In-Depth Articles: The Newest Google Real Estate

This past Tuesday Google announced that it will be adding a new "In-Depth articles" section to its search results page. These articles will appear inside a block in the middle of Google's results page, and will include longer form in-depth articles from high-quality sources. Google discovered that about ten percent of its users search on Google as a way to attain more meaningful skills and knowledge, and they need deeper, more sophisticated articles to accomplish this. This allows online businesses and SEO specialists to attain even more Google real estate than ever before, but this new section of Google results is not terribly simple to break into. There are many steps to follow, and businesses should contact their SEO specialists to make sure they are up to date with this new development. Here are some quick tips that Google laid out in its press release that will help companies take advantage of this new resource.

First, for articles to be considered, authors must utilize the Google+ Authorship markup. Authors must have a multi-layered Google+ account, a simple head shot, a byline containing their name on each page of their content, and an E-mail address on the same domain as their content. Once these steps are completed, Specialists must also utilize Schema.org "Article" markup in their content coding to ensure that Google spiders can quickly analyze and rank their text. Schema.org "Article" markup is a somewhat confusing field, so businesses would be wise to find a specialist that has experience in this style of coding. Also in the coding field, specialists must utilize rel=next and rel=prev tags for multi-page articles to help Google to view the content as a sequential passage. And finally, companies should use a proper schema.org organization markup to connect their site to with an iconic logo. This will help the company's logo to show up higher in Google rankings to ensure a stronger brand for their content.

All of these steps, on top of the creation of stellar content, must be utilized if online businesses wish to be a part of this new section of Google. By doing this, companies will have more avenues for SEO growth to add into their content marketing campaigns. In-depth articles can already be seen for searches of broad topics like music, movies, art, and history; however, Google has made it clear that this section will not be included on every single SERP (search engine results page) out there. It is clear though that this new section will allow companies to identify and engage potential customers who are willing to spend time reading and researching their field, rather than just the every day one-click passers bye.