What The &%$! Do You Want From Me? (A Journey Into Google’s Mind)

byParthaB

4.2K followers

Updated 2 years ago

CHEEKY DISCLAIMER: For those of you wishing to view my content in video format, give it a month or so, I’m sure one of the “Super Affiliates”/”Expert Trainers” will REPURPOSE my content, while adding their own twist (Hahaha!! Don’t worry guys, still love you all, and I obviously understand how the internet works - what’s mine is yours!)

You find a longtail, low-competition, super easy to rank keyword (or have you REALLY?)

You plan what you’re going to write for your article.

You write the article and publish.

You wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Nothing.

Can’t see anything.

Not a sausage.

Where the hell is my article?

I thought this was an easy to rank keyword?

Why is it not even featuring on the first 100 pages of Google?

What am I doing wrong?

Let’s find out.

A Quick “I’m Ranking” Lesson First

Do you mind if I deal with the “elephant in the room” first?

Basically, I’m seeing a lot of new members stating that they’re “ranking on page one of Google”.

The usual happens, “congratulations”, “well done”, “I’m so happy for you”.

And yet, no-one actually questions this.

I’m all for “being a nice person”, and offering “encouragement”, but I also prefer to help others in a practical way.

So, here’s the deal for all new members who are stating that they’re “ranking on page one of Google” in their first month or two…

YOU’RE NOT

Harsh? Possibly! True? Not Definite BUT Most Likely!

Okay, the thing that I am often seeing is this:

Your keyword is “How to Make Money Online”

Your article title is

“Partha’s Super Duper Guide on How to Make Money Online”

And what do you do?

You go to Google or Jaaxy rank checker and you type in for the FOCUS KEYWORD

“Partha’s Super Duper Guide on How to Make Money Online”

And you see you’re ranking number one!!!

Guess what?

How many people in the world do you honestly think would search for:

“Partha’s Super Duper Guide on How to Make Money Online”

I’ll tell you.

NONE!!

Why?

Because the vast majority of people in the world who are searching for “How to Make Money Online” will NEVER have heard of me.

Therefore, they WILL NOT type in the COMPLETE TITLE of my article.

So, by checking your “rankings” like this, the only thing you’re doing is giving yourself false hope.

ALWAYS check ranking for articles FOR THE ACTUAL KEYWORD YOU HAVE TARGETED.

This is also why I’m a huge fan of Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools because THEY ACTUALLY TELL YOU EVERY KEYWORD THAT AN ARTICLE IS RANKING FOR.

Plus, if you’re going to check your ranking, do so in a private browser or incognito tab.

Why?

Because your “normal” Google search will provide PERSONALIZED searches based on YOUR BROWSING HISTORY (unless you have this turned off in your browser under SETTINGS).

All this means is that Google wishes to provide you with the information they believe you will be interested in.

A good way for them to determine this is how often you visit a website.

Essentially, the more often you visit a website, the more Google will feel that it is one of your “favourites”, and will therefore PLACE IT AT THE TOP OF THE SEARCH RESULTS.

How often do you visit your OWN WEBSITE?

I’m guessing 100s of times a month.

Therefore, any searches you make in Google RELATED to topics on your website, you will OFTEN (not always) be shown at the top of the search results, especially if you have searched that term BEFORE.

As I say, it doesn’t always happen, but why take the chance?

Check rankings in a PRIVATE BROWSER.

Then again, just wait, and check Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools a month or two down the line to see your REAL RANKINGS for ALL THE DIFFERENT KEYWORDS that ONE article is RANKING FOR!

Lesson Over, let’s get to the good stuff!!

Give Google What They WANT

Okay, back to the point of this blog post, “How to Give Google What They Want”.

Now, something you’ll want to get into the habit of doing after you’ve found a decent keyword is to do some “competition analysis”.

Sounds impressive, right?

Let’s just break this down into easy to understand language.

Essentially, Google is telling you what they like to see for a particular keyword by the way they place the results on page one.

