In recent years, Google has valued complex material with a lot of words when assessing how visible it would be on search engine results pages (SERPs).
The top of the SERP seems to be dominated by “ultimate guide” style items, meaning content that provides a complete guide, or content covering a wide topic in depth, rather than ranking short responses to extremely specific questions. Short texts are not valuable anymore.
A user finds this text-rich information more frequently when he uses Google to ask about a specific topic. And frequently, they are immediately sent to the section of the article where the query is addressed.
Some marketers have claimed that Google strives to rank the most “complete” content on a given topic as a result of this occurrence in search engine behavior.
In this context, “complete content” refers to information that fully addresses any queries a user might have while still in the search process.
Why Does Google Favor Ranking Complete Content?
Long-form, in-depth articles do not intentionally strive to be ranked by Google.
As a result, it prefers this kind of content when classifying because it is frequently exhaustive for a certain request.
For the optimal ranking of content, Google often considers the following factors:
Semantic Relevance for Research
Semantic relevance is a term used by Google to describe how it evaluates a piece of content’s capacity to satisfy a particular searcher’s needs.
For instance, if someone types “online gift guide” into Google, they most likely want to find an online gift guide.
By displaying the online guides at the time of the search, the user’s needs are satisfied.
Therefore, Google gives well-established online gift guide sites like giftexperts.com precedence over those with a physical location.
Google mostly examines a page’s copy to evaluate semantic relevance. This is why SEO places such a high value on the smart use of keywords.
Link to a Page
Among other things, pages with more links from other websites perform better on Google than pages without links.
Whenever applicable, make sure to include links to resources.
Articles that provide comprehensive answers to a subject will be more likely to be linked to because they can serve as a valuable resource for a wider range of other articles.
The fact that posts with more than 2000 words typically have 77% more links than posts with less than 2000 words lends credence to this. Always think about who you are helping with your content. The more people you help, the more your article will likely receive links and traffic.
User Experience
The primary reason for Google’s preference for “complete content” is that it uses the user experience to decide which content to rank.
There are a few user behaviors that let Google know that a certain piece of content is a suitable match for a search.
Google values content that helps users “complete a search” in particular.
Once a search is completed, the user no longer has to look for more items to address her original query. Google thus favors content that encourages visitors to stick around or click through to another page of the website they are currently visiting. Content that prompts visitors to leave the page and click through to another result on the search engine results page.
If the initial piece of content they visit doesn’t answer their query or isn’t written in detail enough to address any follow-up inquiries they may have, users often return to the search engine.
According to the research on user behavior, Google will “prize” articles that address each issue within a topic.
How To Create Complete Content
Now that we know why Google favors “complete content,” let’s look at how to produce flawless content that drives traffic.
The key to producing content is identifying the questions that users may have about a given search, according to the claim that “complete content” addresses all of these queries.
There are two straightforward yet efficient methods for doing this, both of which require paying attention to the search results that Google returns:
- Use the “People also asked” function
- Analyze competitor articles… and create better content (the important thing is not to try and copy their content)
About the Author
Mirko Humbert
Mirko Humbert is the editor-in-chief and main author of Designer Daily and Typography Daily. He is also a graphic designer and the founder of WP Expert.