RankBrain What is it
Google’s RankBrain
RankBrain is a machine-learning algorithm that helps Google process, understand, and sort search results. Find out more about how it works and how you can use it to your advantage.
RankBrain Helps Google Understand Search Terms
RankBrain is one of Google’s most important ranking signals. A major component of the larger Hummingbird search algorithm, it was released in 2015. Since then, it’s been serving searchers more accurate results and quietly adjusting the importance of backlinks, domain authority, content freshness and other factors based on how people interact with the search results.
Before RankBrain, Google guessed the best results for new search queries based on the individual words the query contained. But with RankBrain, the search giant draws on existing search patterns and other data to try to understand what each query means and provide more accurate results.
RankBrain compares queries against its database of known searches and then approximates results. It can be said that RankBrain understands concepts, and how search terms like “dog” and “cat” are similar in a way that “football” and “giraffe” are not.
RankBrain Values the User Experience
After it serves results, RankBrain tracks user experience signals to assess and improve itself. We don’t know exactly how this part of the process works. But it’s likely that RankBrain boosts the ranking of pages that people visit and spend time on.
At the same time, it demotes pages that users don’t engage with. For example, if people click on a search result but then quickly leave that page, RankBrain could interpret this to mean that the page isn’t informative and lower its ranking.
One thing to note is that RankBrain understands and shows closely related results. It knows that “affordable digital marketing for small business” and “affordable online marketing for small business” mean essentially the same thing.
Optimizing Your Website for RankBrain
You can use RankBrain’s understanding of search terms to your advantage. When you optimize for one keyword and provide great content centered around it, RankBrain can rank you for related terms as well.
The important thing is to choose keywords that are neither too broad nor too long. Providing great value for a keyword like “small business marketing tips” could rank you for thousands of keywords.
Other things you can do is to create emotional, clickable titles, use numbers and stats, optimize description tags, and focus on in-depth content. All of these can boost engagement levels, which RankBrain likes so much.
But it’s also important to take your SEO efforts beyond on-page optimization. Boosting brand awareness online and making yourself better known on social media increases the chances that people will choose your site in the search results. Awareness builds familiarity, which in turn increases clicks.
Final Thoughts
In the end, RankBrain makes Google’s search algorithm smarter and more efficient. As a website owner, you can use it to your advantage to boost your search engine ranking and with it, your online exposure.
To achieve this, you need to focus your efforts on providing value with every piece of content you publish. At the same time, you need to ensure your content grabs attention and keeps people on your site.
Contact Ladical Digital Marketing
Are you interested in finding out more about the benefits of Search Engine Optimization? We’re here to help you out! Please feel free to contact us using our contact form or if you prefer call us directly now at (888) 750-8860.
We are Ladical Digital Marketing located in Waterloo. We has a have a number of SEO Products available, in order to improved your websites search engine results on both Google and Bing.
