Article

Talking Human

Keeping up with search algorithms is impossible, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. Any company with a website plays the algorithm game, whether they know it or not. And some play it better than others. Others have a lot at stake, hiring organizations whose sole purpose is to help improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Here’s what we think:

Don’t play the algorithm game to the detriment of your end user.

If taken in isolation, no single SEO best practice (used ethically or not) will get you the rankings, traffic or response you desire. But we do believe there’s a foundational element that will not fail you or your target audience. It’s called intelligent content.

But first, some context

In brief, SEO is the collective efforts made by a company to have its website appear in the top results of search engine rankings. There are multiple approaches to SEO. On-site (or on-page) focuses on the content of the web page. Off-site builds credibility for your website through other sites and people. Think of it as someone with authority citing your page.

Some best practices of on-site SEO include thoughtful and well-written copy, the use of relevant keywords, and good user experience. Google says that its systems are designed to “determine which pages demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.” The great hope is that the combination of these practices—as well as others not mentioned, including some technical ones—will land a company’s website in the coveted top five results (the spots that aren’t paid for).

That sounds simple enough. But while we can control the quality of our own website, we can’t do anything about the algorithms. Or can we?

In late 2019, Google updated its algorithm with Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
Introducing BERT

This update, called BERT, is designed to help Google better understand the context and intent behind conversational queries. Think “where is the best food in the city” versus “local + restaurants + high rated.”

BERT uses Natural Language Processing (NLP), a combination of machine learning (a subset of artificial intelligence) and linguistics to understand intent. Google search and translate aren’t the only systems that use NLP. So do Grammarly, Microsoft Word, Alexa and Siri.

Google calls BERT a “core update.” Such updates make “significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems.” Google says that BERT will affect 10 percent of search queries, which may not sound substantial until you consider that 10 percent is approximately 350 million searches a day. Even after introducing BERT, Google’s advice remains the same as it’s always been—offer “the best content you can. That’s what our algorithms seek to reward.”

HAL 9000 says…

The best content is intelligent content. Talk human. Stop trying to outthink the machines. Algorithms may be aiding a user’s search, but that user is still a human looking for a human response.

We at Stiff have been defining and refining what intelligent content is for over 30 years. And while the response depends on the client, audience and end product, a few fundamentals never change:

Intelligent content responds to a need. We spend a lot of time getting to know our clients and what they offer. Equally as important, we get to know our clients’ audiences and what they need. A lot of time and research goes into exploring the gap, if there is one, between client and customer expectations. The content we produce in collaboration with our clients bridges the gap and communicates value.

Intelligent content keeps things simple. Don’t overcomplicate the matter. If you want a user to stick around, speak to them in terms they’ll understand. Being the smartest person in the room isn’t a game of who can speak the most jargon, use the biggest words or craft the longest sentences. The smartest person in the room prioritizes the audience.

And remember, you don’t have to explain everything all at once. Your webpages shouldn’t be white papers, research reports or a bucket list of everything you wished your audience knew about you. They should be targeted, tantalizing and provide enough relevant information to keep your user clicking.

Intelligent content is elegant. There is a difference between writing intelligibly and writing elegantly. Elegant writing is free of errors, employs tools of persuasion and incorporates the good habits of writers. It’s invisible to readers who instead only notice the messages, intentions and convictions being conveyed.

A wordsmith wields the conventions of the English language—including persuasion—like a master. To make things simple, we’ve organized these conventions into what we call the Machinery of Language.

Intelligent writing is for everyone

Here’s an exercise from the Machinery of Language we call concision. It will get you thinking about one of the principles of intelligent content: keeping things simple.

After writing down everything relevant that you believe your audience needs to know, put your words through the redundant, obvious and immaterial filters.

1. Delete the redundant. Get rid of repeated ideas, which can be facts needlessly explored from different angles, restated for emphasis or accidentally duplicated.

2. Delete the obvious. If facts are common knowledge, and if arguments can be easily deduced by the reader, remove them.

3. Delete the immaterial. Even relevant research can be immaterial. Spot tangents in your ideas and unneeded padding in your individual sentences.

It may not be your job to write SEO-driven website copy, but no matter who you are or what you’re writing, you will benefit from the principles of intelligent content.