SEO
7 Content Writing Trends For 2023
The fourth industrial revolution and Web 3.0 continue to transform all legacy communication platforms – from how we consume news to how we market our products.
One field that stands as a fulcrum of this tech boom may be writing and art itself.
As new technology like AI-generated art and ChatGPT continue to become more sophisticated, many people are uncertain about the future of these fields.
Will search algorithms and people come to accept AI or reject it outright? Are we powerless to even stop it? Does AI harm or help the SEO industry?
I’ll discuss the confluence of many trends in the content marketing industry, which are rapidly evolving the way we approach everyday writing.
2023 Content Writing Trends
1. The Rise Of AI-Driven Content
It’s no secret that brands have leveraged AI marketing for years and probably even limited the usage of AI-generated content.
While Google has stated that AI-generated content meant to manipulate search results constitutes spam, it has also stated that the “appropriate use” of AI to assist content is not against its guidelines.
It’s difficult to discern how efficient Google is at detecting AI systems, but it’s clear that AI-generated content will be something to keep a close eye on.
According to a UBS study via Reuters, ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in January 2023.
However, I’ve found several other AI platforms that provide similar chatbot services and the ability to write entirely SEO-optimized blog posts.
I’ll describe how to leverage AI later in this article, but learning to properly incorporate it into your workflow and work with these systems will ensure the best results.
2. Video Shorts Are Becoming Dominant
YouTube, Instagram, and Meta have all launched their video shorts on their platforms to compete with the cultural Megaforce that is TikTok.
Platforms like Instagram have even boasted a higher engagement rate in places like Brazil after the launch of its Reels. In fact, it is estimated to reach over 163 million users by 2028.
Video shorts and reels are a great way to curate brand exposure and engage with a large audience.
Unlike traditional long-form videos, short video clips have a better opportunity to go viral and lead directly to a new phenomenon in social media.
3. Influencer Marketing Is Evolving
Influencer marketing isn’t dead. Rather, it’s evolving.
What people once referred to as influencer marketing has really evolved into the creator economy.
Essentially, many brands are partnering with online creators who produce short and long-form content that bring subscribers to their platform.
YouTube announced last fall that it would split 45% of the revenue from Shorts ads with its creators (although that number has come under attack).
Regardless, it’s clear that renewed competition among social media giants and the evolution of social media has placed a greater premium on individual creators and rewarded them accordingly.
Everyone, from the White House to major makeup brands, is partnering with TikTokers, Instagram celebrities, and everyday content creators to promote brands and their messages.
Evidence of this is also reflected in the staying power of podcasting.
4. Podcasting Remains Strong
Podcasting represents one of the many awkward attempts of marketers failing to utilize new technology in their work offerings.
Much like TikTok and Instagram Reels, podcasting is better suited for personal branding and large-scale exposure than old-school SEO tactics.
Nevertheless, podcast listenership has grown by almost 30% since 2019 and continues to be a valuable tool for individual content creators and brand partnerships.
I suggest incorporating podcasting into your thought leadership strategy when possible and partnering with podcasts whose audience fits your brand.
Podcasting is not right for every brand, but it can be great for influencers, CEOs, and content creators your brand is partnered with.
5. There’s Greater Demand For Personal Experience
So, I started this list by stating how AI was the No. 1 content marketing trend of 2023, but I also listed how content creators are becoming more valuable.
This confluence of competing interests is no contradiction at all. Instead, it’s clear that many are looking to individual brands and thought leaders for their information.
Today, people don’t go to WebMD for health advice; they turn to Reddit or influencers.
Similarly, podcasters like Joe Rogan have several times more listeners than CNN on any given night.
This means that people desperately crave authenticity and turn to individuals they trust for advice.
Cultivating trust through thought leadership and personal branding is more important than ever.
If you search for an article on SEO basics, are you more likely to click on Search Engine Journal or some random blog?
In fact, personal branding and experience are so important Google has even added a new letter to its acronym EAT (now E-E-A-T) for the word “experience.”
So, tell more stories and convey greater empathy in your writing.
Leverage the tools listed above and make your writing more personalized to gain greater exposure.
6. Content Marketers Require Data More Than Ever
Zooming out a bit, I understand that podcasting and video shorts don’t make sense for almost 99% of businesses.
