very relevant today.
Simplistically, RankBrain is a machine learning,
artificial intelligence system.
It provides a modern approach
to how Google understands search queries
and searcher intent.
And changes like this help signal what's to come.
You see, RankBrain's primary purpose is to evaluate queries
and then identify the best content.
Google wants to return results that are incredibly relevant,
even if in some situations, the content doesn't contain
any of the words from the original search query.
It's all about evaluating the intent of the search
and finding content that meets this goal.
The major idea behind RankBrain is that we can get away
from specific keyword matching
and move to mapping content to concepts.
In the past, a query for laptop
may not have listed content referencing the plural, laptops.
And it gets even more complicated.
Say we've got a blog article that lists the best hamburgers
in Santa Barbara.
The old method of SEO would look to see what keywords
were most frequently used.
Does a user search for best burgers in Santa Barbara,
or maybe where is the best hamburger in Santa Barbara?
We then have to fiddle with our content
to make sure we use terms like burger versus hamburger,
and included any necessary modifiers,
such as where or what and so on.
But when you really think about it,
a search for best burgers Santa Barbara
versus what are the best burgers in Santa Barbara
versus top 10 hamburgers in Santa Barbara
are all really asking fundamentally the same question.
RankBrain connects the dots
and decides that regardless of the difference in word pairs
and ordering of the search query,
the same content will work.
So if you didn't use the magic headline,
top 10 burgers, and instead chose,
these are the best hamburgers in Santa Barbara,
you might rank just as well for these search queries.
RankBrain has reduced the importance of keyword matching
and improved the importance of simply matching your content
to fit a user's intent.
So what does this mean for the future of search?
What should you be doing? I have three suggestions.
First, mapping single keywords to single pages
is an outdated idea.
Gone are the days that we need to build a page
for best burgers and another page for best hamburgers.
We instead should optimize our content by condensing it
and choosing the groups of keywords
that thematically map back to it.
Second, the same input can yield a different output
because Google factors in context.
If I do a search for coffee shop while I'm in Los Angeles,
I'm going to get different results than the same search
while in New York.
You need to understand that certain queries
will require different content.
For a coffee shop, you'll need to invest
in lots of local SEO and validate your content
as having a local context.
You won't need to shove the city after every instance
of the word coffee shop in these days.
You also need to evaluate that some search queries
will demand fresh content, while others,
in-depth thoroughly linked content.
You may have queries that should be formatted as a list
over a table, and so on and so forth.
The model requires careful planning and a deep analysis
to determine what signals you need to give to Google,
to clarify which users will find your material in line
with their specific intent.
And finally, you need to stay focused.
If your content is always fresh,
then work to capture search queries
that demand fresh content.
If you serve up short answers to niche questions,
then maintain that focus because Google will measure
the reputation you earn when serving up content
to those particular query types.
A great approach is to stay on top of articles, news,
and data being shared by the industry.
Start to experiment with your content
and begin to look at search queries
through the intent-based approach that we've outlined.
(upbeat music)