SEO Insights: Google, Algorithm Changes, and Article Lengths

This is the first paragraph at Google on their Code of Conduct page:

"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it's also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.

If you've tried too hard to improve your search ranking and suddenly found your site five pages farther back in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you would be more likely to feel as if Google has definitely been pretty "evil" when it comes to your website and business. However, in general Google is all about constant algorithm changes with the intent to improve the search experience for users. Here are some of the recent bigger changes that could make a difference for your site:

1. (Not Provided): This one is a major setback for marketers, as no longer can we see most of the search words and phrases used by searchers who reach our sites from Google. In making searches more secure, Google has made it much more difficult for marketers to figure out what content is drawing visitors to their sites.
2. PageRank: PageRank seems to be gradually going away at Google. It's for years been a tool to gauge how a site is doing as far as incoming links and popularity on the Web. It previously was updated every three months or so, but it's been almost a year now since the last update.
3. Hummingbird: This update employs a whole new way of Google recognizing "conversational search." So many people are now searching on their smart phones and using conversational search phrases that Google is modifying to meet the demand. A search like "show me photos of the Taj Mahal" will yield pretty much only images because that's what the searcher asked for, rather than articles.
4. In-Depth Articles: There is a whole new box of search results beginning to show up on Google, and it's titled "In-depth articles." These tend to be longer and more detailed articles that provide a lot of information about the topic of the search. Let's take a little bit more of a look at this one for our purposes.

In-depth articles results appear in a separate block with thumbnail images. Another very important thing to understand is that they are never promotional in nature. These are informative and educational, NOT sales or marketing oriented at all.

So, what does this mean to us and our real estate websites? First, it's not going to be easy to get featured in this area, but if you can it will definitely be a major boost in traffic for your site. Here are the ways in which you can increase your chances according to current information:

• Do no promotion, services offers, or linking in the article to pages that are promotional. Don't use forms on the periphery that offer services or solicit information for leads.
• Make the articles longer than you may currently be writing for the site. Current information seems to indicate that a minimum of 600 words is best, with 800 or more being better.
• No matter what the link, do a very thorough job of covering the topic of the article. If you're educating the site visitor in the process of home inspection and repair negotiations, do it very thoroughly. Use bullet points and detailed descriptions of what the inspector does, how they report, and what the buyer does with the information in the transaction process. The more detailed you can be, the better.

You already know that you want to position yourself as the local real estate market expert for buyers and sellers. What better way to drive home the point than by having your pages featured by Google as "in-depth articles?" Even if you can't reach that plateau, using these tips will get you better search engine position due to the informative nature of your articles.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.