Google employees Matt Cutts and Steve Baker recently released related posts on how computers understand human language and what that means for webmasters. These posts cemented what a lot of SEOs, webmasters and search engine users already were starting to realize about the engine – it was beginning to pick up on the intricacies of language and how to use them to better find us the search results we’re looking for.
While that’s all great and awesome, Google’s adaptation to the minutiae of our everyday speech means that us, the people in development and support (SEOs, content creators, webmasters) have to adjust. A few of the major changes are detailed below:
Some variations in anchor text now have less value.
When link building, an SEO has the task of creating and getting natural, organic anchor text for their targeted website. Generally, mixing up anchor text by creating plural and singular versions would be a standard practice. In Baker’s example, he uses “arm reduction” and “arms reduction” as an example of two terms that are one letter apart, but have miles of difference in meaning.
Google’s identification of this fact means that if we were trying to rank for “arm reduction”, getting links with the targeted anchor text “arms reduction” would do little to help rank for “arm reduction”, besides providing minor benefit to overall domain authority. Normally, adding in long tail keywords would help rank for the short tail, but that is only because Google identifies the long-tail (arms reduction) as a supportive term for the short-tail (arm reduction). In this case, it does not.
2000: Trying to Rank for Arms Reduction?
Anchor text: “Arms Reduction” – Strong Benefit
Anchor text: “Arm Reduction” – Strong Benefit
2010: Trying to Rank for Arms Reduction?
Anchor text: “Arms Reduction” – Strong Benefit
Anchor text: “Arm Reduction” – Minor Benefit
.. while some variations in anchor text have more.
The flipside of this is identifying that your page can now benefit from more natural anchor text, rather than having to force in strange spacing and plural versions of the keyword in order to still obtain real rankings increases for your targeted keywords. Use “photo albums” for the page you want to rank for “picture albums” and don’t fret – “picture albums” will still see strong, increased benefit from relevant anchor text.
2000: Trying to Rank for Picture Albums?
Anchor text: “Picture Albums” – Strong Benefit
Anchor text: “Photo Albums” – Minor Benefit
2010: Trying to Rank for Picture Albums?
Anchor text: “Picture Albums” – Strong Benefit
Anchor text: “Photo Albums” – Strong Benefit
Google is making a case for usability.
When building up a page, there is less need to think about over-saturation of your keyword target in order to show Google that your website is relevant for a certain keyword. Now, more than ever, you can focus more on sheer usability and throw in more, less searched for synonyms and still show Google that “photo albums” is a still relevant for “picture albums”. This allows for more natural, user-friendly websites to rank highly instead of only those that are perfectly optimized for the search engines.
For the webmaster and content developer, this means that you no longer have to worry about creating separate pages for photo albums and picture albums, as you can now efficiently optimize both on one page. This allows for more natural website content creation and a better user experience – Google’s ultimate goal.
About SEORoss — Ross is a Senior SEO Analyst at Single Grain and an active purveyor of phiROSSophy. You should follow him on twitter @rosshudgens.