Instead, leveraging technology and focusing on data-driven content will be key to competing in the digital marketing space in 2023.
Fortunately, machine learning makes this easier than ever.
Investing in good software, such as SE Ranking, Semrush, or Ahrefs, will help you learn more about the competition and compete.
Similarly, updating your Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 will give you more detailed information about essential search metrics and strategies you can take to improve your campaigns.
7. Page Experience And Value Remain Integral
Finally, technology enables greater interconnectivity between all of our web platforms, and the ability to create seamless funnels and user experiences is paramount.
One innovation I’ve found interesting over the past year is the rise of shoppable content or the ability to purchase products on an embedded video or blog.
Little innovations like these increase the ease of conversions and make converting leads a synch.
I also suggest upgrading to a reputable CRM (customer relationship management) and integrating lead-magnet content, such as ebooks, infographics, and research, to entice more sales.
Make 2023 the year you maximize the value of your content and deliver a massive ROI.
2023 SEO Checklist For Content Writing
Now that I have covered some important trends, it’s time to move into optimizing your website’s content following the same trends for 2023. The following speaks to both page and blog content.
All guidance derives from the trends I’ve witnessed with clients and other website rankings over the year, and I expect much of this to stick throughout 2023.
To keep things organized, I advise my writers to think about SERP information first, then follow the page from top to bottom.
Begin with the title tag and meta description, and move down through the actual page as you see it on the screen.
Following is the checklist for optimizing each content element as we throttle into 2023.
1. Keyword Research Optimization
I spoke at length about the importance of data before. However, the greatest bit of data we can use comes from our keyword research.
Keywords are the currency of SEO.
All SEO professionals know that keyword research is the first step in creating optimized content.
SEJ features hundreds of articles on performing keyword research, so I won’t go into crazy detail here.
But sadly, many SMBs still refuse to perform any type of keyword research.
This is normal for new clients at my agency who have never worked with an SEO pro before.
But unfortunately, I also see a lack of keyword research for new clients who have worked with SEO professionals before.
If you neglect to perform keyword research, you’ll fail to garner any traction in the search results.
Here are some thoughts on keyword research trends as we head into 2023:
Target 80% Evergreen Keywords; 20% Trending Keywords
Take the time to truly understand the evergreen content needs of your market and audience, and target evergreen keywords for that content.
The goal is to have that content add value and solve the reader’s problems for many years into the future.
An example from a digital marketing agency: content writing tips, SEO basics, etc.
That said, you must also pay attention to trending keywords, such as the latest products available in your marketing.
An example from a digital marketing agency: how to optimize for voice search, predictive search, etc.
And if you follow these trending keywords and create authoritative content early enough, some may turn into evergreen keywords, and you’ll have a jump on the competition.
Create A Buyer Persona: Target Keywords And Content Toward That Buyer Persona
Spend time building your buyer persona, and create an actual fictional character such as SEO pro Sara.
- What would Sara be searching for?
- What keyword would attract her to your content?
- What type of CTAs will Sara engage with?
- How about imagery?
Don’t Go Crazy Over Volume
When creating a constant flow of content, typically through a blog, don’t go crazy over only targeting high-volume keywords.
Depending on the ROI of a service or product, I’ll target keywords as low as 10-20 visitors per month.
I had a client who sold annual investing services with high guarantees worth around $4,000 yearly.
I targeted a few terms of around 20 search volume and sold 8 of those annual services – $32,000 and all re-signed through the following year.
That is not bad for a low-volume keyword target.
Monitor Keyword Performance Closely
We track client keywords through Semrush, and if something’s not working as it should after around six weeks, we analyze the content and all of our target keyword positioning.
Sometimes a simple swap of words in a title tag helps with rankings.
Other times, it’s a complete overhaul of the content itself.
This is why tracking progress and continually revamping older content throughout the year is vital.
Don’t Forget About The Related Keywords
When I complete keyword research and have a target keyword that I’ll use for a page, I’ll also provide a list of related keywords for when I get to work.
Related keywords show more relevance to your topic, which helps send stronger signals about the page’s intentions for both search engines and readers.
Which title tag above attracts your eye?
2. Title Tag Optimization
David Ogilvy, the late Brit known as the “father of advertising” and founder of Ogilvy & Mather, said:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.”
