Table of Contents for Google API Documents Leak
In this four-part blog series, we share:
- 7 SEO Caveats for SMBs: Insights from the Google API Leak
It shares the story of the Google Leak and explains the difference between an attribute that Google measures and an SEO ranking factor. - SMB SEO Validation: Our Proven Tactics Confirmed by Google Leak
These are 12 SEO considerations for SMBs in the Google documents leak that only served to validate and reinforce our attention to them. - 12 Key SEO Tips for SMBs: Post-Google Leak Focus
Known SEO practices that require additional focus for SMBs. - Google Leak: 12 Shocking SEO Revelations for SMBs
These revelations shocked SEO experts.
This is Part 3 of the series. It highlights SEO practices that we’ve long been aware of for SMBs but now believe we should emphasize more.
12 Key SEO Tips for SMBs: Post-Google Leak Focus
Key SEO Tip 1
Getting Website Pages Ranked Takes Time.
Our agency has long emphasized to our SMB clients that getting new pages ranked may take time. When SMBs launch or relaunch a website, we’ve told our clients that getting Google to fully rank a newly launched website may take four to five months.
Why we’re emphasizing even more patience after the Google API documents leak
We now learned that Google may “hold back” new website content and domains (the site’s address) until they are “proven trustworthy” and not spammy.
Although the Google documents leak doesn’t refer directly to site age per se, it does mention putting websites in a sandbox, sort of quarantining them, because of their immature host age.
Our real-world insights and experience in getting found by Google
For our SEO clients, we track monthly analytics after a website launches. We also submit the pages to Google for indexing. Despite engaging in these best practices, it often takes months before Google’s search returns showcase pages, particularly for SMBs.
Real-world example
For example, when we launched our agency website in 2017, we had a paltry 11 clicks from monthly organic (SEO) visitors. At three months, the number of clicks rose to 28 monthly organic clicks. After one year, we had 50 monthly visitors from organic search, representing just 18% of all our traffic.
Within seven years, our organic search comprises 67% of our website traffic.
Takeaway about getting organic traffic
Engage in best SEO practices. It takes time. But it pays long-term dividends.
Key SEO Tip 2
Keep Content Fresh.
Why we’re emphasizing fresh content after the Google API documents leak
The Google documents expressly refer to a content “freshness score.”
Our real-world insights and experience regarding content freshness
As an SEO agency, we’ve seen our small business clients gradually lose traffic when they choose not to invest in regular content updates or if they plan to do it themselves but don’t.
Likewise, if they “set it and forget it,” traffic eventually tapers off. Pages and posts that once were heavily trafficked disappear from the search return pages.
We get it. It’s hard to be consistently intentional with the cadence of your content updates.
After all, we all have businesses to run—day-to-day activities to serve our customers. Who has time?
Freshness takeaway
The lesson here is clear. Don’t have time for your website?
Either make time or outsource your efforts.
Don’t neglect your content.
Google has a content Freshness score for your website. Update the content on your website regularly.
Key SEO Tip 3
Backlinks Still Matter—a Lot.
Backlinks are links from an external website. In other words, a company or organization finds your content so helpful that they link directly to it.
Why we’re emphasizing getting legitimate links more after the Google documents leak
They remain impactful. The Google API leaks uncovered that Google wants links to be both relevant to your content and linked from diverse sources.
Read our next article to discover what shocked us the most about links.
Our real-world insights with backlinks
With all the other ranking factors now available, we believed Google when they said backlinks don’t matter as much anymore. We’re going to emphasize them more again.
We have found that this is one of the most challenging factors for business-to-business (B2B) clients to grow particularly for small and midsize businesses.
By contrast, business-to-consumer (B2C) clients have an easier time and more opportunity to get links from their contacts and customers who know them.
Backlinks takeaway
External links still matter. Recent links matter more.
Key SEO Tip 4
Google pays a great deal of attention to anchor text and links. Be sure to include relevant anchor links in your content.
Anchor Text Counts.
Anchor text is the visual text on a link
Why we’re emphasizing anchor text more after the Google documents leak
The Google API documents link has an entire page about anchor text observation, measurement, calculation, and assessment. It has an Anchor score separate from Link scores and Authority scores.
The documents tell us that sites receive a Spam Penalty, a ranking demotion of sorts if there is a mismatch between what the link reads and the page where it’s headed.
Our real-world insights and experience with anchor links
We’ve always told our SMB clients that the link should not be generic. In other words, if possible, it should not read “Click here” or “Read more.” This means nothing to Google.
Instead, the anchor text should be relevant to the page it’s headed toward, such as “Read more about our marketing consultancy.” This example goes to our “about us” page, and the anchor text reads “about our marketing consultancy.” Notice that “Read more” is not included in the link.
Instead, it’s helpful to have keyword phrases that are relevant to the page to which you are linking.
Anchor text takeawy
Anchor text is essential. Anchors have their own score. Pepper them into your content with links that lead to relevant content.
Key SEO Tip 5
Text Near Links Matter.
Why we’re emphasizing text near anchor links after the Google documents leak
The Google documents explain that the text near the anchor links matter.
Real-world insights about text surrounding anchor links
We’ve always suspected that this is the case. Google crawlers are pretty smart, and it seems logical that they could understand text near the links.
We find this information to be reassuring. At times, it’s difficult to determine which part of a statistic, for example, should have the anchor text. Should it be the publication source? The number or percentage? Perhaps we can worry a little less about this one now that we know they both matter.
Text takeaway
Ensure that the text near your anchor text is also relevant to the focus of your content.
Key SEO Tip 6
Content Can Be Short and Rank Well.
Good news! Content doesn’t have to be lengthy to rank well.
Why we’re emphasizing that longer content isn’t necessary
The Google documents leak reveals that short content has a slightly different scoring system than longer content.
Our real-world insights about content length
Years ago, we would share research that showed that articles with more words ranked better. From there, we modified our opinion. You should write the minimum number of words needed to express the ideas.
From the information we heard watching Google’s office hours, we believed it was better to combine short-form content into longer articles. However, we haven’t seen this be a successful SEO practice.
Real-world examples
Short-form content does indeed rank well.
For example, “Contact us” pages rank well. They have minimal content. For example, my contact page has only 100 words or so.
Similarly, our most popular blog is 65 Inspiring Social Media Ideas. The 65 ideas represent less than 450 words with a few hundred words of introductory content before them. These ideas are a subset of a 20,000-word, 6-part ebook on social media marketing content for SMBs. The latter gets little attention.
I have also seen clients’ content that is brief and quite popular.
Content length takeaway
Write content to an appropriate length without stressing about the word count.
Google does not favor long-form (more than 1,000 words) content over short-form content.
Key SEO Tip 7
Site Authority Is Something Google Measures.
Why we’re emphasizing that site authority matters
We mentioned earlier that sites take time to gain SEO traction. The Google documents leak reveals that Google looks at an overall sitewide authority score. Chrome data is also in the mix.
Our real-world insights about site authority
What Google said in the past
Google has long said that domain authority doesn’t matter. Now, many SEOs are saying Google is a liar. Whether Google was mincing words (site vs domain authority), misinformed, evolving, or lying outright, it does seem that the age and status of your website matter.
Competing with the big boys and girls
In our experience, it has always been difficult for SMBs to compete with enterprise companies—perhaps because of this site authority score. (We discuss this in greater depth in the fourth part of our series.)
How to assess how you’re doing
Although we’re not privy to Chrome data, we can see impressions (what people are searching for), clicks (if they went to your website page), and average engagement time per session on a website as a whole and individual pages. You can find impressions and clicks for your website in Google Search Console. Engagement time is in Google Analytics- 4 (GA-4).
We like to see people engage for an average of one minute or longer in a content session. Our marketing agency site shows an average engagement time per session for this year for all traffic as 1 minute and 34 seconds. It’s even higher for organic search: more than two minutes per session on average.
Does this translate into better rankings? We’re not sure. But it should. We’re hoping Google is looking or will be looking at GA-4 data for SEO.
Site authority takeaway
Include content that people want to “google” (impressions), are drawn to (title tag and meta description), click on (clicks), and engage with (time spent in the session and on the individual pages).
If you have content that isn’t reaching these goals, analyze what changes you need to make. At times, content may need to be improved. Other times, you may need to delete or archive pages.
Key SEO Tip 8
Google measures click data to assess the popularity of your website.
Be One of the Cool Kids.
Why we’re emphasizing that your pages need to be popular.
The Google leak revealed that Google devalues unpopular content. The search giant measures clicks, good clicks, bad clicks, and last longest clicks.
These leaked documents also include NavBoost (how well your website pages perform in the Chrome browser).
NavBoost re-ranks sites based on the click data.
Our real-world insights on popular and unpopular content
Content that is unpopular can reveal itself in a variety of ways:
- No one “googles” it (few site-wide impressions).
- Users “google” it, and you rank well, but users don’t choose to click your listing in the search results (click vs no click).
- Users “google” it, and you rank well. They click on your listing in the search results but immediately or very quickly exit your website. These are called “bad” clicks (good clicks vs bad clicks).
It’s especially harmful if someone chooses your content, exits your website, and re-googles or chooses another listing that they engage with. This indicates to Google that your content is irrelevant.
Ideally, you want the most impressions, good clicks, and especially longest-lasting clicks (users dwell time on the page).
Takeaways about unpopular content
Again, analyze individual pages. You can see impressions and clicks for organically (SEO) ranked pages in Google Search Console’s performance tab. Additionally, you can see individual page engagement in Google Analytics-4.
If pages are doing poorly, analyze why.
- Is it something you’re writing about that doesn’t interest anyone but you? The best writing in the world is irrelevant if no one discovers it.
- Do you need a better title tag or meta description to get more clicks? Entice people.
- Is it good content presented in an easy-to-scan (and read) format? Are you using bullets, bolding, and headings?
You wouldn’t expect someone to engage with a “Contact Us” page for a lengthy time. However, longer content should have a longer engagement time.
Key SEO Tip 9
Search is Dynamic.
Search is ever-evolving. We know Google changes its algorithm (formula for getting found) at least five times a day. Not a huge surprise here. Search is constantly changing.
Exact Keyword Title Match Is a “Thing.”
Why we’re emphasizing title tags even more after the Google documents leak
Google evaluates if your title tag exactly matches the keyword phrase someone is “googling.”
Our real-world insights about title tags
We’ve always focused on title tags, but the “exact match” aspect is eye-opening. By the way, although shorter (fewer than 60 characters) title tags are faster for people to scan, Google does not limit the length of your title tag.
We find it hard to believe that this literal interpretation of exact match title text is crucial. But we’re open to the possibility. Experiment with the concept.
Title tag takeaway
Reevaluate your title tags. Are they an exact match to the keyword phrase that people are “googling?” Test this attribute to see if it’s impactful.
Key SEO Tip 10
Google Gives an “A” for Effort—or at Least a “ChardScore.”
Why we’re emphasizing effort after the Google documents leak
Google has numerous types of Page Quality (PQ) scores. It also uses a type of artificial intelligence (AI) called a large language model (LLM) to estimate the effort spent creating the content.
Google named this effort score a “ChardScore.” (We have no idea why Google named this score after a beet.) Google also measures chard variance and chard score variance.
These values assess whether pages can be easily replicated.
Our real-world insights on effort
We assume that the chard variance scores measure whether or not you apply consistent effort and how much your site’s chard score differs from chard scores of other website content about the same topic area.
Google estimates the amount of effort the writer put into creating the website page.
Search quality raters and LLM
Google offers search quality rater guidelines. Real humans rate web pages based on these guidelines.
We would surmise that the LLM for the ChardScore was fed data from these search quality raters.
In its guidelines, Google has consistently emphasized two factors: quality content and the user experience.
This makes sense. To be the best search engine, the company wants to give “googlers” the best quality answers to their searches and an optimal user experience. This is true for Chrome and other Google-based search engines, such as Safari.
What is quality?
You can learn more about quality by reading the aforementioned quality rater guidelines.
Overall, Google proposes that quality content showcases expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). E-E-A-T is not mentioned per se in the leaked documents. However, we believe it’s a proxy for quality.
Google summarizes quality content as helpful, reliable, people-first content, and it provides questions you can ask yourself about your content.
We strive to meet these objectives for our small and midsize businesses; this takes time and effort.
Takeaway about effort
Quality content takes time, money, and effort. Google estimates how difficult it was to write your content. It should be unique to your website and provide an expert’s point of view. According to Search Engine Land, unique information, depth of information, tools, images, or videos are ways to get an A for effort.
Key SEO Tip 11
Don’t Just Focus on Keywords.
Why we’re emphasizing more than keywords after the Google documents leak
Google has a keyword stuffing score. If you overuse your keyword phrase on a page, Google will likely demote your website’s ranking and consider your website “spam.”
Our real-world insights about keyword phrases
Keyword phrases have their place. It can provide insight into the popularity of a proposed topic or phrase.
Google says you need to create content for humans, not search engines. I would argue that you (or your content creator) should write content for both.
Keyword takeaways
Consider the following:
- Choose a topic that interests your target audience. Keyword research helps here. But also pay attention to the buzz at business networking meetings. What interests your potential customers or clients? Similarly, what questions do your potential and current customers ask you?
- Don’t overuse a keyword. No one wants to read stilted, repetitive copy.
- Be original. Don’t rehash charted waters that others have already covered. Use a new hook or angle. Or share unique insights or research.
- Be creative. But also apply best technical practices that crawlers can discover and understand AND that humans want to read. This means using headings properly.
- Create a “wow!” factor. Write content that users want to bookmark and share. Yes, it’s hard to be THAT good. How will you know? Monitor your analytics. Monthly analytics can help you understand what users are clicking and reading.
- Quality and effort matter.
Key SEO Tip 12
Chatbots and other forms of AI have their place, but AI-generated content on your website is likely to be seen as spam.
Don’t Use AI Content for Your Web Pages.
It may sound self-serving since we write SEO-optimized website content, but we believe that (at least in its current state), you should eschew Ai-generated content.
Why we’ll continue to avoid ChatGPT and Gemini for website content.
The API leaked documents have several scores and measurements that they use to avoid pablum.
- Gibberish score
- Trend spam measurement
- Spam brain total doc spam score
- Spam rank
- Spam word score
- Spam probability
- Spam ranking penalty
Filler content, nonsense, AI-generated content, and forgotten “Greek” or “lorem ipsum” content can all fit into these categories.
You can see by the measurement names alone. Google looks at spammy words, documents, and likely the entire website.
Our real-world insights about chatbots
Chatbots have their place. They’re wonderful for sparking ideas. They can help ensure that your content touches on salient points. They can aid in correcting grammar, misspellings, and awkward phrasing.
AI content is generic.
But here’s the problem. It all sounds alike—generic information.
AI content is akin to reading the dictionary. It’s a valuable tool, but who wants to read it cover to cover?
AI content is devoid of personality.
Even tools such as Grammarly can remove personality from content. Small and midsize business content should reflect the unique differentiating features of your business.
AI is a gas bag.
Have you noticed that chatbot written content is very, very wordy? It can be distilled by half without losing meaning.
AI content takeaway
No one wants spammy content. Use AI to:
- Generate ideas.
- Ensure you’re not missing salient points when covering a topic.
- Catch potential grammar errors and typos.
However, don’t follow it mindlessly. It can be wrong, misleading, and lie (hallucinate).
Instead,
- Write content in your own style. Add a little personality.
- Focus on your customers, writing for humans.
- Differentiate yourself from your business competitors.
- Be original.
- Put effort into creating your content.
Next up:
Part 4: Google Leak: 12 Shocking SEO Revelations for SMBs
Nancy Burgess
