While the latest Google update defines what is classed as helpful content for search engine users, what do these changes mean for online enterprises?
As the world’s biggest search engine, it’s almost understandable why the big wigs over at Google have made some pretty significant changes over the years as to how the tech giant essentially operates on a day to day basis. In saying that, the concept has remained relatively the same since its inception – to deliver accurate, high quality answers to almost any question.
However, many search topics are often hijacked by companies with big advertising budgets, or purposefully write content that is keyword saturated, delivering search results to the reader that are ultimately not as accurate as they should be. As a means to help combat this rising trend, the latest Google update has changed the algorithm once again to recognise helpful content and improve user experience.
How Helpful Content Works In The Latest Google Update
While there are a number of ranking factors that can determine a website’s visibility online, the godfather is the basic principles outlined in SEO. Otherwise known as Search Engine Optimisation, SEO is what we call the practice of including specific content on a website, such as keywords, meta data, and titles, while adhering to other criteria such as Core Web Vitals.
Like anything in business, some brands have more resources than others. For those with more staff or more funds, weaponising these basic rules to reach the top of the search engine results has been relatively easy – until now.
As a part of a broader effort to ensure that readers see more original, helpful content written by actual humans, the latest Google update will inevitably punish websites that push ‘clickbait’, or content that is littered with keywords, particularly those with content that has little to no relevance to the targeted keywords used. In a nutshell, helpful content is authentic, and publishers who pursue this avenue over SEO related shortcuts will soon be rewarded for their efforts accordingly.
If you’re wondering how to write helpful content, the good news is that the latest Google update was also released with a series of questions to guide website owners on how to meet the new benchmarks. To validate the quality of your content and ensure you’re on the right path, comb through your website and ask yourself the following questions –
- Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or website that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
- Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge, such as expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place?
- Does your website have a primary purpose or focus?
- After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
- Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
- Are you making a conscious effort to adhere to core updates and actively pursue product reviews?
For those still feeling a little intimidated in the wake of the latest Google update and what is actually defined as helpful content, a good place to start is Google EAT. As a term that stems from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, a 168 page document used by real life humans – not robots – to assess the quality of the search engine’s results, Google EAT stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Needless to say, producing helpful content that’s both user friendly and properly optimised for SEO is hard. Even the most gifted of in-house marketers usually identify as either technical wizards, skilled visual gurus or natural born writers, but rarely ever is it all three. If your brand is struggling to produce top notch content that Google deems worthy enough to showcase, it might be time to consider outsourcing.
The Key To Good Marketing Is Great Content
Producing quality, consistent and on brand content takes time, effort, experience and resources, but avoiding these responsibilities altogether may actually be doing your brand a disservice. Thankfully, investing in a solid content marketing strategy has actually never been easier.
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
