Skynet RankBrain Algorithm

           Have you ever seen many of the movies or TV shows where humans try to make robots as smart as people and then the robots try to take over?  One of my favorites is the Cylon’s from the TV show Battlestar Galactica.   Killer robots.

Well from the reaction of the SEO community you would have thought that the Cylon’s were attacking us when Google announced that they were implementing what they are calling the RankBrain Algorithm in my many of the searches Google performs.

           In 2014 Google acquired an artificial intelligence company called Deep Mind and this appears to be its first attempt at using some of that newly acquired technology in to searches. 

          So Google came up with a machine that they are calling Artificial Intelligence(AI) that they think has the ability to learn and understand colloquial human speech. Google’s new ranking factor is called Skynet RankBrain. In early attempts with AI the machines the machines struggled with being able to figure out the nuances of the human language. The new RankBrain AI is able to use complex long-tail context clues such as the user’s location to understand the searcher’s actual intent to deliver more relevant results. 

So how do we optimize for RankBrain?

         For those SEO Writers and webmasters out there. Fear not. RankBrain isn’t going to drastically change how you create your content or much how you change what you are doing with design. That is if you are following Google’s Webmaster guidelines and best practices. There are some steps that you can take to ensure that your website content is ready for Google’s AI.
Much of this goes back to the old ways of delivering content to your prospective website visitors:

1. Find a compelling subject and match a keyword 

          Offer a fresh and possibly alternative perspective or a unique angle on your subject matter. Be sure to include a targeted keyword or two in the text you are creating.  Make sure the words people would be searching for are in the text.   Don’t forget that part of AI is matching complete sentence searches which someone who might be do a Siri or Cortana query from a phone.  Normally these are complete sentences.

2. Include a Q & A at the bottom of the page.

          What is the best way to get complete phrases as a keyword for phone searches? Add a list of questions and answers at the bottom of your page. Think of your product or service you are trying to pitch. Then hold your own phone to your mouth and ask your phone to search for it based on what you would look for. Then explain your product or service to a teenager and see what they would search for. You might be surprised by the different results. You can optimize your page for several of those longer tail keywords if you know what they are. Every time you find a new way of querying for your product or service you can simply add a new question and answer in to the bottom of your web page without adding a whole new page. 

          Do a sanity check though and make sure that consumers are actually using the keywords that you are optimizing for to search for your product or service. You can learn more in the next chapter on how to do this.Don’t target for lots of visits like most people try to do.  Don’t target Keywords that are unlikely to bring visitors to buy your product or services even though they are searched for more than average.  

Standard optimization applies. RankBrain definitely analyses a web page to make sure it follows Google’s guidelines and has good coding. Make sure that after you create that great content that you insert your keyword phrase throughout the content, post them in specific locations such as the URL, title tag, H1, H2, in emphasized text in the body of the post, and in the ALT tags on images. 

3. Other things to note for RankBrain factors.

There are a few other key notes for RankBrain factors:

1. RankBrain is only one of many algorithms and not used in every search.
2. The RankBrain algorithm uses less “Exact Match Keywords” than many of the other algorithms. It looks for more variations in how the keywords are used on a page. Some algorithms allow you to use one or two exact match keywords in every paragraph and you watch your rankings rise. But RankBrain emphasizes the importance of using several variations of your targeted keywords. Even though it’s a machine AI, the key here is to write for like a human.
3. Don't forget semantic markup which actually gives you an easy way of providing the context that RankBrain is looking for. Semantic HTML markup is used to illustrate your targeted subject matter by allowing you to tag the appropriate content or target of a page.

When it’s all said and done, RankBrain is just another advance in semantic search.  If you align your website with Google practices your rankings should fall in line and bring in visitors.

Next : Some more Algorithms you must notice and Understand for SEO