Though Ogilvy was a traditional advertiser, his guidance rings true for 21st-century online marketing.
Title tags remain one of the strongest signals for search engines to explain what that page is about.
When writing title tags, they must not only engage humans but also satisfy SEO.
This is why the target keyword must be included in the headline.
The best practice is to have it as close to the front of the title as possible, and I’ve witnessed rankings change based on swapping around words in titles.
Here are other things to check off about title tag creation:
Keep It Short
The standard practice for SEO professionals is to create title tags between 50-60 characters because Google typically truncates everything after 60.
But after a year of experimenting with various lengths, I try to write them shorter – like 40-50 characters.
This requires added energy from copywriters, but the effort is worth it.
Sometimes when creating a content strategy for clients and my workflow, I spend more time creating a list of optimized topics than writing a single 1,500-word article.
Feature Numbers
A Conductor study revealed that headlines featuring numbers (exact numbers of points such as 47 Content Writing Tips) get 36% more clicks.
Without a doubt, use numbers where possible.
Use Brackets Or Parentheses
HubSpot reported that using brackets in titles increases click-through rates by 38%.
3. Meta Description Optimization
Here are the tips on optimizing meta descriptions in 2023:
Keep Them Shorter Than the Recommended 150-160
This is especially true for mobile. We began experimenting with metas around 120-130 and observed increased click-through rates among various clients.
Think Free Advertisements
Think of these as a free way to advertise and as a main supporter of your title tag.
A good formula is the struggle/solution statement that entices a searcher to click.
Also, include a call to action with some “words that sell” (for more on that, read Richard Bayan’s Words that Sell).
Always Use Your Target Keywords In The Meta Descriptions
Though Google says meta descriptions have no direct ranking value, they certainly have an indirect ranking value.
If the target keywords are searched for, they will become bold in the meta descriptions, providing relevancy to the searcher’s intent. This influences a clickthrough, indirectly affecting rank value.
Also, though Google might only use your meta descriptions about 3o% of the time and typically automatically populates them, it’s still the best practice to provide unique meta descriptions for every page across the website.
I’d argue that even pages such as the privacy policy or contact pages are typically left to self-populate.
4. Header Tag Optimization
Header tags are simply subtopics that break up the text and provide structure. These are especially effective in listicle articles where every number/section is the next section’s overall topic.
Most people scan when reading; these header tags are the first thing people typically read.
Everyone wants to know what’s in it for them, and this makes that super simple. They also are vital to ranking for featured snippets.
Google typically takes header tags and uses them as bullets for a snippet. The query [title tag optimization] provides the perfect example:
To optimize these in 2023:
Use Target And Related Keywords
Always use your main keyword in at least one header tag and high-value related keywords in others.
Don’t Keyword-Stuff
Instead, infuse keywords naturally.
This should be easy if you outline your content and set out to provide the most valuable information to the reader about the subject.
Keep Them Short
I’m saying as short as possible – six words or less. Remember, your audience is not dumb.
This section is about a checklist for optimizing content elements.
I don’t have to write “Optimizing header tags in 2023 based on current trends.”
Instead, “header tag optimization” suffices.
5. Internal Links/Image Optimization
Internal links within the text itself are vital for strong SEO.
They send strong signals to search engines about the relevance of another page on your website and how you place value on that page.
Don’t Go Crazy With Internal Links
Instead, use them where a reader naturally values the added content to learn more.
Use A Strong Anchor Text
The goal here is to use anchor text that includes the target keyword of the page being linked to.
This practice is all about sending the strongest signals possible to search engines and users about what you think is valuable information that supports the current page’s content.
As for images, remember: Search engines can’t read an image (photo, PDF, etc.), so we use “alternative” text.
Here are quick pointers for 2023:
Each Image Should Have A Unique Title And Alt Text That Includes A Target Keyword
The latter is crucial because, according to Google, people search for over a billion images daily.
And if these images feature alt text that’s keyworded for the image search query, you’ll quickly discover other streams of traffic.
And for titles, nothing is worse for search engines than “Shutterstock – 2828923990213409858329.”
My agency places unique titles on all – even if they are the same; we simply notate them by -1, -2, -3, etc.
Use Captions Wherever Possible
I discovered that simply adding captions to images at a motorcycle publication increased on-page time by over 20%.
