So how can you continue finding the right keywords to target now that RankBrain has its head in the game? Let’s take a look.

What Is Rank Brain?

If RankBrain is an unfamiliar term, you’re not alone. Essentially, RankBrain is an intelligent, relevance understanding engine. It enables users to search with natural language (both written and spoken) to return results with related keywords, not simply exact matches. For example, if a user asks Google for “Batman actors”  RankBrain might return pages with the terms “What actors have played Batman”, “Batman move stars”, “Christian Bale”, “Adam West”, and “Heath Ledger” along with any pages containing the original “Batman actors” keyword.

If you’ve been focusing your content on more precise keyword matches, you may have seen your rankings for them shift lately. That’s because RankBrain is a real game changer when it comes to how a page’s relevancy to the question at hand is determined.

So how can you adapt your keyword research strategy to take advantage of this system? It all starts with a shift in focus.

RankBrain knows that terms like luggage, boarding pass, TSA, delay, and connecting are all related to flights.

The Three Gs

In a lengthy article he wrote for Moz, cognitive psychologist Dr. Peter J. Meyers described his recommendations for a revamped keyword research process as “The Three Gs”. To summarize, your new keyword research practices should begin with Gathering keywords. Next, you’ll need to Group them. Then, you’ll Generate exemplars.

Gather

Gathering keywords will be much like it has been. You may brainstorm your own keywords and then run them through the Google Keyword Tool to see if they stick.

Group

Whereas you might normally just grab the most searched, least-competitive terms and called it a day, RankBrain throws a wrench in that plan. It’s not as simple as how many queries a search term receives anymore.

Now more than ever, users are searching with long-tail keywords, often using more natural language, and RankBrain is more likely to return pages that fit the concept, not necessarily the actual wording used in search terms.

That’s why you need to group your gathered keywords into similar concepts as well. Using the Batman example above, you might group “What actors have played Batman” with “Christian Bale”, while “Heath Ledger” (who played The Joker, not Batman, in The Dark Night) could be grouped with “Batman movie stars” instead.

Generate

Once you have your groups, you’ll need to choose a keyword representative, or exemplar, from the group to target in your content. Choose exemplars with a variety of phrase structure, and you’ll set yourself up to build great, natural-sounding content that answers user questions – and isn’t that the point of a search engine anyway?

The Fourth G

Dr. Meyers suggests adding a fourth G to your process: Gap, as in “mind the gap.” While RankBrain is capable of deep learning and is highly intelligent, its understanding of how concepts relate to one another won’t match every human being’s. It may not match yours. So when using your RankBrain-improved keywords, be aware that you may not be using them the way RankBrain might expect, and you might have difficulty ranking for certain terms. Just keep an eye on your rankings, and circle back to improve existing content (or create new content) to target lagging terms more extensively.

How to Use the Updated Keyword Tool

If you think all that sounds like a real pain, it can be. If you try to tackle it all on your own, that is. Luckily, the Google Gods, in all their wisdom, updated their Keyword Tool to help you through it.

You may have noticed some changes to the tool recently that have actually hindered the research you’re used to doing. Where are the “Low, Medium, and High” measurements of your competition? Why are there a ridiculous number of keywords displayed, many with no volume data? If it’s been tough to wade through, don’t worry. Armed with your new Three Gs of keyword research, you’re ready to tame this tool. Here’s how:

Sorting Through The Mess

After you type in your gathered keywords, ignore the piles and piles of suggested keywords the tool returns for just a moment. Head to the top of the page and find the “Group Keywords” dropdown menu. The “no” option is probably selected. Instead, set it to “yes with low lexical similarity.”

What happens? The Keyword Tool magically groups the suggested keywords into manageable concepts – much like you did in G number two above. You can still access all of the individual keywords by clicking on the “Show all # grouped keywords” next to each concept. Choose a few concepts, and these become your generated exemplars. Three Gs covered.

Conclusion

The idea of RankBrain can be scary, but our goal with this article is to help you feel a little more comfortable about it moving forward. It’s certainly a paradigm shift from exact keyword matches, but we like to focus on the fact it means you won’t have to shoe-horn awkward phrases into your content anymore. With the right post-RankBrain research, you can create better, more targeted content than ever before.

If you’re still feeling a little intimidated, don’t worry. Cthru Media is with you every step of the way. We can help you transition into a RankBrain world, or take care of all that heavy keyword lifting for you. Contact us today to get started. The sooner you do, the sooner you can start claiming well-deserved page rankings.