I am pleased to announce that I am opening positions to advise new clients. Let me share with you how I completely revamped my SEO strategy after learning as much as I could over the last two years about the AI systems that drive today’s search rankings.
When the helpful content system launched in 2022, I knew that some of our current SEO practices would need to change at some point.
Google told us The helpful content system was an automated system using a Machine learning model. A machine learning model is an AI system. As of the March 2024 core update The helpful content system no longer exists. Instead, a variety of new signals were introduced into the core ranking systems. A month earlier, Google announced a Breakthrough in architecture behind their machine learning systems, allowing them to become more efficient and use more information in their calculations. AI is increasingly driving how Google ranks results.
Some of our SEO strategies may need to change
In 2022, I realized that if I wanted to explain to my clients how Google’s ranking systems work, I needed to understand more about machine learning. I took Google’s machine learning courseand I read and watched everything that could help me understand it better.
I have spent hundreds of hours discussing research and patents related to search and machine learning with other SEOs and also with ChatGPT, Bard, Claude and Gemini.
Since then, I’ve learned even more about how Google’s systems work. In our strategy we take the following into account:
- Thoroughly understand your audience’s needs and fulfill their intentions.
- Navboost – This system uses user interaction data to predict what is likely to be helpful. Together, we’ll identify what your audience finds helpful and determine how we can improve it You are most likely predicted as the result that would satisfy a search.
- Freshness – incredibly important for most websites. We’ll discuss Google’s Patent for freshness-based ranking and develop strategies to improve and create new content that is fresh and interesting.
- RankBrain – Google’s AI brain for ranking. This system reorders the top 20-30 results. This means that the traditional “ranking factors” we know have much less importance in today’s systems.
- Current authority – I’m not talking about AI-generated theme cards. These are created to make a website look good to machines. Still, Google wants to reward “people-first” content. I have a strategy for building topic authority in 2024 based on creating clusters of truly helpful original content on your topics and strategically using internal links to help Google understand the unique value of each.
- Instant glue – This is a version of Navboost that learns what people find relevant to new queries. We’ll discuss whether this impacts your searches, and if so, whether we can win with our knowledge of how this system works.
- DeepRank – a deep learning AI system that learns about the world by studying the actions of searchers. Our work on understanding intent should help us here.
- RankEmbed BERT – a vector embedding space that embeds a query into that space and then finds content that is likely to be relevant and helpful. I believe we can reverse engineer this process to some extent. I’ve developed a few AI tools and prompts to help us try it. However, to do this You need to combine this knowledge with a thorough understanding of your audience’s needs. This cannot be automated or done by AI alone.
The DOJ vs. Google test exhibits were a great help in understanding Google’s systems. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to take the time to read through Pandu Nayak’s statement How rankings work. The discovery of the Google API files they discuss them Attributes that may be used in search also helped me expand my theory. Remember how Google said the March core update brought new signals to core systems? I believe that many of the attributes used in search, such as PageRank, are now used differently as signals that need to be taken into account by machine learning algorithms. Traditional search used one main signal in its calculations: PageRank. Today’s search uses a variety of signals.
I wrote one Book with my thoughts on Google’s systems and also created one Course for those who are as geeky as me and want to spend an incredible amount of time learning and testing. And if you just want to trust me that the most important thing is to put yourself in the shoes of a seeker, then here is it Workbook will help you improve your pages tremendously.
Will you be one of the first to work with me to promote new SEO strategies?
I am looking for some clients who would like to work with me in implementing my methods.
I have partially tested some of these ideas on a few websites. In order to fully test it, I really need to dig in. Initial attempts to use this method were promising. This client below had me optimize this page’s ranking for phrases related to a medical topic.
The above was done quickly using just a portion of my theory of optimizing the content on the page itself with an understanding of intent and vector search. It’s certainly possible that the increase is related to an improvement in freshness, but I believe our attempts to understand and meet user needs have been rewarded. We can do much more.
Requirements to become a customer
- Ownership or advisory role. You can be the owner of the company/website we work on or the SEO consulting for that company. If you are an SEO, we can talk about how best to work with your client so I can help you improve your work.
- Communication. We meet about once a month via Google Meet and communicate in a private space that I set up in my community. the search bar.
- Content creation. You must be able to change and create new content on the website. I won’t write content for you, but I will provide you with sketches and ideas for you to build on. We may use AI to guide and inspire us, but all content must be human-authored and written by someone who knows the business. If you’re the SEO for this company, we’re talking about interviewing employees, business owners, and possibly customers to better understand the needs of your target audience.
- I need access to GSC. GA4 is also appreciated.
- LLM Usage. I need your permission to use LLMs such as ChatGPT and Gemini to assist me in my research and suggestions for your website.
- Permission to share (anonymous). I need your permission to share screenshots of analytics and anonymized explanations of what types of changes we’ve made to make improvements.
- Minimum contract term 4 months. We need time to develop and implement this strategy. After 4 months we can continue to expand our relationship if successful.
Here is my strategy
Sick Evaluate your website’s performance and competition. Together we decide whether one page or several pages should be optimized or created. When we eventually figure out what works for us, this strategy should be easy to implement on other sites.
I will do detailed research on this Search queries that drive traffic to these pages and the search results that Google presents to searchers. I’ll focus on that Understanding the intent behind each side And what “Information gain” everyone offers. We will think together about how we can better meet users’ needs. Then we develop ideas for Creating helpful content on this topic This is better than what is currently available on the internet. We want to figure out how to design a page that users regularly select, are happy with, and find more helpful than other options available to them.
We’re talking about you Reputation for your topics and whether improvements should be made in this area. The Maybe it’s about finding ways to get links – But we won’t look at link building in the same way that SEOs traditionally do. We can work on it Establishing thematic clustersWe create systems that inspire fresh content ideasor I suggest ideas to bring more evidence into the world Build EEAT around your topics. The key to improving EEAT is improving the world’s image of you and your excellence.
We create an action plan for each month and reflect on our progress so far. I will provide a report with suggestions. And then we meet to discuss strategy and implementation.
We can also talk about using LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini to improve your business.
Expectations
Significant changes in organic search performance may take a few months, although I believe we may see some improvements before then.
If your website has been severely impacted by a core or helpful content updatethen we won’t see any improvements until a future core update is rolled out. Sites affected by core updates should can improve with these ideas. However, there may be exceptions, especially if Google now ranks sites above you that are much more authoritative. I still think there is opportunity here – but maybe not for the same competitive keywords. I must point out to you that if your site is impacted by the Helpful Content System, while I have many ideas for recovery, I cannot promise it. We’ve yet to see a website recover from a major impact, but Google has hinted that it could be possible. While I believe that some sites affected by this system can grow again, if they do, it will require significant effort and even changes in business practices.
If you’re not sure if you’re affected by Google updates, I’ll assess it for you.
I expect that we will see a gradual increase in organic search performance for most sites over the months we work together and into the future.
Of course I can’t guarantee any improvement as this is a new strategy. We enter into this agreement with the understanding that we will test and experiment with new, unproven methods that have taken me two years of intensive research to develop.
What about AI?
I look forward to brainstorming with you about using AI, particularly LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini, to benefit your business. There is so much we need to learn and I don’t think anyone in the world is an expert on the technology we are about to see! However, not many people have experimented with LLMs as much as I have. We can talk about your needs and desires in this area and how I can help you.
Cost
I set appropriate fees based on demand.
If you are seriously interested in working with me, contact me using the form below. This will help me understand and set fair prices.
If you’re interested in short-term consulting, here are some additional ways to brainstorm with me.
I look forward to working with you and hope you are too!
Mary