Explain as much as possible, but don’t keyword stuff.
Here’s an ideal place to use related keywords, but only those related to the image.
Make sure to use italics to differentiate the text from the body of the content. Some content management systems don’t do a good job of this, so simple italics will work.
6. Body Of Content Optimization
Following are some quick bullet points for optimizing the actual body of the content on any page or blog:
First, Think About ‘Psychological’ Space
This means not writing long, Faulkner-type sentences or creating long paragraphs.
Short and choppy for the win, considering people scan content and will ignore anything that looks hard to read. This is especially true on mobile!
Forget About The Keyword Density Of A Target Keyword
Although many tools still exist for this purpose, forget about keyword density.
Use your target keyword and list of related keywords naturally throughout the content.
For 90% of my client blog/page work, I begin with the list of target and related keywords. I glance through them before writing, and they usually appear automatically throughout my writing.
I still check the list during the editing stage and naturally infuse as many as possible throughout the text.
Sometimes a few related keywords don’t make sense, so I don’t use them.
Thoughts On Length
Regarding length, I’ve been experimenting for over a year on this and getting some mixed signals from Google.
But one thing is for sure – longer is better for most situations.
For the main category and product pages, I target a minimum of 500 words. Regarding blogs, the minimum is bumped to 1,200.
However, many categories land around 1,500 words, and for more intense subjects (such as articles for publications like Search Engine Journal), my minimum is 2,000 words (though they typically finish much longer).
Two Dark Points
Here’s a quick checklist of two essential elements that should be included in every body of content across your website in 2023 – from service/product pages to blogs to about pages.
- Bullet Points.
- Bold/Italics.
Each element sends strong signals to search engines, explaining that readers, and thus search engines, should pay attention because these elements are vital to the content’s message.
7. Learn To Use AI Effectively
One final point I want to reiterate is how to use AI appropriately. There are several ways to use ChatGPT to augment your workflow, from using it as a search engine for research to optimizing the HTML of your website.
The key is to use AI as a guide and as an assistant, not to replace the act of writing itself.
Here are some key notes to consider when adopting new AI platforms into your workflow.
Search Engines Consider AI-Content That Manipulates SERPs As Spam
Churning out multiple blog posts using ChatGPT or any other predictive text will probably be detected as spam.
Instead, use these tools as research or as quick blocks of text when struggling with writer’s block. Then, edit them down and refine them into your own voice and style.
Make Writing Personal And Humanized
I mentioned earlier that Google added experience to its E-A-T algorithm, prioritizing the author’s expertise and experience as a ranking factor.
Adding personal anecdotes to text and personalizing your content will be massively important and is just one way Google is attempting to thwart AI.
Furthermore, between the time it takes to edit AI-generated content and write it yourself, you are not saving that much time – you are risking a whole lot more.
Use AI For Editing And Organization
One ethical feature of ChatGPT and other tools is the ability to edit and minimize your text.
For example, if you tell ChatGPT to shrink a meta description above 160 characters to below that length, it can do it easily. It can also do the same for any blog you write.
Tools like Grammarly and Hemingway also use predictive text and machine learning to accomplish the same task and are invaluable.
Again, leverage AI to optimize your writing, not replace it entirely.
Concluding Thoughts
As technology advances, the need to balance the impulse to supplement too much of our workflow with AI and to keep our writing organic will be difficult.
Nevertheless, users and search engines prefer creative and organic content over AI.
Does this mean AI is useless or harmful? No.
Rather, there are several areas we can leverage AI to optimize our workflow, catch any errors we would usually miss, and help us automate some of our internal processes.
The balance between Yin and Yang will always remain central to the human experience.
In today’s world, balancing the growing demands of technology with our ethics and creative capacity will be key to how we address this new and uncertain territory.
More Resources:
Featured Image: kung_tom/Shutterstock
SEO
How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO
Quick question: What do you typically do with your old blog posts? Most likely, the answer is: Not much.
If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Many of us in SEO and content marketing tend to focus on continuously creating new content, rather than leveraging our existing blog posts.
However, here’s the reality—Google is becoming increasingly sophisticated in evaluating content quality, and we need to adapt accordingly. Just as it’s easier to encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases, updating old content on your website is a more efficient and sustainable strategy in the long run.
