Want a RankBrain-friendly website? Here are 5 key pointers

Google is now using the RankBrain machine-learning system to process each and every search query it receives. Fuelled by AI, RankBrain is a query refinement algorithm that helps Google to better understand the user’s intent. If you have a website that’s not optimized for the RankBrain algorithm, then you’re likely set to lose traffic to your competitors.

The first step is to get your site properly indexed as the real optimization starts after Google successfully crawls your website.

After your site is properly indexed, it’s now time to follow these steps to jump-start to your journey to an optimized, RankBrain-friendly website.

Have a mobile-first web design alongside a content and SEO strategy

The website should be responsive on all platforms — from wearables to mobile phones to televisions. In terms of content, the mobile-first website approach follows the linear layout model — the most important content should be on top, followed by the next important piece, and so on.

When it comes to following the mobile first approach for SEO, Google’s local results pack is the thing to consider. Ensure that your business is at position A on the Google’s local pack. Also, have a “tap to call” button at the top of the mobile app so people can easily place a call to your business.

Make use of schema, JSON-LD and rich cards

Presenting your website in a visually compelling manner is the best strategy to consider. Google is slowly moving towards providing visual search results based on the user intent in place of the traditional text based search results. Rich cards are a great way to visually present your website’s information for an improved mobile user experience. Other recommended formats are JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa which is the supported formats for all data types.

Related: Google and your company’s SEO: a love story

Once implemented, you can use the Search Console Rich Cards report  to fix any errors or enhance the existing cards for better CTR and conversions.

Focus on website engagement rate optimization (WERO)

One of the most crucial ranking factors considered by Google is user engagement. Metrics like bounce rate, CTR, time on page and yime on site are some of the ways for Google to determine the user engagement. Every user is supposed to take an action on your site — a positive action helps your site to stay on top, while a negative action (like the closing of the webpage and returning to the search results) pushes your website further down Google’s ranking order.

Use both micro influencers and macro influencers in social campaigns

Influencers are better known as the movers and shakers of the industry. They become the face of the brand and their credibility on social media helps the brand to have a reputation of it’s own. An influencer serves as a connecting link between the brand and the target audience.

Influencers can be both micro and macro.

You can assume them to be the the micro and macro forces that are shaping the behavior of the audiences. Macro influencers have large fan base on social media while micro influencers have fewer followers but a more acute target audience. It’s recommended to make use of both macro- and micro-influencers to get positive reviews, better fan following and more conversions.

Drive high-authority referring domain links

A recent study from Backlinko claimed that websites that are having a greater number of high authority referring domain achieve the highest rankings on the Google search results.

The Ahrefs domain rating is a near to accurate measure of the domain popularity and tend to have a greater correlation with high rankings. Hence, apart from Domain Authority, ensure to check regularly the Ahrefs domain rating as this will help to your website a top spot in the search results.

Both, Ahrefs domain rating and Moz’s Domain Authority measures the quality of the backlinks and the number of referring domains while analyzing the popularity of the domain and assigning a score to it.

RankBrain is all about understanding the user intent and following the above strategies will not only help Google to better understand the contents of your website, but it will also help to get your website ranked higher up in the search results for more conversions and profits.