People use the internet to find information on a million different topics a day. With the recent changes to how Google lists web pages to match queries and the never ending desire for businesses to have the most innovative and attractive website, it seems many have forgotten that the best strategy for your website and its content should be to help users. Google’s best practices have users in mind and you should have users and Google in mind.
There are 3 main processes Google goes through to provide search results: Crawling- a computer program uses an algorithm to decide what websites to crawl and which pages to use.
Indexing- Googlebot creates an index of all the words on a page and where they are on the page.
Serving Results- When a search is made, machines search the index and provide results based on relevancy. Relevancy is based on a multitude of factors.
This is a lot of information to consider, so here are a few simple tips to help you in your journey to having content a more accessible website
Google is rewarding websites that are geared towards helping users and, frankly, that is what will keep users coming back to your website. Google’s goal is to yield the most relevant information possible, to enhance the user experience. Your goal should be identical. Google suggests having an “information-rich” site will enhance your SEO. Use this as an opportunity for content marketing. It is well known that providing detailed information to users, in the form of a blog, can help users become customers. When users have questions, they turn to Google. Create an active, consistent blog that offers valuable information in your field. This will help you to 1- be included in Google search results, 2- once you are there, provide the detailed information users are looking for so that 3, you can gain new potential users and customers.
Now that you have useful information users are searching for, enhance the visibility of the content. Google offers “in-depth articles” features, which appear above search results when users search for people and broad topics. This is what you should be doing to help Google find your detailed articles: Provide a headline, alternative headline, indexable image and description to your content. This helps Google recognize your content as useful information and helps users realize that your search result is the best option.
Your logo is like a calling-card, it helps users quickly recognize your business. Google can potentially use this image if you direct them to it. Creating a Google Plus page, adding your logo as the default image and linking it to your website will help Google to know which logo to use for your website. After all, you’ve spent all this time branding your business, you want to be sure the right images are being used.
Users have a very small attention span, so it’s not surprise that you use dynamic images on your website to attract their attention. There are a couple things you should keep in mind when uploading these images. Be sure the image you are using is surrounded by corresponding information. For instance, you don’t want to have a picture of a meteor in your blog post about losing weight. Google will recognize this and it can hurt your rankings. And when you upload images related to your content, be sure to create descriptive alt text. This will help Google use your information for related searches. For example: <img src=”benchpress.jpg” alt=”Man demonstrates how to properly perform bench press”>.
A users web experience typically begins with the need for assistance. Your website and its content should be designed to help users, this will help your chances of being listed on Google and of having users select your website as the resource they need. And in the end, this well help you build your customer base.
Editorial note (updated): this article originally referenced creating a Google+ page and Google's "in-depth articles" feature to influence how content appeared in search. Google+ was shut down for consumers in April 2019 and the "in-depth articles" feature was retired in 2017. The core principle — build genuinely helpful, well-structured content and help search engines understand it — is unchanged; the section below updates the tactics to current practice.
Updated: making content discoverable the way search works now
The crawl → index → serve model in the original is still accurate. What changed is the toolkit for the "help Google understand and surface this" step. The modern equivalents of the dated tactics:
- Structured data instead of Google+ identity. The old advice to establish a Google+ page so Google associated your logo and content with your brand is now done with schema.org structured data — Organization, Article, Product, FAQ, and Breadcrumb markup — which is how you tell search engines what your content is and which entity it belongs to.
- Topical depth instead of "in-depth articles" markup. You no longer flag long-form content with special metadata; you earn that treatment by genuinely covering a topic comprehensively — a pillar page plus linked supporting articles answering each sub-question.
- Descriptive titles, headings, and meta data remain exactly as important as the article says — they are still how a result earns the click once it ranks.
- Image SEO is unchanged and still under-used. The article's point stands: relevant images, surrounded by corresponding text, with accurate, descriptive alt text. That alt text is both an accessibility requirement and a relevance signal, and it is still one of the most commonly skipped basics.
The unison, made concrete
"SEO and content work together" becomes actionable when you see them as one workflow: keyword and intent research defines what to write; the content itself is the asset that earns rankings and converts; on-page SEO and structured data make that asset legible to search engines; internal linking distributes its authority. Content without SEO is unfindable; SEO without content has nothing to rank. Neither works alone — which is the article's enduring thesis.
A practical checklist
- Decide the searcher's intent before writing; match the format to it.
- Answer the primary question early, then cover the related sub-questions on the same page.
- Add appropriate structured data (Organization, Article/Product, FAQ where genuine).
- Write accurate, specific titles, headings, meta descriptions, and image alt text.
- Internally link new content into the relevant topic cluster.
Done together, content and SEO compound. We run them as a single program — see our content marketing and eCommerce SEO services, or contact us.