Google Autocomplete: Relevant Keyword Searches

By Mike Munter

Google Autocomplete: Relevant Keyword Searches Video Transcription

Hello, it's Mike Munte with Affordable Reputation Management and what we're going to talk about today is changing Google Autosuggest and making sure that the content is relevant that we're attempting to make the changes for.

Select 15-20 Relevant Keyword Search Terms

One of the first things we do when a new client contacts us is we come up with a list of 15 to 20 searches that are relevant to the keyword term. So, let's say for example we have an individual named "Joe Smith" and he wants to change his Google autosuggestions because there's a term he doesn't like.  

What we do is we come up with fifteen to twenty terms that are relevant to content that is already existing on the internet. And the reason we come up with this many searches is because just up until recently Google used to actually give us 10 suggestions in their autosuggest box. More recently, we see four, but we have idea if that will ever change - if Google will make it 10 or 20 or 15 - we don't know. 

So, the reason we do 15 to 20 is to safeguard against that also just to keep it looking natural, so that we're not just targeting 4, 5, or 6 terms. By targeting a variety of terms, we make it look more natural to Google's algorithm.

Relevance - Keyword in URL and Title

Now, when it comes to relevance, what we look for is the keyword actually in two places. One in the URL of the domain and number two in the title of the web page. 

So, for example, come over here and take a look. Using our hypothetical client "Joe Smith", let's say that we came up with 15 search terms for Joe and he said, "Hey, I want to make 'gardening' one of my search terms."

So, we'd take a look and we're like, "Alright, 'Joe Smith Gardening'". Well, we take a look in Google and we find that there are no - there's no content for "Joe Smith gardening." There's nothing with it in the title; there's nothing with in in the URL. There's no mention of anything that's relevant. 

So, the likelihood of changing "Joe Smith gardening" in Google autosuggest is going to be lower and it's really not going to make sense. I'm not saying you can't do it, but there's really no point in doing this exercise or if you're gonna create suggestions for content that does not exist online.

The Right Approach To Autocomplete Relevant Content

So, a better way to approach this would be - we're just gonna get rid of the "gardening" suggestion because it doesn't exist, but it does happen that Joe Smith loves tuna! And he blogs about it every once in a while and he does fishing, he has different ways of preparing it and he cans it.

And so he has created a website called "JoeSmithTuna.com" and he's given it a title "Joe Smith Tuna Blog," so "Joe Smith tuna" would be a very relevant piece of content that we'd want to do searches for. 

So, this is how your search result is going to look, when you type, Joe Smith tuna" [into Google], you're gonna see [the keyword] in the title right here and you're going to see it in the URL. And you may see it in the description, but we don't really care about that bcause the description does not have much to do with search results.

So, the good news is that if you're making a list of [keyword] terms for yourself and let's say you can only come up with 8 or 10 [relevant] terms, you can actually create relevant content very quickly and it's an additional service that we perform for our clients. 

Creating Your Own Relevant Content

So, what we do is we go onto usually Wordpress.com or Blogspot.com and we come up with a topic of interest or of relevance to the client and we create that blog so it would become joesmithtuna.wordpress.com or let's say he happens to be a basket weaver on the side and just enjoys that, so we might have joesmithbasketweaver.blogspot.com and then when we create the content on that domain, you want to adhere to two rules:

One is you want to make it unique, so don't just go out and find a bunch of basket weaving posts that someone else has written and copy /paste those onto your blog. For one that's copyright infringement and number two it could cause that blog to not appear in search results, or it even could get de-indexed by Google. So, just take the time the time to write some good content and then, the second thing is it's useful.

You know, if you're gonna do this, make it useful for somebody who might actually look for information on basket weaving - add some pictures, maybe a "how to" video, etc. You don't have to go too far into it, though, usually we find that a 1 or 2 page website is plenty and of course you've got it in your URL, right here. This would become joesmithbasketweaver.blogspot.com - that would be totally free. You could do it on Wordpress, you can do it in Weebly. And you also want to make sure that you're title the blog with that keyword in there.

So, that's how you come up with your list of relevant terms and you can create some relevant content if you don't already have it. 

If you have any questions about changing Google autosuggestions, you can give me a call at 503-890-6663. We'd be happy to help you!