@tjrobertson52

Could the best way to rank in Google actually be to ignore Google? That's what the renowned SEO Marie Hayes said in her most recent newsletter. And I actually think she might be onto something.

I've been subscribed to Marie's newsletter for five or 10 years now. What is time? And I'm fortunate enough to call Marie a friend these days.

I highly recommend her newsletter overall, but this most recent one really spoke to me. I just want to kind of go through it. Marie posits that we can simplify the way that Google ranks websites into four steps.

Although it's actually three steps, the fourth one is more of a continuation. First, Google gathers an initial set of results based on traditional ranking factors. Then Google uses a set of AI systems to rank that set of results by which results will best satisfy the user.

And then finally, Google uses a series of signals, like user behaviour, to determine how accurately they predicted which results would best satisfy the user. Step 4 is just that over time, these systems will get better and better at predicting which results will satisfy the user by continuously comparing those predictions to the signals they're getting from users themselves. As Marie states, this is a simplification.

It's much more nuanced than this in reality, but her framing more or less matches my intuition. Marie then points out that most SEOs are still focused on that first step, traditional ranking factors. Historically, That has been the most important step.

Initially, it was the only step. But we've known for a while now that Google's been trying to get away from factors like backlinks and keywords and just deliver results that actually meet the user's search intent. The cheaper, faster, smarter these AI Models get, better Google's able to do that.

And it's important to note that the AI Models Google is using to rank websites are not large language models. At least not yet. We're talking about smaller, specialized models like BERT and Nav Boost and glue.

These models are still far from perfect at evaluating which sites are gonna satisfy your search intent. They are getting better very quickly. Now, for the time being, traditional search factors are definitely still important, and that's largely because it's the cheapest way for Google to get that initial set of results.

But I do agree that they're only going to become less important. And while Google is focused on results that satisfy the search intent, they're still pretty terrible at evaluating quality. Partly because the AI isn't smart enough, and partly because it would just be too expensive.

But what I think pretty much any SEO would agree with is that it's much easier to rank if you're a well known, established brand. Marie Hayes calls this out in her newsletter. She recommends everyone review Google's Quality Raters guidelines.

If you're not familiar, Google employs something like 16,000 quality raters, which are contractors that are given a set of guidelines by which to evaluate search results. They are then presented with a set of results for a given query and are tasked with evaluating how closely those results match the guidelines they've been given. This is how Google evaluates whether or not an algorithm update is moving things in the right direction.

These guidelines don't exactly tell us how Google ranks websites, but they do tell us how they want to rank websites, what factors they want to matter. And what Marie points out is that over and over again in these guidelines, Google emphasizes the value in being known as the go to source in your industry. Now, how exactly Google determines that you're known as the go to source in your industry is still a mystery.

And the more it's turned over to AI, the more it might even be a mystery to the engineers at Google. But I think Marie's point is that we should stop trying to solve the mystery. Better these AI systems get, the harder it's going to be to figure out exactly how they work.

Instead, we should just give into the idea that Google's gonna get better and better at ranking websites the way they intend to rank them. Instead of being focused on how to make Google think you're known as a go to source in the industry, you should be focused on becoming the go to source in your industry.

And if your brand is too small to be the go to source in your industry, pick a subset of your industry that you could dominate, and then put your effort into creating content and tools and resources that are truly helpful to your audience. And I think all of this is directionally correct, but it's not a new trend. It's a trend that's been going on for at least a decade now.

It's just accelerating now. And I think it's important to reiterate that we haven't arrived in this future yet. Traditional SEO is still very effective, but what this episode of Marie's newsletter did for me would just remind me that we need to be focused not just on where Google is now, but where Google is heading.