During Pubcon last November, Matt Cutts asked in his keynote how many SEOs where focusing on the snippet found in the search results and doing Click-Through-Rate optimization. Not too many people raised their hand. Matt grinned and said something to the effect that CTR optimization might be worth looking at.
Fact: Google’s search results are what separate it from all other search engines.
Google’s goal is to continually provide better, more relevant search results to answer visitors’ questions quicker. Some of the biggest enhancements Google is making to accomplish this goal are subtle-but-important changes to their results pages. None of them are new and mind blowing, but the common thread that runs through them can indicate – and maybe predict – where SEO is going.
Changes in the SERP
Site Previews: The Site Previews feature was launched in November last year, and even though they aren’t the biggest hit in the SERPs, I think it is the most telling change that Google has made. As shown in the screenshot below, the Site Preview shows a searcher the page before clicking it. One of the features highlighted by Cutts and Google was the content indicator that shows where the snippet came from.
The snippet indicator is intended to help visitors see why that page is relevant.
Rich Snippets: Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Google is pushing rich snippet codes. Though the concept of rich snippets isn’t new, Google is launching new snippets – the latest being a shopping snippet that gives reviews. Once again the purpose of the change in the SERPs is to help indicate that the page is relevant to the search query.
Location Indicator: The location indicator is one of the most praised changes by SEOers. It allows a person to change the location of a search to get results relevant to that location. 
This can be important if you are looking for local businesses and news. Once again, they are trying to indicate that the site/page is more relevant to the search term. (Catching the idea yet?)
Title Updates: Last week I blogged about a noticeable trend where titles in the SERPs are not matching up with the page title. This was not a new change to Google, but many of us are seeing it more often. Much like a meta-description, if the title doesn’t seem relevant to the content of the page it will be updated by Google to match the search query. And where does the new title come from? The content and headers found on the page.
The Common Thread
The point I am trying to make is that each change Google releases seems to pull and rely more on the relevant content of the page.
- The snippet highlighter shows the relevant content of the page.
- Rich snippets show the unique code that makes the page relevant.
- The location indicator helps provide localized relevant content.
- New SERPs title comes from more relevant content.
Predicting Google
In this same Pubcon session, Matt Cutts said that SEOs who try to stay “ahead” of Google will be the most successful. I think that because of recent events like JC Penney getting penalized and other companies gaming links, Google is showing strong indications that content relevance, and even Brand Authority, are valuable ways to increase your search results.
Content is King … Again
We may just be seeing SEO coming full circle where content and relevancy is more important than links. This time it is much more sophisticated then keyword placement, though. Now on-page optimization will rely on indicating relevancy with content, code, third party reviews, relevant rich media, company information like addresses, contact information, and much more. I feel we are coming on to a day where SEOers will become site marketers rather than link brokers. I look forward to the day.
Let me know of any other indicators you are seeing that show the importance of on-page relevancy.
What I’ve liked about events like PubCon, is that after attending for years, you get the feeling that you don’t have to predict what Google is doing or going to do. When you’re in the trenches working on sites everyday most changes appear to happen slowly, at least that’s been my perception.
Good post Malmborg, though I don’t think I agree with your final conclusion 100%.
I think it’s becoming more and more obvious that Google is looking for on-page factors to use in their snippets, etc. But I don’t think that this means that content is going to taking over as the major indicator for ranking. Links are going to continue to be a huge part of the algo, but I think getting true quality links is going to become more and more important as time goes on.
What this means to me is that as marketers we have to make sure our content is written well enough that the right snippets get picked up for the right keywords.
I’d be interested to see what others have to say about this!
I agree. It should be all about your site content. Not links coming in. But, in the same breathe, fake/bad reviews can be done by blacklisters paid by your competition.
Thanks for sharing these lines David. Now:
Why am I fed up with the “content is king” statement?
Not King but Kingdom
WWW is a content repository, born from people in need of handling, categorizing and sharing structured information, producers, consumers and subscribers. Content is the main reason why we have the Internet in general words, why building a global civil network if you have nothing to push through the pipes? So, content has always been there and its links are the reason for “H” in HTML, following history. So they’ve been always there as well.
Last but not least:
In your #In profile you say you use tech to simplify your life, I applause this if you get it
and same does Google, offering the best user experience means lowering complexity, so if a number of SEO geeks made things too hard looking for visibility then Google will wipe others intentions and bring their plain opinion into SERPs, this is crawling, indexing, evaluating and finally delivering pointers to the best possible UX, the right content!
Thanks for reading, read you soon!
Links will always be important, but content must be king for Google to give relevant results.
Links will always be an important part of the algorithm, but I like to think of it this way:
Think of the Google as a noodle strainer. And the relevancy/content is what lets you pass through the strainer. I think that the holes of the strainer are becoming finer and more sophisticated. Once you pass the strainer, then yes, links are going to become a major factor of where you land in the SERPs.
I hope that clarifies my thoughts. Thanks for the great comments.
I like your noodle strainer analogy. Very insightful.
Yeah I agree with that. Having quality content is going to be more and more important, especially with all the crap Google is getting lately about content farms and other content that people don’t seem to care for.
However, you can’t judge how good content is solely by the content itself, which is why Google has turned to links as a way to tell if a piece/site is not only written well, but accepted by the rest of the internet. Links have always been about voting, and not the social graph is there which is only leading to more indicators about whether something is approved of by the rest of the community.
I think there is going to have to be some kind of shift in the way links are looked at and valued, but they are still going to have to be a huge part of the algo.
“Site marketer” sounds good to me too David!
I have said all along that Google is simply trying to make their user experience better. There are a LOT of SEO’s out there that hate Google and the constant change they put us through. But the one tried and true message Google has delivered to us is that they want web sites to build better content.
I think some SEO’s don’t like hearing that because it means they might have to tell some “paying” customers that they might not rank well…EVER!
I agree with you David, content is the most important thing for google.
That’s what I love about SEO it is constantly evolving and requires you to be on top of your game if you want to be on top of the search rankings. Thanks for the post and I’ll look more into click through optimization.
content is good . . . . but I like the star wars lego men the most.
Sorry but I don’t get the relation of the Lego image towards the article