We got a peek behind the Google curtain!
Way back in May, lightyears ago in cyber time, there was an accidental Google leak discovered by Erfan Amizi. Erfan turned it over to Rand Fishkin, one of the MOZ founders, and Search Marketer of the Year, Michael King. They decoded it and learned several important things. (I learned that the leaked document was total gibberish to me.)
While the learnings from the leaked document were not earth-shattering, they are illuminating, so here goes.
Google’s best practices are still valid, at least for now. AI may change everything, but more on that later.
Google is not going to make it easier for anyone but Google. We all knew that but, on some level, I think we are all hoping for some benevolence. (Dance you clueless marketer—Bang, Bang—Dance!)
Does Your Site Do This?
It can with Stylaquin! Stylaquin is the easy to add Shopify app that transforms your website. Stylaquin makes shopping faster, more engaging, and more fun. Stylaquin shoppers stay longer, view over 85% more products, come back more often, and buy more when they do. Find us in the Shopify App Store.
Apparently “Site authority” is a big thing. Again, we have known about it for years, but it’s more important, and yet somehow just as ephemeral as ever. The big takeaway is that backlinks are something to focus on. Backlinks are the basis of most site authority, so more, high-quality links are better. There are toxic backlinks, though, like every scary story out there, we don’t know who they are. Yes, that’s mighty vague, but it’s all we’ve got.
Clicks matter, a lot. This is where engagement comes back into the conversation. Engagement is one of the hardest things to fake. Google tracks clicks, drags, and a range of what are called events. The more events your site has, the higher your engagement score. If you’re on Shopify and want a quick and easy way to supercharge your customer engagement, check out Stylaquin. Stylaquin increases dwell time, increases events, and increases repeat visits.
Links still matter, but only inbound. Don’t spend time on extra internal links. Google is only looking at (or at least the link only shows it looking at) external links to your site.
Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!
The Stylaquin Idea Board keeps customers engaged in two ways: it’s an interactive styling board where shoppers can collect and curate all the things that interest them; and it also acts as a wishlist that shoppers can return to. Find us in the Shopify App Store.
High-quality content is still key. For the moment at least content is still king. Once AI gets going, I predict that it will do to content what bad marketers did to email. Think about it, once the bots start really duking it out, it’s going to be a war that no one wins. Here’s a post on why AI is going to destroy keyword search.
Freshness is still important, and also something that AI is going to poop all over. A bot can post every five minutes and there are marketers out there who will do that (of course) until Google finds a way to identify the bots, at which point the bots will shift to avoid Google and so on, and so on. Spy vs Spy, whack-a-mole, take your pick.
Bonus: Google has actual humans who review content and they rate the best as “Golden Documents”. It’s nice to know it isn’t all just bots reading our posts.
