Thursday, December 12, 2013

What Do Google Answers Mean for Content Writers

seo tips
 Google just doesn’t need to send traffic to your website to provide definite pieces of information anymore. Instead, they’re answering a lot of questions on the search results page itself.

Let’s take a look at some of the search queries that Google is stealing the attention from, and what it means for you as a content maker.

What is today’s forecast?

The result provided for today’s weather forecast is one of the more complicated Google direct answers. Sure, The Weather Channel is still number one. But unless you need more information, there’s no need to go there with Google’s full answer widget that outranks everyone. It allows you to flip through the seven-day forecast and see the hourly temperature, precipitation, and wind facts. The fact that Google’s widget is much easier to use than The Weather Channel mobile site doesn’t hurt either.

What is… Anything?

 Have you been trying to rank for content that starts with what is? If it’s a one to two word saying, Google has already provided the answer with their Web Definitions.
The latter is quite attractive as they show mentions from as far back as the 1800’s based on the number of books using the word searched. You can even click on the graph to see the Google books Ngram Viewer for more information.

How Much Is… Anything?

What Is My IP used to be a very suitable website to visit when, for whatever reason, you needed to know your IP address. But now, Google can answer that in a matter of seconds.
Need to know the present value of the US Dollar in the country you are traveling to? Google has that covered, along with a trending graph to show you whether you picked a good or bad time to make the trip.

Google also does unit conversions. No more needing to click during to a website to find out if a kilometer is greater than a mile or how many ounces are in a cup. They don’t get as coarse as Wolfram Alpha, but they are working on it.

The Point?

So, where am I going with this?  If you’re Machine Learning for improved Content & SEO outcome , you have a challenger bigger than Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers, and it’s Google! Google is expanding their knowledge graph, direct answer, web definitions, and oneboxes on a regular basis. You can’t just make content based on this.

It’s always been significant to find out if you’re competing against Wikipedia and other high authority knowledge providers when creating a piece of content, but at least if you were second you weren’t halfway down the page. Now you are, particularly if the searcher is on a mobile device, has a low resolution, or clicks that down arrow for more information.

The Way to Win Traffic

The way to grab attention from Google’s direct answers is to give more when more is needed. in its place of having a piece of content that tells someone what a hashtag is, rank well for a piece of content that tells people the profit of using a hashtag, how to use a hashtag, how to measure analytics for hashtag usage, and so on. Provide more value than Google does to boost the odds that you will still get a click, even if you are further down the page.

You might also like: Machine Learning for improved Content & SEO outcome


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