The search engines constantly strive to improve their performance by delivering the best possible results. Although 'best' is subjective, the engines have a good idea of the types of pages and sites that satisfy their searchers. In general, these sites have different characteristics in common:
- Easy to use, navigate and understand
- Provide direct, useful information that is relevant to the search
- Professionally designed and accessible to modern browsers
- Deliver high quality, legitimate, credible content
Despite amazing technological advances, search engines cannot yet understand text, view images or watch videos in the same way that humans can. To decipher and rank content, they rely on meta-information (not necessarily meta tags) about how people interact with sites and pages, and this gives them insight into the quality of the pages themselves.
The effect of usability and user experience on search engine rankings
There are a limited number of variables that search engines can take into account directly, including keywords, links and site structures. By means of linking patterns, user engagement statistics and machine learning, the engines create a considerable number of intuitions about a certain site. Usability and user experience have a second-order influence on the success of a search engine. They offer an indirect but measurable advantage for the external popularity of a site, which the engines can then interpret as a signal of higher quality. This is called the phenomenon "no one likes linking to a crummy site".
Creating a thoughtful, empathetic user experience helps ensure that visitors to your site experience this positively, encouraging sharing, bookmarks, repeat visits, and incoming links, all signals that trickle down to the search engines and contribute to high rankings.
Signals of quality content
1. Commitment statistics
When a search engine delivers a page of results to you, it can measure the success of the rankings by observing how you deal with those results. If you click on the first link, immediately press the back button to try the second link. This indicates that you are not satisfied with the first result. Search engines search for the "long click" - where users click on a result without immediately returning to the search page to try again. Taken together millions and millions of searches every day, the engines build a good pool of data to assess the quality of their results.
2. Machine learning
In 2011, Google introduced the Panda update for its ranking algorithm, which significantly changed the way websites were judged on quality. Google has started using human evaluators to manually review thousands of sites and search for low-quality content. Google then integrated computer learning to mimic human assessors. Once the computers could accurately predict what people would rate on a low-quality site, the algorithm was introduced on millions of websites across the internet. The end result was a seismic shift that rearranged more than 20% of all Google search results.
3. Link patterns
The engines discovered early on that the link structure of the web could serve as a proxy for votes and popularity; Better quality sites and information earned more links than their less useful, lower peers quality. Nowadays, algorithms for analyzing links have been significantly improved, but these principles remain valid.
All the positive attention and excitement surrounding the content offered by the new site translates into a machine-parseable (and algorithmically valuable) collection of links. The timing, source, anchor text, and number of links to the new site are all processed in the potential performance (that is, the ranking) for relevant engine searches.
Now imagine that that site wasn't that great - let's just say it's just an ordinary site without anything unique or impressive.
Crafting Content for search engine success
"Develop great content" is perhaps the most frequently repeated suggestion in the SEO world. Despite its cliché status, this is good advice. Appealing, usable content is crucial for search engine optimization. Every search carried out at the engines comes with an intention: search, learn, solve, buy, repair, treat or understand. Search engines place web pages in their results in order to fulfill that intention in the best possible way. Creating satisfactory, thorough content that addresses the needs of searchers improved your chances of earning top rank.
Transactional searches
Identify a local company, make online purchases or complete a task.
Transactional searches do not necessarily relate to a credit card or bank transfer. Signing up for a free trial account with Cook's Illustrated, creating a Gmail account or finding the best local Mexican cuisine (in Seattle it's Carta de Oaxaca) are all transactional questions.
Navigation searches
Visit a predetermined destination or search for a specific URL.
Navigation searches are carried out with the intention of surfing directly to a specific website. In some cases the user may not know the exact URL and the search engine serves as the white pages.
Informative searches
Research into non-transactional information, quick answers or ego searching.
Informative searches include a large number of questions, from finding the local weather to getting maps and directions, to find out how long that journey to Mars actually takes (around eight months). The common thread here is that the searches are mainly non-commercial and non-transactional in nature; the information itself is the goal and there is no need for interaction that goes beyond clicking and reading.
It is up to you to meet these intentions. Creativity, high-quality writing, use of examples and recording of images and multimedia can all help you create content that perfectly matches the goals of a searcher. Your reward is satisfied seekers who demonstrate their positive experience through engagement with your site or with links to it.