Truly comprehending the mission statements of platforms like Google can be a challenge, but what lies within is the roadmap to help organisations truly understand the importance of speed, security, and compliance. This is vital when we discuss organic visibility, that is the visibility you get naturally on search engines like Google before you have to pay for ads.
In order to reach customers in a highly competitive landscape, businesses must be as strong as possible in search.
In this article, you will notice that we reference Google exclusively. That’s not to suggest you should forget other engines, they largely follow the same rules, but in February 2019 alone, 92% of all search traffic used Google in one form or another.
This is no lucky coincidence, of course. Google didn’t just land at the top of the food chain. They are dominant for a reason; their search results have been consistently the most relevant which has won them their crown.
So if ranking highly is all about relevance, and Google keeps delivering the most relevant results, do businesses stay at the top simply by delivering relevant content? The simple answer is no.
Understanding what it takes to rank can be quite complex, yet at the same time, it is elegantly simple.
Let’s examine Google LCC’s current mission statement, and how it impacts search.
“Organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
“Useful” – Google wants to give its users the most relevant, useful, engaging results, and they have several mechanisms by which they can do this. The access Google has to data is mindblowing. Most websites in the world carry Google’s GA code, this is a small but powerful piece of code that companies put on a website so they can track 1,000s of metrics like speed, bounce rate, exit rate, and conversions, to name just a few. It would be naive to think Google doesn’t leverage this data to when determining what is “useful”.
“Universally accessible” – This is telling, and has been a theme for many years now. Google wants the customers/users experience to be consistently good, no matter what device (mobile, tablet, tv, voice search devices, etc.), no matter what connection (poor quality to high-speed fibre). They want companies to build their sites to be compliant, and most importantly, meet Google’s criteria — what Google considers to be “Good.” This goes right down to compliant colours, through to touch points on mobile being big enough to use with our fingers.
So meeting this is simple, right? Well, kind of. Let’s break this down further based on their mission statement.
Focus on the user
We strive to deliver useful and relevant results.
Empower website owners
We help publishers and businesses get discovered online.
Maximise access to information
We are committed to a free and open web.
If you want to dig further into this, you can here:
https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/
There is really no hidden agenda, it’s clear within Google’s simple primary colours. They do empower website owners and companies, like ours, with the tools to help validate and optimise.
Ignore this guidance at your peril.
Google gives us access to tools like Google Search Console, which highlights improvements, issues, etc. to help us optimise websites. They provide tools which allow us to optimise page speed, as well as giving us a small insight into how they measure it.
I have written articles previously on page weight, perceived page speed, etc. which you can read here:
https://wilsoncooke.agency/thoughts/page-speed-and-what-this-means-to-your-rankings/
Back to the mission statement, and what we can do to meet Google’s evolving criteria.
“Evolving” is to be emphasised here. We have seen various iterations and evolutions of the page speed insights page over the last few years. This is the current iteration of the tool:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
The point of these evolutions presents challenges for Web Developers. As this is evolving so fast, it quickly renders previous techniques and developments outdated. While we are all working towards the same goal, technology is always improving. For example, did you know there are new image formats available? Next generation formats like JPEG 2000?
To really get anywhere near a “Good” quality score takes a complete restructure of a legacy site. It is only with new builds that companies have a chance to get close to the new benchmarks.
Based on the mission statement around “universally accessible, useful,” and “empower website owners” if organisations want to rank and drive customers to their site, they need to make sure their sites are:
- Secure
- Fast
- Relevant
- Content is written with the end user in mind
- Easy to use on any device.
Imagine every website being equal, there are two sites with similar types of content and domain authority, etc. but one is secured, optimised for speed, delivers a better experience, has a low bounce rate and higher conversion rate (all of which Google can see), which do you think Google will offer up first?
The answer is obvious: The site that meets Google’s standards according to their mission statement.
Recently we completed a project for Jigsaw with exactly this in mind, using the Pagespeed insights to build the most compliant, high scoring site possible.
This is no easy task, our development team worked tirelessly and with exceptional skill to build a site with a drastically high score.
The result is a site that helps Jigsaw, and its subsidiaries, to be fully compliant and rank much higher organically.
To improve visibility, and in turn, organic search performance and revenue, it is essential to understand Google’s goals and align your activities to match their roadmap.
If you want to rank higher than the competition, but aren’t sure how to go about search marketing, or would like a review of your current efforts, get in touch with the team at WilsonCooke, we would love to chat about how we can support you with your upcoming projects or campaigns.
