If Google is so smart, why do I still need to include keywords in the title?

We constantly hear how smart Google is, and that it’s impossible to trick Google—or for that matter, to outsmart it. You’ve probably also heard that the best search engine optimization is simply to create good content, and the rankings will follow. But if Google really is that smart and the algorithm so intelligent, why do you still have to include the keyword in the title tag?

I’m absolutely not arguing that good content isn’t important. On the contrary—it’s a basic requirement for search engine optimization, and likewise a prerequisite for a well-functioning site. It’s certainly a steeper uphill climb to do SEO without good content. However, it is far from the only important factor. If someone claims that creating good content is enough for SEO, I see two possible explanations: either the person has never actually worked with real SEO, or they are trying to sell a service by pretending that this is real SEO.

We can use the title tag as proof of this, even though there are hundreds of other good examples of why good content alone isn’t enough. If Google is so incredibly smart, then why do I still need to include the keyword in the title tag? Can’t Google understand that my content is good without me writing the keyword specifically between <title> and </title>? Is it really between those two small snippets of code that it is decided whether the content is good? And how can a machine that can’t even understand that SEO and sökmotoroptimering are the same thing recognize which content on the topic is actually the best?

If you search for the two words “SEO” and “sökoptimering,” which are EXACTLY the same thing, then how come the results look completely different? If it’s content that ranks best for SEO and sökoptimering, how can there be a difference if it’s the best content that’s being shown? Or, for that matter, look at “sökordsoptimering,” “sökoptimering,” or any of the many ways to write “sökmotoroptimering.” Why does it look like this?

The answer is that while Google is indeed a smart machine, it is far from the super-intelligent machine that some try to make it seem like. Good content doesn’t rank on its own, because many small factors come into play, and whether something is good or not is not something a search engine can determine. Try searching for “sökmotor” and you’ll see that Google appears in 16th place among the best search engines (they recently dropped from 7th—perhaps they’ve been filtered). If it’s true that content quality determines ranking, then both Yahoo and Bing must have better content. So maybe Google isn’t as smart as we’ve actually believed?