Google = Human

Google’s goal has become increasingly apparent to me lately. Think about it – they want to offer you the best search results possible. To do this, they must assess websites like a human would.

Google “spiders” crawl all over the Internet looking into websites and comparing them against their ranking system to see if your site fits into an ever moving standard of what folks like about websites. What consumers like is a site that gives them good, solid answers to the things they’re searching for.

Google only sees words and code. No fancy pics or entertaining movie content. But it’s amazing how much it can tell from that code.

Compare a website to a real-life experience. Let’s say you’ve got aging parents and you need a caregiver to help out. Not using the Internet at all (remember those days?), you might start by asking someone.

Word of Mouth = Links

On the web, the closest Google can get to word of mouth right now is by looking to see if other websites out there are recommending a caregiver. The way sites recommend other sites is by posting links; but not just any links. Google wants the link to contain a specific phrase common on both websites – your website and the referring website. That’s a truly good word of mouth recommendation in the eyes of Google. So it crawls both sites, sees the links pointing at each other, sees that both have lots of mentions of the word “caregiver” and recognizes that both are more credible as a result.

But there’s more. When you meet someone in real life, and want to trust them with something as important as caregiving, you want them to be an authority on the subject.

An Authoritative Personality = Specific Content

In the pre-Internet days, you’d trust a subject matter expert more than you would just any ol’ person off the street. So you might look for things you can read about this company. You might write to several caregiver companies and request a brochure. In that brochure you’d find pictures and copy that describe the caregivers. To make a decision as important as a caregiver for your parents, you’d pay close attention to the words they use, to their presentation of themselves. Then you’d go to meet the ones you’re interested in. You’d listen to how they present their subject. Do they speak with authority?

On the web, Google has a way of judging the authority of a website. It crawls for specific key phrases and words, and presents your website as an option to the searcher who puts in those words – but only if they’re on your website in a specific way. They must be –

• Used in your meta tags
• Used in your headlines
• Used often throughout the website
• But not overused

Authority = Experience

In the old days, if you met a caregiver with very little experience, you’d know it in a second. The main clue is age. The next clue is their resume. You’d definitely check references.

On the web, Google does the same thing. It looks for the age of the website. Sites that have been around a while will rank higher than the new kids on the block. It checks to see if you’re legit. If your website shows clues that you’re using the website as part of a link farm, or you’re from countries with a history of internet fraud, you won’t rank well and you may not rank at all.

Enthusiasm = Regularly Updated, Fresh Content

In the pre-Internet days, no one would choose a caregiver if they didn’t send signals that indicated enthusiasm for their chosen profession.  When someone is interested and engaged in providing the best caregiving service, you can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voice

There are many websites out there that go dark for long periods of time. Google comes in and looks around for the dates of your last postings to see if you’re busy exploring your chosen profession, are engaged in what you do, and are providing ongoing, fresh information to your customers. If not, you won’t be valuable to Google or consumers.

To Be Human is to Change

The Google algorithm supposedly changed 400 times in the calendar year 2009. It changes for many reasons, but mainly for two –

• To better match human needs on the Internet
• To stay ahead of those who attempt to misrepresent their websites to trick search engines into ranking them better.

The tricksters out there will continue to try to fool Google into ranking them higher, but they’ll never get ahead in this game. Google is protecting their brand. And what a brand it is. Watch the changes and work on your web brand diligently.

You’ll be rewarded just like you would have in the old days.

Maybe we should all begin to see the world more like Google. It turns out this newfangled technology is developing a lot of old fashioned values.