Whenever I’m looking for recipes online there is invariable a long story about the author’s family and which family members like this dish and which ones do not. I’m sure I’m not the only person who thinks this is vey uninteresting and just wants to get to the cookie recipe but I’ve heard that doing this gives websites better chances of turning up higher in search results.
Why do these stories improve search rankings? Who decided to set the settings that caused this?
In: Technology
Basically, because Google can’t hire millions people to read through every page on the internet, so they have to use algorithms instead.
Google’s algorithms use certain markers to figure out what a website page is about and whether someone searching on Google wants to see it.
There are a few markers that they use, but the most important ones are:
1. Keyword relevance
2. Keyword density
For each page, google looks at a word or phrase that summarises what the page is about (e.g. “fruitcake recipe”). This is your page keyword.
If you google “fruitcake recipe”, that’s a tick in the relevancy box. But Google also wants to see that you really know about the topic. Are you the best page for it to highlight when someone is searching for a fruitcake recipe? Do you know more than any other page about fruitcake recipes?
The way to show Google you are is by putting plenty of the phrase “fruitcake recipe” in the page, show Google you’re a really good source of fruitcake recipe information, going really in depth into the content.
Just spamming the words “fruitcake recipe” isn’t any good though, Google is pretty good at figuring out spam content vs real content, so you’ve got to write yourself a real blog post that mentions it a lot.
There aren’t that many blog posts to write about fruitcake recipes though, so you write a blog post about how your grandma passed down the recipe on her death bed etc etc.
Well now Google thinks that you’re the best darned content on fruitcake recipes and pushes that content right up to number 1 of the google search page (a simplification, but you get the idea).
The algorithms work really well for most things, blogs and information articles especially. They are very good at answering questions and giving you the information you need, something Google was designed for, but they mean that certain websites have to jump through disingenuous ‘hoops’ to make sure they’re seen (such as a 600 word blog post on how fruitcake recipes make them feel).
There are plenty of recipes that DON’T do this, but you never see them because they’re on page 9 of Google searches. Thus it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
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