What Can We Learn From The Recent Google Internal Document Leak?

In early May this year, someone at Google managed to mistakenly upload a huge amount of internal data to a GitHub site. That information was recognised as significant and has been released to the internet at large. It turns out it’s extremely important because it reveals many of the secret parameters the Google search engine algorithm uses to rank websites. So, does this Google leak mean the end of quality internet? Will we see a wave of low-quality sites suddenly rising to the top of the search results?

What’s the Likely Impact of the Leak?

Here’s the thing – although some of the information may present a few opportunities for less than ethical tweaking of websites, the biggest revelation is that there are no ‘quick fixes’. In fact, the leak has more or less confirmed that good, wholesome SEO strategies are the most effective. In other words, the algorithm runs deep and already rewards hard work and thorough long-game tactics.

What does the Google Leak Reveal?

For F1RST and our clients, the news is excellent! The Google leak has confirmed we’ve been hitting the target for over 10 years. So, if we summarise what the leak has revealed in terms of SEO best practices, we find the following:

Websites

Build good, clean, targeted websites:

• Build a fast website
• All the information that has to be there is there and nothing else
• The homepage has an unambiguous value statement of what you will get from this website
• Site navigation is obvious and intuitive
• The content is amazing
• The links within the content are very clear, obvious, clickable and linked to things they should be linked to.

Navigation

Make menus comprehensive, and in clear ontological order.

• Site navigation perfectly represents the cascading order of the ontologies you cover on your site. In English: if you talk about fruit then you have apples and then you have Granny Smith. Moreover, an ontological approach looks at the things the data is about and uses them as the basis for the structure of the data.
• Make articles super easy to navigate
• Plus, keep silos organised and clean (group subjects and products logically)

Content

Ensure it’s targeted, unique, structured information, and regularly updated. Create focused content.

• Fresh content gets boosted. We’ve known this for a long time. Moreover, the freshness factor and fresh links within fresh content get boosted more. Pages that aren’t fresh get demoted. They may even get deleted.
• Present your content in a way that Google can anticipate. Google has already scanned an insane amount of the internet and knows the relationships between ideas and entities. This is known as semantics and topical authority.
• Keep your silos clean. We see that site focus, radius, embeddings and page embeddings are used for ranking. In English: What is your site about? Have you covered that well? And is that covered in depth? And, are you also talking about some random unrelated things here? Don’t do that. Only publish within your subjects. Don’t get off track.
• Authorship is the entity that publishes a piece of content on your site. So, what’s the publishing date, who published it, and then how many mentions of that person are out there?

Links

Strong links are good, high-traffic sites are best

• Links you get to your content from other sites – make sure they live in strong, high-traffic websites because Google demotes pages without traffic. Why choose Domains with lots of traffic? – Because some of the traffic will trickle into the content and will click on the links. This has more value than getting a link that doesn’t get any clicks.
• Guest posts are excellent. Particularly guest posts that have your brand name. So, as Google indexes the page, they see the brand name, alongside branded queries (searches for your brand name)
• Continue acquiring links from fresh pages, links from new pages are better than older ones

User Behaviour

Engage quickly, satisfy intent

• Google checks everything you do when logged in via Google services.  It recognises human behaviour because of the time and distance between your clicks, etc. Plus, logged users are more trusted than non-logged users.
• Satisfy the users’ intent ASAP.
• Build a list because most people use a Gmail address of some sort, you then send them an email, and they open it in Chrome which Google tracks and values as trustworthy traffic.

Brand

Run Ads. Develop Social Media Traffic

• Guest posts with your brand name posted are important
• Branded searches tell Google that the brand exists and the brand matters
• Run ads, even on a small scale. Run some ads capitalising on whatever viral trends are current. Moreover, run ads on all platforms, so people see them and Google your brand name in Google search. You will achieve greater search volume for your brand name
• Build your brand and get social media traffic. Social media traffic comes from browsers with logged in users, meaning you’ll receive more legitimate traffic that fits the algorithm

These key points from the Google leak have confirmed the validity of our SEO strategy. In addition, it shows that knowing what to do is the easy part, the challenge is putting it into practice.

F1RST Produces Winning Strategies

F1RST has been continuously developing SEO strategies for the last decade. Moreover, this development, research and experience have created a game plan that mirrors the leaked list perfectly. As a result, we hold 30 top rankings for our services and have achieved the same for 50 of our local clients. The results speak for themselves.

Realistically, as a business owner, you won’t be able to do this alone. We provide the resources, experience and expertise. Remember, Google does not like quick fixes and actively demotes companies that try to rig the game. Ultimately, it’s the tried and tested longer-term strategies and their effective implementation that work and produce remarkable rewards.

F1RST can coach you on how to implement these strategies. We can also do it for you. Let’s talk.