Ways to Optimize Older Content
Some of your old content might not be optimized for SEO very well, rank for irrelevant keywords, or drive no traffic at all. If the quality is still decent, however, you should be able to optimize it properly with little effort.
Refresh Content
If your blog post contains a specific year or mentions current events, it may become outdated over time. If the rest of the content is still relevant (like if it’s targeting an evergreen topic), simply updating the date might be all you need to do.
Rewrite Old Blog Posts
When the content quality is low (you might have greatly improved your writing skills since you’ve written the post) but the potential is still there, there’s not much you can do apart from rewriting an old blog post completely.
This is not a waste—you’re saving time on brainstorming since the basic structure is already in place. Now, focus on improving the quality.
Delete Old Blog Posts
You might find a blog post that just seems unusable. Should you delete your old content? It depends. If it’s completely outdated, of low quality, and irrelevant to any valuable keywords for your website, it’s better to remove it.
Once you decide to delete the post, don’t forget to set up a 301 redirect to a related post or page, or to your homepage.
Promote Old Blog Posts
Sometimes all your content needs is a bit of promotion to start ranking and getting traffic again. Share it on your social media, link to it from a new post – do something to get it discoverable again to your audience. This can give it the boost it needs to attract organic links too.
Which Blog Posts Should You Update?
Deciding when to update or rewrite blog posts is a decision that relies on one important thing: a content audit.
Use your Google Analytics to find out which blog posts used to drive tons of traffic, but no longer have the same reach. You can also use Google Search Console to find out which of your blog posts have lost visibility in comparison to previous months. I have a guide on website analysis using Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can follow.
If you use keyword tracking tools like SE Ranking, you can also use the data it provides to come up with a list of blog posts that have dropped in the rankings.
Make data-driven decisions to identify which blog posts would benefit from these updates – i.e., which ones still have the chance to recover their keyword rankings and organic traffic.
With Google’s helpful content update, which emphasizes better user experiences, it’s crucial to ensure your content remains relevant, valuable, and up-to-date.
How To Update Old Blog Posts for SEO
Updating articles can be an involved process. Here are some tips and tactics to help you get it right.
Author’s Note: I have a Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist you might also be interested in following while you’re doing your content audit.
Conduct New Keyword Research
Updating your post without any guide won’t get you far. Always do your keyword research to understand how users are searching for your given topic.
Proper research can also show you relevant questions and sections that can be added to the blog post you’re updating or rewriting. Make sure to take a look at the People Also Ask (PAA) section that shows up when you search for your target keyword. Check out other websites like Answer The Public, Reddit, and Quora to see what users are looking for too.
Look for New Ranking Opportunities
When trying to revive an old blog post for SEO, keep an eye out for new SEO opportunities (e.g., AI Overview, featured snippets, and related search terms) that didn’t exist when you first wrote your blog post. Some of these features can be targeted by the new content you will add to your post, if you write with the aim to be eligible for it.
Rewrite Headlines and Meta Tags
If you want to attract new readers, consider updating your headlines and meta tags.
Your headlines and meta tags should fulfill these three things:
- Reflect the rewritten and new content you’ve added to the blog post.
- Be optimized for the new keywords it’s targeting (if any).
- Appeal to your target audience – who may have changed tastes from when the blog post was originally made.
Remember that your meta tags in particular act like a brief advertisement for your blog post, since this is what the user first sees when your blog post is shown in the search results page.
Take a look at your blog post’s click-through rate on Google Search Console – if it falls below 2%, it’s definitely time for new meta tags.
Replace Outdated Information and Statistics
Updating blog content with current studies and statistics enhances the relevance and credibility of your post. By providing up-to-date information, you help your audience make better, well-informed decisions, while also showing that your content is trustworthy.
Tighten or Expand Ideas
Your old content might be too short to provide real value to users – or you might have rambled on and on in your post. It’s important to evaluate whether you need to make your content more concise, or if you need to elaborate more.
Keep the following tips in mind as you refine your blog post’s ideas:
- Evaluate Helpfulness: Measure how well your content addresses your readers’ pain points. Aim to follow the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
- Identify Missing Context: Consider whether your content needs more detail or clarification. View it from your audience’s perspective and ask if the information is complete, or if more information is needed.
