Relevance and the importance of keeping in your lane

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Relevance and the Importance of
Keeping in your Lane
@seomalc #digitalsuperchats21

Malcolm Slade
Performance Director
18 years digital marketing experience

Step 1: Check site uses clean HTML
Step 2: Ram it full of keywords
Step 3: Build a load of links to get PageRank ™
Step 4: Send client a ranking report
18 years ago SEO was easy.

Google was rubbish
Algorithms were basic
Everything seemed largely
manual or maths based

“To organise the world’s
information and make it
universally accessible and
useful.”
Google Mission Statement

To succeed you will have to be
the best and show search
engines that you are the best.
Malcolm Slade (SEO Analyst) 2006
Consider brand as a potential
ranking factor.
Malcolm Slade (Head of SEO) 2011

Google Updates
Knowledge Graph – May 2012
500 Billion Fact / 5 Billion Entities (March 2020)
RankBrain 2015
Query refinement for unknowns based on similar knowledge
Automated fact gathering
Knowledge Vault – August 2014
‘Big changes at Google’ - 2015
John Giannandra becomes Director of Search. Very AI/semantics and knowledge
focussed
No more named updates
Quality. Quality, Quality, Quality….

Google is now “clever” enough
to know what is going on.
Malcolm Slade (Performance Director) Just now
Google organises information into taxonomies
and ontologies to connect concepts together
into a semantic web

Google knows who you are.
Google knows what you do.
Google knows where you fit.
Google knows what relates to you.

Step 1: Check site uses clean HTML
Step 2: Ram it full of keywords
Step 3: Build a load of links to get PageRank ™
Step 4: Send client a ranking report
Irrelevant
Irrelevant
Irrelevant
Irrelevant
Old skool SEO is no longer relevant

Modern SEO is all about
relevance

Relevancy isn’t new.
Google has always been trying to promote relevant content,
PPC quality score is driven by relevancy.
Brands need to make a transition from trying to beat the
system (mathematically) to working with the system to
become the most relevant

Baking relevancy into your SEO
strategy

Step 1: Understand and do
everything for your users
What do your users want from you?
What are your users trying to achieve?
Why might your users go elsewhere?
Treat Google like a user

What do your users want from you?
Google wants to efficiently crawl and index your site
so it can understand you
What are your users trying to achieve?
Google wants to understand you so it can serve you to
its users
Why might your users go elsewhere?
Google can’t do either of the above or deems you to
be not worth indexing

Step 2: Aim to be the best
authority you can within your
niche

Research your niche thoroughly
Who are your peers / competitors?
What is Google favouring within your niche?
What relates to my core niche?

Question everything you do in terms
of “is it relevant?”
Is that content / landing page relevant to my brand, my audience
and my niche?

https://cloud.google.com/natural-language
• Research competitor pages that are
doing well.
• Try and cover as much of your topical
niche as possible:
Bed, Mattresses, Headboards, Sleep, Bed
Bugs…..
• Use autocomplete, Google trends, search
suggestions etc.
• Research your competitor’s content
structures, interlinking etc.
• inLinks.net (Free topic explorer)

https://www.charlywargnier.com/my-public-web-apps

Is that promotional activity I am about to do
relevant to my brand, my audience and my niche?
A recent study by [random brand] said “people who eat 4
Snickers a day are likely to have heart issues”
A recent study by [Mars] said “people who eat 4 Snickers a
day are likely to have heart issues”
Vs

Links remain a valuable part of any SEO strategy, but
they need to be relevant to stand the test of time
But what about links?

1. Relevance between linking page and destination
Is there thematic relevance between the content and what
Google knows about you?
2. Relevance between domains
Is there thematic relevance between the domains
interlinking?

Good quality content that covers
the subject well can be relevant
Beware of guest posting services

I built a rocket
CreativeRace talk about it - low relevance / low engagement
The BBC talk about it – low relevance / high engagement
NASA talk about it – high relevance / high engagement

Majestic SEO – Topical Trust Flow

Step 3: Do one thing well and
stay in your lane

Google has put you in a box for a reason. It
can be very difficult to change boxes.
E.g. Cheap Holidays v Luxury Holidays
Consumer Electronics v Swimming Pools
If you are going to do it you have to commit fully and expect
to lose out as your focus shifts. Nobody is going to relate
the new to the old unless you tell them.

Ask “is this relevant?” at
every opportunity

Ask “is this relevant?” to
your internal teams and
agency partners

Want to chat about this article, ask a question or need further
support with your performance activity? Get in touch:
www.creativerace.co.uk
Tel: 0113 234 1630
Email: hello@creativerace.co.uk

Relevance and the importance of keeping in your lane

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