Google completely revamped its SEO Starter Guide in a way that shows five ways to create a focused web page that inspires trust and a positive user experience.
1. Topic-rich links
Being useful to readers is a practical approach to web content. Google’s recent antitrust trial revealed that user interactions have a strong ranking influence on Google’s algorithm known as Navboost. A patent that may be Navboost describes how user interactions create a document-level score that can help a site rank better. This means that creating a document that encourages positive signals of user interaction can help a site rank better (read about what Navboost’s patent can be).
The old version of the document had sentence-level internal links to other web pages, but they were not always semantically relevant in context and did not use anchor text that adequately described the linked web page.
Here’s an example of how a link to a sitemap explainer web page was enhanced.
The old version links to the explainer with this entire sentence:
“Learn more about creating and submitting a sitemap.”
The new version links to the same page as this one (linked words in bold):
“If you’re open to a little technical challenge, you can too submit a sitemap—which is a file that contains all of your site’s URLs that you care about.
Topic-rich internal links are a useful way to create an internal link to another web page that is useful to readers because the context of the link is the topic that makes more sense than linking to another web page that doesn’t have context .
2. Orderly structure of the page
The most obvious change is how much shorter the start guide is compared to the old version. The original web page contained approximately 8,639 words. The updated document contains about 4,058 words. The new version of the SEO Starter Guide is 53% smaller than the original.
Also, the original contained 92 heading elements, from H1 to H5. The updated document contains 27 heading elements ranging from H1 to H3.
The interesting part is that the opening guide was reduced by 53%, but the use of heading elements was reduced by 71%. This means that if the rate of heading usage had been maintained, the updated document would have contained a relatively equal percentage of headings (53%), but it had not.
The actual percentage change was 71% less, representing an absolute difference of 18%, but almost double that in relative terms, which is the most important measure. The relative difference in heading usage reveals that Google used 34% fewer headings in the new version.
These changes have the effect of giving cohesion to the entire document, with all parts flowing logically into each other.
3. Focused subject matter
The reason fewer headings are used in the revised SEO starter guide is because it no longer covers granular sub-sub-subtopics. The old version used 31 H4 heading elements and 12 H5 heading elements.
One consequence of the new web page structure is that the updated version is more focused on the topic, providing the absolutely necessary information while giving readers the option to follow a contextually relevant link to another web page with more information.
The shorter format makes it easier for the reader to understand the topic in its entirety as a focused document.
The number of topics covered on the new webpage is roughly the same as on the old webpage (new = 11 topics/old = 12 topics). The main difference is in the narrower approach to the subject.
These are the main topics of the new website:
[H2] How does Google Search work?
[H2] How long until I see the impact in search results?
[H2] Help Google find your content
[H2] Organize your site
[H2] Make your site interesting and useful
[H2] It affects how your site looks on Google Search
[H2] Add images to your site and optimize them
[H2] Optimize your videos
[H2] Promote your website
[H2] Things we don’t think you should focus on
[H2] next steps
Here are the main topics of the previous version of the website:
[H2] Who is this guide for?
[H2] Starting
[H2] Help Google find your content
[H2] Tell Google which pages you don’t want to crawl
[H2] Help Google (and users) understand your content
[H2] Manage your appearance in Google Search results
[H2] Organize your site hierarchy
[H2] Optimize your content
[H2] Optimize your images
[H2] Make your site mobile friendly
[H2] Promote your website
[H2] Analyze your search performance and user behavior
Only five topics were moved to the new Getting Started Guide:
Help Google find your content Organize your site Make your site interesting and useful (subtopic in old version) Avoid distracting ads (subtopic in old version) Promote your website
These are the ones ruled out as main topics:
[H2] Who is this guide for?
[H2] Starting
[H2] Tell Google which pages you don’t want to crawl
[H2] Help Google (and users) understand your content
[H2] Manage your appearance in Google Search results
[H2] Optimize your content
[H2] Optimize your images
[H2] Make your site mobile friendly
[H2] Analyze your search performance and user behavior
[H2] Additional resources
4. Sometimes concise is better than complete
The context of reading an article on a mobile device has completely changed the way content is consumed. Content is consumed on a need-to-know basis. Before mobile, it was impossible to look something up on the internet without having to get up and walk to the nearest desktop or laptop computer. Now, any information you need, no matter how trivial, is just a few clicks away, and what you need isn’t always a full article.
Leaving aside the convenience of anytime, anywhere content, it’s inconvenient to scroll more than a hundred times to read a long article.
What the new web page achieves is a commitment to provide a web page precisely on the topic that is also comprehensive without being too long.
5. Similar image elements
Finally, the images on the new webpage share similar colors and design. The old version had colors that varied greatly, with one yellow, one bright red, one had pictures. Many of the images looked like they were players from different teams, like teammates in different uniforms.
Even if you use stock images, choosing images from the same artist will help promote a sense of cohesion on the web page.
The new web page, because the images have similar colors, makes the whole web page more focused and confers a professionalism which in turn can inspire confidence.
Takeaway food
There are probably more takeaways, but these are the ones that stand out to me:
1. Links rich in topics
It allows for a concise reading experience and provides links where they make sense to a reader.
2. Orderly structure of the page
The order of topics provides a logical progression from topic to topic, like the doors opening into the next room one after the other in a linear fashion, making it easier to consume the entire document as a whole .
3. Stay well focused on the subject
Off-topic follow-ups are distracting. Staying on topic creates a better reading experience and can increase understanding of the overall topic.
4. Sometimes concise is better than complete
Too much information can be confusing, especially when it is more than is needed for a given topic.
5. Similar image elements
Attention to details such as images and web page graphics lends a professional presentation that can build trust. Even when using stock images, keeping the same artist portfolio will reinforce visual similarity.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Kues
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