- Interview Experts: Speak with industry experts or thought leaders to get fresh insights. This will help support your writing, and provide unique points that enhance the value of your content.
- Use Better Examples: Examples help simplify complex concepts. Add new examples or improve existing ones to strengthen your points.
- Add New Sections if Needed: If your content lacks depth or misses a key point, add new sections to cover these areas more thoroughly.
- Remove Fluff: Every sentence should contribute to the overall narrative. Eliminate unnecessary content to make your post more concise.
- Revise Listicles: Update listicle items based on SEO recommendations and content quality. Add or remove headings to stay competitive with higher-ranking posts.
Improve Visuals and Other Media
No doubt that there are tons of old graphics and photos in your blog posts that can be improved with the tools we have today. Make sure all of the visuals used in your content are appealing and high quality.
Update Internal and External Links
Are your internal and external links up to date? They need to be for your SEO and user experience. Outdated links can lead to broken pages or irrelevant content, frustrating readers and hurting your site’s performance.
You need to check for any broken links on your old blog posts, and update them ASAP. Updating your old blog posts can also lead to new opportunities to link internally to other blog posts and pages, which may not have been available when the post was originally published.
Optimize for Conversions
When updating content, the ultimate goal is often to increase conversions. However, your conversion goals may have changed over the years.
So here’s what you need to check in your updated blog post. First, does the call-to-action (CTA) still link to the products or services you want to promote? If not, update it to direct readers to the current solution or offer.
Second, consider where you can use different conversion strategies. Don’t just add a CTA at the end of the post.
Last, make sure that the blog post leverages product-led content. It’s going to help you mention your products and services in a way that feels natural, without being too pushy. Being subtle can be a high ROI tactic for updated posts.
Key Takeaway
Reviving old blog articles for SEO is a powerful strategy that can breathe new life into your content and boost your website’s visibility. Instead of solely focusing on creating new posts, taking the time to refresh existing content can yield impressive results, both in terms of traffic and conversions.
By implementing these strategies, you can transform old blog posts into valuable resources that attract new readers and retain existing ones. So, roll up your sleeves, dive into your archives, and start updating your content today—your audience and search rankings will thank you!
SEO
How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages
The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.
Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.
What Is Compressibility?
In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.
TL/DR Of Compression
Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.
This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:
- Identify Patterns:
A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases - Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size. - Shorter References Use Less Bits:
The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.
A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.
Research Paper About Detecting Spam
This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.
Marc Najork
One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.
Dennis Fetterly
Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.
Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.
Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis
Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.
Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.
Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:
“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”
The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.
They write:
“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.
…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”
High Compressibility Correlates To Spam
The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.
Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.
The researchers concluded:
“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”
But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:
“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.
Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:
95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.
More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”
The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.
Insight Into Quality Rankings
The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.
The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.
The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.
This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:
“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.
For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”
So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.
Combining Multiple Signals
The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.
The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:
“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”
These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:
“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”
Key Insight:
Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.
What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.
Takeaways
We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.
Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:
- Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
- Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
- Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
- In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
- When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
- Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
- Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.
Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:
Detecting spam web pages through content analysis
Featured Image by Shutterstock/pathdoc
SEO
New Google Trends SEO Documentation
Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.
The new guide has six sections:
- About Google Trends
- Tutorial on monitoring trends
- How to do keyword research with the tool
- How to prioritize content with Trends data
- How to use Google Trends for competitor research
- How to use Google Trends for analyzing brand awareness and sentiment
The section about monitoring trends advises there are two kinds of rising trends, general and specific trends, which can be useful for developing content to publish on a site.
Using the Explore tool, you can leave the search box empty and view the current rising trends worldwide or use a drop down menu to focus on trends in a specific country. Users can further filter rising trends by time periods, categories and the type of search. The results show rising trends by topic and by keywords.
To search for specific trends users just need to enter the specific queries and then filter them by country, time, categories and type of search.
The section called Content Calendar describes how to use Google Trends to understand which content topics to prioritize.
Google explains:
“Google Trends can be helpful not only to get ideas on what to write, but also to prioritize when to publish it. To help you better prioritize which topics to focus on, try to find seasonal trends in the data. With that information, you can plan ahead to have high quality content available on your site a little before people are searching for it, so that when they do, your content is ready for them.”
Read the new Google Trends documentation:
Get started with Google Trends
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero