If you’re an SEO specialist or just a simple website owner who aims to rank your website higher, then this article is for you.

The Google Engineers has been continuously finding ways to give people more accurate results for their search queries. Google right now is using a machine learning technology called RankBrain to help deliver its search results. And just recently, Google announced that Rankbrain is Google’s third most important ranking signal in their algorithm and it’s becoming more important every day.

The exact way how Google ranks websites is still a mystery for some website owners. Knowing how RankBrain works can help you improve your SEO, particularly with the newest SEO trend, the voice search.

WHAT IS GOOGLE RANKBRAIN?

RankBrain is the Artificial Intelligence algorithm that Google uses to understand search engine queries. What makes RankBrain unique is that it learns from the users rather than just following a set of rules that have been programmed into it.

Since it was introduced in 2015, RankBrain has then played a significant role in the world of SEO. Google announced that RankBrain had become their third-biggest ranking signal, the other two are content and backlinks.

HOW GOOGLE RANKBRAIN WORKS?

Before RankBrain, Google would try to match the words in your search query to words on a page.

But 15% of the keywords that people typed were never seen before by Google. And because these keywords were brand new, Google had no clue what the searcher actually wanted. So they guessed, and this is the reason why years ago, Google sometimes returns irrelevant search results.

But then again, that was years ago. Google now uses Rankbrain to determine the intent of searchers. RankBrain tries to actually figure out what you mean by matching never-before-seen keywords to keywords that Google HAS seen before.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE FOR GOOGLE RANKBRAIN?

Since RankBrain creates a big impact on your search engine ranking, you better not ignore it. Google Rankbrain is paying very close attention to how you interact with the search results. Specifically, it’s looking at:

• Organic Click-Through-Rate
• Dwell Time
• Bounce Rate
• Pogo-sticking

These are known as user experience signals (UX signals).

1. IMPROVE ORGANIC CLICK-THROUGH-RATE ( CTR )

Here are some of our tips for you to improve your website’s organic click-through-rate ( CTR )

• Focus on your headlines — A good title can grab your audience attention and convince them to click, to read, and to share your content. Never forget to include your main keyword in the title.
• Use descriptive URLs — Because nobody wants to click on a link called http://example.com/?p=123
• Create custom meta descriptions — Give your readers a summary of your content. A compelling meta description has the power to raise the click-through rate of your organic search results.
• Implement rich snippets — Structured data allows you to provide a lot more information to your potential visitors right in the SERPs.

2. BOOST DWELL TIME

Dwell time is the amount of time a user spends on your site after clicking on your result. Google RankBrain wants you to publish contents that makes your users happy which is indicated by the period of time they spent on your site.

3 – 4. BOUNCE RATE AND POGO-STICKING

Bounce rate is determined by the number of people ( in percent ) who visit a single page on a website. A high bounce rate isn’t always bad, as it can mean that the user gets an answer to his question and leave the site immediately.

80%+ is very bad
70 – 80% is poor
50 – 70% is average
30 – 50% is excellent
20% or below is likely a tracking error (due to duplicate analytics code, analytics implementation is almost certainly broken, third-party addons such as live-chat).

Pogo-sticking is when the searcher clicks on a link on a SERP, sees that it’s not what she is looking for, and immediately bounces off by hitting the back button. This phenomenon is a direct result of immediate dissatisfaction in the search result, unlike bounce rate—pogo sticking is always a bad thing.

HOW TO REDUCE YOUR BOUNCE RATE AND POGO-STICKING AND BOOST DWELL TIME?

1. Provide a Good User Experience

When SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) and User Experience collides, your search engine marketing is a sure big success.
The overall feeling of a user while they are interacting with your website plays a vital part of the user’s decision whether to keep browsing on your website or to click the back button and look for another site.

Developing a website that looks and works great on all platforms and devices is the first thing to consider if you want to reduce your bounce rate.

2. Improve Your Site’s Speed

It’s an undeniable fact that high performing websites have higher SEO ranking which in result brings in more visitors and higher conversion rate.
A one-second delay in page load time yields:

• 11% fewer page views
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• 7% loss in conversions

A few extra seconds could have a huge impact on your website performance and the ability to engage visitors and make sales.
To learn more about how to Optimize your website’s performance, read this article “ SEO: 9 EFFECTIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE’S PERFORMANCE ”

3. Use Videos To Engage Audience

Video can be used make the user journey and experience better. They are highly engaging and grabs attention more than text and images.

4. Use High Quality Images to Captivate User Attention

Using high quality images is proven effective tool that you can use to decrease your bounce rate and to avoid pogo-sticking.
Images helps draw attention & trigger the emotion of your audience.You can use them as full screen backgrounds, parallax backgrounds or as background slides.

5. Show Your Credibility

Proudly display the glowing reviews of your product or services, customer reviews ( testimonials ), awards, endorsements, certifications, quality scores, and industry affiliations of your company. This builds user trust into providing their credit card and personal information to your website.

6. Target Abandoning Users

Add exit intent popup for your website to help reduce bounce rates and increase your sales. This can track when a user is about to leave your website and show them a targeted message at the precise moment. This is a highly effective technique with a proven success rate.

If you want an easy way to optimize your website for Google RankBrain, Go4global is here to help you. We will you appear on the first page or even on top 10 of Google’s Search Engine Result Page. You may email us at info@192.168.254.121/go4globaldesign.com or you may also give us a call 818-491-6838. Contact us now!