Plus, I don’t care what anyone says, but domain authority and backlinks still play a MASSIVE role in ranking.

In fact, after all these recent Google updates and traffic drops that MANY, MANY, MANY people in the industry have suffered (I’ve mentioned it many times now, ONE of websites lost 90,000 visitors PER MONTH and around $7,000 in income PER MONTH - Not nice, but my biggest two websites haven’t been affected, although that’s not to say that they won’t be in the future).

BUT, a lot of these lost rankings seem to have been replaced by very poorly written articles (400 words, no images, no videos, just a page full of ads and 400 words on the keyword topic) on websites with a BIG domain authority and a LOT of RELEVANT HIGH DOMAIN AUTHORITY BACKLINKS.

Authority clearly counts (even if the content is poor).

Anyway!!!!!

As I say, Google actually more-or-less tells you what they want.

So, a great way to discover this is to check out the first 3 results for a particular keyword.

And I’m going to show you EXACTLY how to do this now.

Let’s Do Some Competitor Analysis

Okay, let's go to the Google Search Bar and find a keyword.

For the purposes of this blog post I’M NOT going to find a decent rankable keyword.

That’s NOT the point of this blog post, plus I have written and published a fair few blog posts around my keyword research methods, so go check them out if you haven’t already.

This blog post will show how to do some very basic competitor analysis so that YOU CAN WRITE YOUR ARTICLE & GIVE IT THE BEST CHANCE OF RANKING FOR A PARTICULAR KEYWORD.

So, I go to the google search bar and simply type in (a question phrase)

WHEN SHOULD I

And then I let Google Autosuggest do its thing.

Let’s go with the top result here of

When Should I Prune Roses

Okay, what I generally do is to check the TOP 3 results.

As I’ve mentioned before, ranking on Google PAGE ONE is great and all, but in reality you want to be ranking in one of those top three spots.

The difference in traffic can be phenomenal.

In fact, a keyword that states it has 1,000 searches a month, the difference in traffic received for that keyword (based on past research) would approximately be:

310 visitors per month for ranking NUMBER ONE

WHEREAS

29 visitors per month for ranking NUMBER NINE

Can you see how much difference there is for getting nearer to the top of the page?

So, as I say, I want to check the TOP 3 RESULTS and this will SHOW ME WHAT GOOGLE WANTS FROM MY ARTICLE AROUND THAT KEYWORD.

So, let’s look at the FEATURED SNIPPET FIRST

The website is Gardeners World.

It has a domain authority of 60, so this is an authoritative website.

Basically, once you’re above a DA (Domain Authority) of 30 you’re into the realms of decent authority, and this simply becomes more authoritative the higher the DA number (once again, check out my previously published WA blog posts which explain how to identify the DA of websites).

Okay, back to Gardeners World.

The domain also has a total of 205,360 backlinks pointing to it (other websites that have “linked” in some way to this website).

Next, the article has been “headed and subheaded” as follows:

ONE H1 tag (the TITLE, WordPress does this AUTOMATICALLY for you, so you never have to worry about adding an H1 tag to a blog post).

It also has ONE H2 tag.

And then FOUR H3 tags.

So, this basically tells me that the article has an introduction, one MAIN answer to the query, and then 4 different ways in which the query can be answered.

For this blog post, Gardeners World has settled on:

HOW TO PRUNE ROSES (H1 tag) as the MAIN subject of the blog post.

They then have the MAIN SUBHEADING (H2 tag) which is WHEN TO PRUNE ROSES (which is the MAIN SUBJECT OF THE KEYWORD QUERY).

Then they have FOUR MINI SUBSECTIONS which focus on PARTICULAR TYPE OF ROSES.

So, their “mini subsections” (H3 tags) cover:

MODERN SHRUB & ENGLISH ROSES

BUSH ROSES

RAMBLING AND SPECIES ROSES

CLIMBING ROSES

In other words, the featured snippet article is explaining WHEN TO PRUNE ROSES (which covers the keyword query)

BUT

Then to give their readers MORE VALUE they also provide details of WHEN TO PRUNE 4 DIFFERENT TYPES OF ROSES.

