You Ask, I Answer: Keywords Per Page in SEO?

In today's episode, Hannah asks, how many focus keywords are you using per page? Does the amount you focus on per page change depending on the domain authority? This is a more complex question than it used to be. Fundamentally, Google in particular, uh, search engines in general, all the major ones, but Google especially now uses some of the most advanced machine learning uh behind its search algorithms to do what's called semantic clustering for all topics. And what this means is that Google's not looking at words anymore.

There's they're not even looking at phrases. Uh in recent episodes uh with their engineers on various machine learning podcasts, they've been talking about vectorization of uh phrases and even entire sentences to figure out what pages are related to other pages, what content is related to other content. And so it's now not a question of the word, the phrase, the keyword. It is a question about the topic and does your content speak authoritatively to that content? Uh this is one part of many, many parts that goes into modern search ranking, and it is very, very complex.

The best way to get started wrapping your brain around it uh this is to actually read Google's uh search quality evaluator guidelines. So one of the things that Google does is it hires professional people, well not professional people, but it hires people to go through a training and then rate pages randomly selected throughout its index and rate them on quality, essentially. Is this a page that's that fits the needs of the user that uh is high quality, etc.? Um I'm gonna actually let's bring this up here this is the search quality uh guidelines document this thing is massive right um it is a a large chunk of uh uh text that Google explains in 167 pages how it wants the people who are it has hired to evaluate web pages so they talk about finding the website page quality what constitutes high quality pages what constitutes low quality pages um how to rate specific types of pages understanding mobile needs understanding whether a page fits the intent of uh its its queries and the you might be saying well so Google uses ai why does why does any of this matter well this is how they train their AI right this data is what forms a large chunk of the basis of how it understands the rest of its index these are the are essentially training data sets that Google is creating from paid users and so if you adhere to the guidelines in this document you will have a much better uh you'll be much better prepared to rank well for all the stuff that Google uh you know the algorithms that that then take that training data and and build these advanced machine learning models so to optimize your pages it's now uh it's now a lot more about psychology, um, journalism and and all of these things that humans want rather than um rather than going after words and phrases like the old joke is you know an SEO professional walks into a bar comma tavern comma pub you know because that was SEO in the old days uh today it is a lot more complex so let's look at uh one thing I think is worth pointing out here let's go into what Google considers the highest quality pages the pages that will rank the best uh very high quality MC main content uh is a there's a high standard for accuracy and well established consensus where such consensus exists it's the creation of unique and original content for the specific website what constitutes that content may be different for news original reporting that provides information that would not have otherwise been known had the article not revealed it often very high quality news will include a description of primary sources and other original reporting referenced during the content creation process should be accurate and meet professional journalistic standards uh for informational content accurate original accurate comprehensive clearly communicated professionally present presented and should reflect expert consensus as appropriate now that's a lot of stuff in there just on the quality of the content and that doesn't even get into things like reputation but think about your content are you just creating are you creating stuff that is original comprehensive and and highly credible using your subject matter experts at your company if you're not uh you will not rank as well the other thing I wanted to point out here that's really interesting is uh let's go past the lowest quality pages, medium quality pages. This phrase here is so important.

Nothing wrong, but nothing special. How much of your content meets that standard of nothing wrong, but nothing special? That's where I think most companies go wrong in their SEO. There's nothing that's wrong, but there's nothing that makes it stand out as a piece of original reporting as a piece of high quality content. That's one of the reasons why uh I advocate especially for the that Hero Hub Help model that Google released in 2014.

Your quarterly pieces, there should be a quarterly piece that is hero content. That is that ex exhaustive, comprehensive research paper or uh jer investigative journalism piece that you put in the time, the effort, the money, the resources to build once a quarter that meets this highest quality standard. On a monthly basis, you you try to aim for high quality, right? So high quality pages, a satisfying amount of high quality content, including a descriptor for helpful type title, uh spend a few minutes examining the main content before drawing a conclusion about it. What what is high quality content?

Who's responsible? Customer service links, positive reputation. These are all things that Google says it is expecting to see, and it wants its raters to see on high quality pages. So your monthly content should be that that high quality content, those high quality pages. Um Google uses this this expression eat expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

Are these uh are these high quality pages? Are they produced with journalistic professionalism? Are they produced uh come from trustworthy sources? Do they have do they demonstrate significant life experience? Uh, that is something that actually shows that Google explains this everyday experience.

If you you may not necessarily have a, for example, like if you're uh uh general contractor, you may not have a degree in anything, but you have 20 years building houses, and you can clearly demonstrate your expertise and show little tips and tricks that might not otherwise generally be known. Just like if you're a chef and you explain to people that tomatoes contain natural glutamic acid, and when you add salt to tomatoes, it it forms a natural type of monosodium glutamate MSG that enhances the flavor of tomatoes, right? That's one of those little things that the average person doesn't know until they read your content, and then you go, Oh, that totally changes how I cook tomatoes, for example. So worry much less about those keywords, worry much more about creating the high quality content. Grab this guide.

It is available, I've put a link in the notes here. Um it is from Google, read it, make exhaustive notes through it. And you gotta read the whole thing, right? There are a lot of companies and a lot of websites that have done a passable summary, you know, of this document, but it there's a reason it's 167 pages. It's because Google wants you to be very clear about what you're supposed to be doing with your content to make the most of it.

Um but yeah, grab the read it, download it, and then adhere to it when you're creating your content and follow that Hero Hub Help plan uh to make that high highest quality content once a quarter, high quality content once a month, uh, and then medium to high quality content as you can on a high frequency basis. So again, aiming to be helpful as much as possible. Google talks a lot about content that is useful and helpful in here. So uh great question. Leave your uh comments below or uh join us in the Slack group over at trustinsights.ai/slash analytics for marketers to discuss this topic and many more.

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