Search intent / ranking signal

Google loves to give SEO advice and if you're trying to rank your website at the top of Google search results, it makes sense that you would listen to advice directly from the source, right? The problem of course is that Google doesn't want to help you rank better.

They want to help high quality sites rank better. Their primary goal is to improve the quality of the search results so more people use it and more people click on their ads.

There are some people who think that Google is actually intentionally making the organic results worse so that you're more likely to click on ads. I do not believe that but I wanna talk about why you shouldn't just blindly follow Google's SEO advice and also why you shouldn't ignore it completely.

These are two very common traps that a lot of SEOs fall into. On one hand you have SEOs that become just absolutely obsessed with anything that Google says about SEO.

And on the other hand you have people who completely disregard anything that Google says...

ave you reviews. Google's algorithm will see all of this and reward you for that high quality helpful content.

And of course, there is some truth here, but it doesn't really tell you anything about how Google's algorithm works. The truth is all of this advice is aspirational, but Google isn't transparent about that.

Google talks as if their algorithm is already perfectly aligned with their intentions. The truth is their algorithm is still terrible at measuring the quality of content and there are still plenty of things you can do to trick their algorithm into ranking you higher.

But of course, Google doesn't want you to know that. The only thing their algorithm is really good at is understanding the intent of the searcher, which is why I think every good SEO.

Puts a lot of effort into making sure the content they're creating matches the intent of someone searching for the keyword they're trying to rank for. So if Google is just out there pretending their algorithm can do all these things it can't do, why would you listen to them at all?...

erience, 90% or more of the advice we get from Google is advice that that Googler truly believes. And of course, a lot of their advice is just common SEO.

Best practices that no one would disagree with. But in those times where they're giving truly bad advice, I don't think they know they're giving bad advice.

I don't think they know how to rank high in Google and they're just choosing to say the opposite. I just think they're working at Google and there's all this aspirational language about what their algorithm is going to be capable of floating around in the workspace and they buy into the hype the same way a lot of SEOs do.

However, those aspirations still tell an important story. They tell us how Google wants their algorithm to work and the directions are likely heading in as it gets smarter.

And smarter. So please don't blindly follow Google's SEO advice.

But if you're doing SEO seriously, or you're paying someone to do it, I still think it's important to listen to what Google says about SEO. And then run your own experiments.