Google Takes a Look at in-depth Content

Google is rolling out another major search engine optimisation change that pushes in-depth content nearer to the top of page rankings.

The search giant reckons one in 10 users go online to research broader  in-depth content topics, while the other 90% want a quick answer to a straightforward question.

To help researchers, Google is flagging in-depth content in a new set of search results.

The Google search bot has been updated to look for in-depth content – and web masters can flag this by adding article mark-up to their pages.

“Following these best practices along with our webmaster guidelines helps our systems to better understand your website’s content, and improves the chances of it appearing in this new set of search results,” said Pandu Nayak, of Google’s technical staff.

To do this, Google wants web masters to tag in-depth content with scheme.org article mark up by including the following tags:

• headline
• alternativeHeadline
• image
• description
• datePublished
• articleBody
• Authorship markup

Google also suggests some other best practice mark-ups to obtain the best page rankings:

Pagination and Canonicalisation

Identify multipage articles with rel=next and rel=prev will help the search bot link pages so the complete article is indexed. Google stresses rel=canonical points at each individual page or a “view-all” page, not just page 1 of a series of pages.

Logos

Set up a Google+ Page and linked to the website. Choose an official logo or icon as the default image and specify this as the organisation logo in the makeup.

Restricted Content and First Click Free

Google has new mark-up that lets search bots crawl restricted content sites – First Click Free.

The idea is the first page of an article is free, and the next click on multipage content requires the user to log in, sign up or subscribe.

“This is our preferred solution since it can benefit both our users and our publisher partners. It allows Googlebot to fully index your content, which can improve the likelihood of users visiting your site; and it allows users to view the article of interest while also encouraging them to subscribe,” says the Google web site.

Comments

comments