Two years ago, Google shook the SEO community with the unveiling of RankBrain. At the time, there was little information available from Google about what RankBrain was, so it was difficult to understand the impact it would have on online marketing.
Over time, however, we’ve been able to piece together the impact of RankBrain, and in turn, how to adjust our SEO and online marketing strategies accordingly. Keep reading below to learn more about how RankBrain has changed the marketing industry and how your company in Markham can factor this in for a successful online marketing strategy.
RankBrain 101
First, let’s begin with a brief 101 on what exactly RankBrain is, how it works and how it’s impacted online marketing:
- What is RankBrain?
RankBrain is an artificial intelligence (AI) program developed to improve Google’s search algorithm for a better search experience. To be clear, RankBrain was not created as a new algorithm, but as a part of Google’s established algorithm known as Hummingbird, which functions through a complex combination of several elements.
- What does RankBrain do?
RankBrain works with the other elements of Google’s search algorithm to present users with high-quality, relevant content. More specifically, it helps Google process the search engine results by assisting the search engine to better interpret long-tail keywords. As a machine learning AI, RankBrain is able to find and recognize patterns in complex searches (word relationships) and can, overtime, can learn to better understand this searches to provide better quality search results.
- How has this impacted online marketing?
In terms of online marketing, RankBrain is a crucial factor to a successful SEO strategy. Aside from links and content, RankBrain is the most important ranking factor. Unfortunately, because RankBrain is all about association learning, smaller brands and business can easily be left behind as larger brands are more easily and reputably associated with specific products (for example, Dawn with dish soap or Bounty with paper towels).
How you can factor in RankBrain for Successful SEO
Never fear, though, as there are still a number of ways you can cater your marketing strategy for RankBrain and achieve high rankings, traffic, and conversions. Check out the tips from our SEO experts below to learn how you can easily factor RankBrain into your online marketing strategy.
- Keep Up With Quality Content
Quality content gives businesses a two-birds-with-one-stone opportunity since it satisfies two of the top three ranking factors: content and RankBrain. It’s well known that strong content, generally, is crucial to effective SEO strategy, but beyond this, it also helps RankBrain do its job. Easily cater to RankBrain factors by continuing to produce quality content using strong, relevant keywords.
- Conduct Thorough Keyword Research
We all know that good keyword research is the golden ticket in SEO, but how does RankBrain factor in? Because RankBrain is based on associations, you can tailor your content to show up in a variety of keyword relevant searches. By researching not only for competitive keywords and phrases, but also for related keyword phrases to include in your content, you can have you content show up in a variety of search queries, even if the user’s search query doesn’t include the exact keyword you had in mind.
- Optimize Your Website and Pages
If you’re looking to achieve higher rankings, it’s important that you are optimizing your website by creating unique meta descriptions for each pages, including keywords in the URL, and crafting quality headlines. These practices are crucial to search rankings, as this is how Google and other search engines understand the content of your page to determine its relevance.
With the addition of RankBrank, it’s crucial to keep up with these and other current SEO practices like ensuring your website is fast, mobile optimized and response, and that bots are able to easily crawl your pages to read content.