Accelerating SEO with automation

Changes in algorithms and search behaviour

It’s no secret that the algorithms for organic search keep getting more and more sophisticated. Today, Google uses natural language processing to understand more precisely what you want from your search – also known as the search intent. In a similar way, Google’s bots evaluate the context and quality of page content, in order to deliver relevant and trustworthy search results that match the intent.

This development correlates with a shift in people’s search behaviour. Across industries and business types, searches have become more complex, containing more attributes to increase precision. For example, rather than searching for “safe family car,” people often ask complex questions, like “what’s the safest car for a big family?” – trusting Google to help them with their intent: to research and compare the safety of large family cars.

It’s worth noting that in this example, the algorithm is likely to prioritise articles and expert reviews over car manufacturers and dealerships, as this corresponds more closely to the intent.

Optimising for search intent

More complex searches also mean that searches with the same intent can be worded in many different ways. Studies have shown that out of 8,5 billion daily searches, about 15 percent are entirely new. This means that every day, there are more than 1 billion web searches that are phrased differently from any searches that have been made before.

Needless to say, this development has made the work of SEO specialists harder than ever. Understanding and optimising for search intent is more challenging than optimising for isolated keywords or phrases. Because the same intent can be expressed in so many different ways, a myriad of keywords and phrases often need to be grouped into topic clusters for efficient SEO. This is where automated performance insights are becoming indispensable, making optimisation and performance tracking across large sets of keywords more manageable.

“We see a growing need to keep track of huge amounts of keywords and keyword clusters,” says Johan Rappling, senior SEO consultant at Comprend. “Using an automated workflow lets us access all the data we need in one place – from search insights showing the market demand, to the actual performance of published pages. It also lets us track performance on topic level rather than page for page. In this way, our SEO corresponds better to people’s search behaviour and Google’s methods, and we don't spend all our time narrowing our scope to specific keywords.”

Complex performance tracking in an instant

Imagine a website with hundreds of recipe pages. For pages where the underlying demand is strong, a high ranking may be crucial to the company’s online presence. If the company makes gluten-free flour, its collection of cupcake recipes should preferably rank highly for any expression within the ‘gluten-free cupcakes’ topic.

Through our automated workflow, the Comprend SEO team has easy access to people’s search behaviour in relation to a given intent. By segmenting the search behaviour and grouping keywords into topic-based clusters, each new page can be assigned a target topic. Once page structure and content are optimised accordingly, the workflow makes it easy to track how a page or group of pages are performing in relation to the topic cluster.

“Let’s say we are tracking the performance of the gluten-free cupcake recipes,” adds Johan. “Our automated workflow brings us the total number of searches for the topic, together with the organic search traffic reaching each page, how each page ranks, and several other metrics. Immediately, we have a complete view that lets us identify if a page or group of pages needs tweaking to perform as intended.”

Invaluable efficiency

The ability to collate, sort, and track keyword clusters with the help of automated tasks adds new levels of efficiency to our team’s work: “We’ve developed this workflow to speed up our processes and save resources,” says Johan Rappling. “For many of our customers this kind of efficiency is invaluable, as it lets us scale up every aspect of our work. This includes helping them leverage changes and trends in search behaviour that may affect their business. And of course, we always keep a close eye on broader SEO trends to ensure that our clients remain ahead of the curve.”