So, this now tells me that there is NOT ONE SPECIFIC ANSWER, and it depends on the species of rose.

Therefore, when I write my article, I too should cover when to prune DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF ROSES.

Next, the article has 4 IMAGES, all of which are directly below the H3 tags, and one MASSIVE Featured Image.

I’m not a fan, remember I always say that you want some information ABOVE THE FOLD (what the visitor can SEE WITHOUT HAVING TO SCROLL) that shows the visitor that they are in the RIGHT PLACE, so for me, you’ll want your featured image to be RELEVANT and perhaps even have some wording to SHOW YOUR VISITORS THEY’RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE IMMEDIATELY. Having part of your introduction VISIBLE ABOVE THE FOLD can also help to achieve this.

So, once more a subject I have previously discussed, if you’re not already well-known or famous in your niche, GET RID OF YOUR MASSIVE HEADER IMAGES - this is the first thing visitors will see and it DOESN’T ANSWER THEIR QUESTION.

Trust me, about 70-80% of your visitors will leave the blog post within 2-3 seconds because THEY CAN’T SEE WHAT THEY WANT.

Okay, finally, the blog post has a total of 1,072 words.

So, nothing amazing, just simple facts and straight to the point.

You’ll also note that the blog post has internal links going to other articles on this website.

This gives visitors MORE RELEVANT INFORMATION if they’re looking to dig into this subject deeper.

Let’s look at the next ranking article for this keyword, the NUMBER ONE ranking article (don’t forget that a FEATURED SNIPPET is often referred to as GOOGLE RANKING POSITION ZERO).

Okay, Number One ranking article is written by GARDEN DESIGN.

Interestingly, its domain authority and backlink profile is greater, therefore it may not be as RELEVANT TO THE QUERY as the article at the top of the page.

GARDEN DESIGN is DA61 and has 452,270 backlinks.

Their article has ONE H1 tag (the title)

FOUR H2 tags (their subheadings)

ONE H3 tag (a mini subsection)

The subheadings are (H2 tags):

WHAT YOU’LL NEED (so this covers the equipment required to prune roses, so something to think about adding to my blog post on this keyword)

WHEN TO PRUNE ROSES (This article covers the different times to prune roses based on the AREA/ZONE and the SEASON of the year).

8 BASIC PRUNING STEPS (this is a step-by-step guide explaining HOW to prune roses)

Then you’ll notice a coloured block of content which links to ANOTHER WEBSITE on a similar subject.

In effect, this may well be a block of content which CONTAINS AN AFFILIATE LINK if people want to buy their rose seeds, etc.

Back to the H2 tags

PRUNING FAQS

So, you can create something like this yourself by going through the PEOPLE ALSO ASK section.

Basically, when answering the query “When Should I Prune Roses?” think of what OTHER QUESTIONS YOUR READER MAY HAVE.

This blog posts also discusses other rose varieties too including:

CLIMBING ROSES

KNOCK OUT ROSES

ROSE HIPS

The final “mini subsection” is a VIDEO which shows How to Prune Roses.

You can actually work out WHY this article is ranking below the other one.

This second article written by GARDEN DESIGN focuses much more on HOW rather than WHEN SHOULD.

Plus, the second article has 1,897 words.

So, the second article has MORE WORDS, a GREATER DOMAIN AUTHORITY, and MORE BACKLINKS

BUT

The reason it ranks BELOW the other article is that it is NOT AS RELEVANT TO THE SEED KEYWORD.

Article number one clearly FOCUSES ON ANSWERING THE QUERY.

Article number two has answered the query, but in a short section, while the rest of the article focuses MORE ON HOW TO PRUNE ROSE.

Remember what I always say, ANSWER THE QUESTION/QUERY.

Now, while article number two HAS DONE THIS, realistically they have done it in about 300-400 words, while the VAST MAJORITY OF THEIR ARTICLE IS ON A DIFFERENT QUERY.

