Google Search Needs What Your Web site Customers Need


Google’s Danny Sullivan mentioned it once more, with regards to what you do in your web site, Google Search needs what your customers need. Do what’s finest on your customers, and Google can be blissful. Should you simply take into consideration what to do to make Google blissful, it’d end in your customers not being blissful. Sullivan wrote, “Just about the whole lot somebody asks about what Google needs, the touchstone is “Is that this what your reader / viewers needs?” As a result of that’s what Google needs. “

He wrote this and expanded on this on X, he wrote:

Just about the whole lot somebody asks about what Google needs, the touchstone is “Is that this what your reader / viewers needs?” As a result of that’s what Google needs.

That is the large image. We wish our techniques to point out content material that individuals assume can be satisfying. Once they land on a web page, they go “Sure! That is precisely what I need!” (And sure, our techniques aren’t excellent. Sure, there’s unsatisfying content material that may floor. It is all one thing we’re working very exhausting to enhance on).

Individuals who create content material — I would hope — ought to be capable of know finest if what they’re doing is what their readers need and doing that’s what Google needs.

However as an alternative, if we are saying one thing like “Hmm, this web page does not have a transparent date” as a result of a *reader* would possibly count on that, it simply will get was “Have a transparent date and also you rank higher!” And … no. It isn’t like that. It is that if in case you have a transparent date on a web page, it is likely to be an indication that you simply’re doing one in every of plenty of issues that readers like — which, in flip, can align with utterly various things we use that also correlate with content material that readers like. After which folks get misplaced within the little particulars of “Google needs me to do X” moderately than “Google needs me to do the very best factor for my readers.”

Which I do know could be a exhausting factor for some to take care of, particularly when at occasions we have mentioned stuff like “Do not do issues for Google.” Actually, it’s best to do issues for Google — it is simply these issues are the identical issues it’s best to do on your readers. That is all the time the touchstone. Learn your pages. Do you just like the expertise? Do you’re feeling another person coming to them is happy? That is what’s to do.

Which is lots of phrases to say … positive, I can attempt to do some extra from time-to-time.

Yea, Google has been saying this since without end and Google will hold saying this.

Generally when Danny Sullivan offers this suggestions, with particular examples, which he has completed earlier than, he could come off as being too crucial. So he is not all the time trying to knock on folks’s web sites. Sullivan wrote, “I’ve completed a couple of earlier than. Would possibly do as time permits. The issue is that individuals can misread as criticism (maybe even as harsh criticism) moderately than it actually meant as “Hey, possibly that is useful suggestions” — particularly as posts could be so impersonal sounding.”

The opposite difficulty of giving particular suggestions is that individuals would possibly contemplate that recommendation as being a particular Google rating issue. He wrote, “I fear extra that individuals mistakenly interpret “maybe contemplate this from a reader’s perspective ” as “he talked about X factor, so X factor should be a rating sign!” Everybody, do X factor now!”

Right here is that tweet:

One other:

Discussion board dialogue at X.