How to Stay Ahead of the Google Algorithm

How do you get higher rankings in Google? Most people try to decipher and discern how to best deal with Google’s algorithm for better search engine results. However, because it’s constantly updated and changing, it can be an impossible task trying to beat the algorithm. But, instead of doing that, why not just stay ahead of the algorithm for SEO success?

Exactly how do you stay ahead of the Google algorithm? Recently, I attended a conference where Matthew Capala from Alphametic presented this concept. I’ll leave a link to his company site if you’re interested in his company’s SEO services. In this article, I’ll go over some of the core concepts Matt spoke about, and give you my take and experience on how I’ve implemented the strategies to improve my SERP.

By the way, if you ever get the chance to attend a conference where Matt is speaking, I highly recommend attending.

The Key to Staying Ahead

What you have to understand first is that these days Google is all about providing searchers with expert, authoritative, and trustworthy content. They also want to provide the information that people perceive they need, and answer their questions. In other words, Google wants their algorithm to think like the human brain—and that’s they key! To stay ahead of the Google algorithm, you have to focus on the human algorithm.

How to Optimize for Human Psychological Instincts

When you’re creating content for the human algorithm, you have to consider psychological factors, removing psychological objectives, and reenforcing trust and authority to your audience. In his presentation at Digital Summit, Matt talked about how humans have a bandwagon bias and feel that conformity is necessary. So, when you’re creating your content, you want to display social proof prominently. You need to stress the “Best Selling”, “Most Popular”, and “Top Sellers” among your products or services—preferably at the top of your website pages.

The bottom line is that you need to beat your competitors on expertise, authority, and trust. Whenever possible, your content should include visual and numerical proof.

You Need to Remove Objections

Along with promoting conformity to your audience, another big factor Matt discussed is removing objectives that your audience may have. People naturally want to avoid risks. So, you should include free trials and money back guarantees in your content—and, you should repeatedly mention them so it gets ingrained in your audience’s brains.

Another objection may be having to enter credit card information, so you should remove credit card asks for free trial signups, for example.

And, you can include frequently asked questions (FAQs) to address any other objections you think your audience may have.

Website and Content Creation Tips

Now, let’s get back to Google and how you can use expertise, authority, and trust to rank higher. In order to become and have Google perceive you to be an authority and expert, Matt recommended that you create a “fat” website that contains more categories and better content. He said to target your high competitive keywords by searching in Google and making note of the questions that appear on page 1 of your search results. Start blogging on these subjects, creating long-form content that links back to your transactional pages.

Another important tip is to include schema in your web pages. I’ve personally had good success including items like star ratings in my schema. Having schema items appear in your search results can definitely lead to more clicks, which in turn can lead to higher rankings.

And, maybe most importantly, don’t forget about your category and informational web pages. A lot of people make the mistake of only focusing on their transactional or purchase pages. But, your category or research information pages is often where you can rank for transactional keywords.

Use Transformative SEO for High Rewards

For me, one of the most interesting parts of Matt Capala’s Digital Summit presentation was about using Transformative SEO. Instead of focusing on low effort/low reward SEO tasks, you should start with low effort/high reward items and move up to the high effort/high reward stuff.

Low Effort/High Reward SEO items include refreshing your old content, redirecting old content to new posts, internal linking, and updating the navigation on your website. High Effort/High Reward items include creating brand new content, external link building, and improving your site speed.

I think this is an excellent road map to SEO success, and I’ve used these techniques myself for better rankings.

Know What User Signals are Ranking Factors

Another important point to keep in mind as you’re creating your content is to know what user signals are more important ranking factors. While the list is certainly fluid, currently website traffic, time on site, and bounce rates are the top user signals that are ranking factors according to SEMrush.

Matt recommended striving for an under 50% bounce rate and a time-on-site goal of over 3 minutes.

Use Link Building Strategies and AI

Backlinks are definitely still needed for website authority. You should definitely use tools such as SEMrush, MOZ, and Ahrefs to analyze and find backlink opportunities. And, for more specific link building strategies, you can use services from The HOTH or Fat Joe SEO for services such as blogger outreach and content syndication.

Also, for me one of the most intriguing areas of SEO is the use of AI Content Generation Tools. Technology has greatly improved so that you no longer have spun articles that are of little value. With today’s AI Content Tools, you can not only get help generating quality content, but you can also get SEO help with their auditing tools.