BUT

Those 300-400 words are still good enough to tank very high, but just not good enough to claim the Featured Snippet.

You would then do exactly the same for the next (3rd) ranking article.

I won’t do that now, but I’ll give you the quick details here:

The article ranking 3rd on the page (so actually Google Position TWO - just to confuse you, LOL) is

DA71 and has 2,007 words.

So, a HIGHER AUTHORITY, MORE WORDS IN THE BLOG POST

BUT

A LOWER RANKING

Therefore, we can assume that article number 3 is LESS RELEVANT to THE ACTUAL SEARCH QUERY than the two articles ranking above it.

Are you starting to see how it can be possible to outrank high authority websites?

Are you starting to see how the number of words in an article doesn’t really make any difference?

ANSWER

THE

QUESTION

Stick to the point people, and answer the query posed in your keyword.

Anyway, from doing this competitor research I know have the following information:

I need to discuss WHEN TO PRUNE ROSES FOR

Different varieties such as modern shrub, english roses, bush roses, rambling roses, climbing roses, rose hips, and knock out roses.

The TOOLS & EQUIPMENT required to get the job done.

I should also discuss when to prune roses in different countries, different zones, and even the different seasons.

So, I went to Wikipedia to find out more about this information.

I can see that the main two articles ranking for this keyword query have 4 images.

And one of the articles has a video, but it is NOT RELATED to WHEN to prune roses, but rather HOW to prune roses.

So, if I can find a YouTube video that discusses WHEN, then I’m already doing better than the other articles ranking at the top of page one.

I note that both articles have a fair few internal links to other RELEVANT (but slightly different) articles on their website.

I note that one of the websites also has an external (affiliate link), so if I can find something RELEVANT BUT ON A DIFFERENT TOPIC to WHEN should I prune roses then I can link to an EXTERNAL WEBSITE.

Perhaps, I can link to an affiliate program that provides “rose growing equipment” (whatever that is!!! Can you tell that I’m not really a gardener? LOL).

Next, I can see that one of the high ranking websites has an FAQ section, so perhaps I can include the same at the bottom of my article, and use the People Also Ask section to do this).

It’s also interesting to note that the top two ranking articles BOTH have FIVE subheadings and mini subsections.

Therefore, my article will ALSO have 5 different subheadings/sections

Finally, even though I’ve said it doesn’t really matter, I can see that the top three rankings articles for this query have

1.072

1,897

2,007

Words respectively.

Realistically, to cover ALL the subjects I’ve mentioned above my article is easily going to be over 1,000 words.

And if I want to “mirror” the articles that Google LIKES and has ranked, I guess anywhere in-between 1,000-2,000 words is fine.

Can you see that I’ve gone quite broad on the word count here?

This takes the pressure of as I’m not aiming for anything specific, so I just write until I have ANSWERED THE INITIAL QUESTION

AND

Use the information that I have found within the 3 top ranking articles (subheadings, topics of conversation, FAQs, images, videos, etc.).

How many words that takes, WHO CARES. But, I can work out that it’s going to be longer than the first article (1,072 words), as I have additional information I wish to cover.

I now know what GOOGLE WANTS, so let’s go and give it to them.

Final Thoughts

So, there you go!

A little bit of KEYWORD COMPETITION ANALYSIS.

OR

FINDING OUT WHAT GOOGLE LIKES AND IS RANKING FOR A PARTICULAR KEYWORD.

Now, what you’ll notice by doing this is that you can actually STRUCTURE YOUR ARTICLE beforehand.

So, you know exactly what you need to cover.

You know approximately how many words it’s going to be.

You know how many subheadings GOOGLE LIKES.

You know how many images and videos the top ranking articles have.

You know that GOOGLE LIKES additional information (internal and external links, FAQ section).

So, what you waiting for Tiger?

Go get to analysing your keywords, the competition, and especially the TOP 3 RESULTS.

You now know what GOOGLE LIKES & EXACTLY HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR ARTICLE & EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO WRITE ABOUT.

How simple is that?

Thank You For Reading

Partha