How to Get Everything You Want by Giving Google Exactly What They Need

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Crack the Google code! Secret Google loophole! Backdoor Google hack! Who knows, they might exist, but you're better off saving your money and betting on a sure-thing. That, my fellow marketers, is giving Google what they need to do their job. As in Google working for you, not against you.

For us marketers, getting on Google's good side is an essential piece of the puzzle. Besides, who wouldn't want the biggest player in this biz on their side? And Google has been bending over backwards, literally yelling from the top of their ivory towers on just what that piece is.

It's all about Google's "user experience". Buy into that and you, your business and Google can get in step. At the core of the user experience is your content and Google has made it perfectly clear. Your content, the content that Google wants on it's pages, must be unique, high quality and add value to your visitors. That's it. Nothing more. Unique, quality content that adds value.

How do you boil down unique, quality content that adds value? It sounds way harder that it really is.

Unique is really a no-brainer. Anything that you create - a post, a video, a recording, whatever - is guaranteed to be unique. Anything! And if you put that anything onto the web, Google will (eventually) find it and know it's unique. As in it's yours, you created, and you own it. The fact that you own it is very, very important to Google. Fire up a search for 'google sued for copyright infringement' and you'll see why. Google is continually in court for allegedly distributing copyrighted materials. They're on the hook for billions with no end to the lawsuits in site. Google doesn't want duplicate content on their network. Period. Throw Google a bone and keep your content unique.

What about quality? How does Google measure quality? The honest answer is, only Google knows! It's at the heart of their ranking algorithms. But for anyone who cares to look, Google is dropping some obvious clues. Like in their new Keyword Planner. Or their autosuggesting or related keyword search tools. This is where the quality rubber meets the road and here's where LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing comes in.

Don't be put off by a couple of big words. LSI just means words that are associated with each other. Google has a very good idea of 1) how words are associated and 2) how search terms are related. In simple terms, these two things help Google measure quality and ultimately value. Let me give you an example...
You have a doggie day care site. You decide to promote your site by writing some content on dog training. Just like the good book says, you put 'Dog Training Tips: Teach Your Dog Some New Tricks" into an H1 tag. You write about cats, Obamacare, global warming, the price of tea in China. You get carried away. You never use words like: collars, school, obedience, leash, aggression, behaviour, or crate. Words that Google knows are associated with the term 'dog training'. Your H1 tag screams 'Dog Training'. Google expects stuff about dog training. It finds no associated words. Google, in fact, has no idea what you're talking about. Epic fail! Google rates the quality of your content low and therefore of little or no value to your visitors.
OK. I know. I hear y'all ! Crazy example. But it makes a point. Without semantically related words, your content is not knowable to Google. The more semantically related words you use, the better Google can understand what you're content is about. And the better Google understands, the more it likes. Keep giving it more of the same, and the skies the limit. The idea that if more is good, then lots is better and tons is best is at the very heart of one the oldest and best ways to get organic traffic.
The good news - Humans are great at producing content that is unique and packed with LSI words and phrases.
The bad news - Marketing tools that help us write and distribute lots and lots of content are horrible at it.
To be fair it's not so much the tools, but the way most of us use them. I'm talking about article spinning. Not only can it be challenging to create readable content, but if you're not careful or paying attention, it is next to impossible to create content that Google considers of any real quality. And remember, without quality, there is no value. No quality, no value, no love.

If you are going to spin content, then you're pretty much wasting your time if you can't get it readable while using LSI related words and phrases. Google will hunt you down and label you as spam, or worse.

Thanks for reading.
#giving #google #keywords #lsi keywords
  • Profile picture of the author Mark Fallaize
    Great post Bert!

    Good point about LSI's, google's quite clever when it comes to words!
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  • Profile picture of the author FingerPicker
    Wow, great post! I haven't looked at the related search terms that way yet. I will be adding them in my content now for sure!
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