SEO: Does Google decide who the experts are?

This is a non technical and very basic introduction to SEO. I wrote several weeks ago about the importance of auditing your information diet, and I am constantly thinking about my online consumption. Understanding the basics of SEO was both an opportunity for me to learn more about something I didn’t understand well and is likely to make me a better professional, and to improve my digital literacy as a human on the internet.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is basically making sure that your content is presented in a way that makes it most likely to be shown high on the page in search results when someone searches for content that you’ve got available. For example, if someone were to google non calorie food trackers, I would want them to find Plate Palette really easily.

Why does SEO matter?

Generally, helping people find your content matters. You can pay for ads on social media and use targeted ads that way, but SEO is one way to get ‘organic’ reach, aka not pay for anything but still get your stuff in front of peoples eyeballs.

Also, the higher ranked you are on a Google search the more reputable and trustworthy your content can seem. This is a benefit! It also means that people who don't really have the most trustworthy content can hire someone to optimize their site for SEO, and end up beating out more reliable sources of information in search results. Sigh. Let this serve as another reminder that digital literacy matters so much, and in so many nuanced ways. More on this below.

How does SEO work?

Google “crawls” your website and then indexes it. This means a bot goes and looks at your website, and gathers up publicly available information about it, then dumps that information into its index. The index is just like the index in a cookbook- every word Google has found on websites gets an entry.

The entire index is what populates Google Search results, but unlike in a cookbook, where results are shown in numerical order from the first page they appear on to the last, Google uses algorithms to determine which order to show things in.

What algorithms are used in SEO?

There are hundreds of algorithms applied to SEO. One algorithm is PageRank which basically looks at all of the ways websites connect to one another, and determines which ones are most important. Not all links are equal in PageRank- getting a link to your website from CNN will do more for you than getting a link to your website from your husband's blog, for example. The idea behind PageRank today is that every site on the internet has some amount of influence, and if a more influential website refers to you, that says more about you than if 50 less influential websites refer to you. There is some nuance to this that relates to expertise. CNN is probably more well known across the population than Runners World Magazine, but a link to a blog about running is likely to be more well ranked if it comes from Runner’s World than from CNN. This is because Runner’s World is more reputable of a source to runners than CNN is.

If you’re logged in to a Google account, some of the algorithms even optimize for results that are more local to you. All of this complexity is why SEO experts have become an entire industry of people. I don’t think it's critical or really possible to understand all of the various algorithms, but Google’s fundamentals on creating helpful content, recommend people think through “EEAT” which is probably helpful to consider and understand as a consumer, and not just a creator.

What does SEO mean for me as someone who just uses the internet?

EEAT stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, and it’s what the Google search algorithms are meant to reward. The first three done well, can lead to more trustworthiness. A funny thing about the internet though- anyone can fake experience, speak with authority, and offer their expertise on something, and gain trustworthiness that is rewarded by Google search algorithms, without ever actually having had to earn that in the real world. Google does actively try to avoid ranking things well that are faked. We all know when we spot an AI generated article out there, and Google does too. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t see AI generated content as a non-starter, they see it as a reason to make sure it's not too spammy or meant to trick their algorithms. I personally don’t want to reward pretty good AI content over a human’s mediocre content at all.

This can actually democratize the internet to some extent. It means that I have as good of a chance at getting my content in front of readers as someone who has run a marathon, but did so on a low carb diet and used ChatGPT to turn their training notes into a blog. It also means that we as consumers have to be aware that what we consume on the first few pages of a Google Search is from the authoritative experts that a gigantic tech company has determined are trustworthy, and not necessarily from people who we might determine are trustworthy in our own lives and experiences.

This is not to tell anyone to go deeper into the search pages, and look for some niche internet content that some mystery tech oligarch is hiding from you. The last thing we need is more paranoia and distrust of actual experts. This is to say that remembering to surround yourself with diverse people, diverse thoughts, and diverse opinions in the real world is hugely important. It’s critical to think about the experience and expertise that you respect based on your own values, and your own complicated and beautiful life.