An update changed the flow of things; an update by Google. The update that has been brought forward has helped disregard content that was not up to the mark. Moreover, it gives more exposure to the sites that were helping the users to get authentic and useful information; most importantly not letting their search go in vain. Google, like always, is doing so to help people to connect with facilitative information.
The content should not only be relevant and on time but also be top-notch. The information and the site should be user-friendly and should be efficiently viewable on different devices as well. This update was made on August 25th to make sure that various sites are not only using search engines to stay on the top but also to get trapped in Google content update. They have to work on removing their unhelpful content and bringing up more satisfying content to increase their ratings and prove themselves. Let us now see some things you might want to keep a track of that are suggested by Google; to create content that basically screams ‘people-first’-
Things you Need to Consider to Ensure That you Are Creating People-First Content as Per Google Guidance:
It’s Always Better to Revolve Around your Main Topic-
Pushing yourself to create varieties of content is appreciated by all, but doing so only for the search engine ranks might be a problematic option even for yourself. You might even end up writing articles about something that is outside your viability. Instead, write articles that lie within the boundary of your area of expertise. There is never too much to explore; so go and postmortem your own area to find someone worth it. For instance, if your area of expertise is providing excellent recipes to the users; then you need to write an article for a highly popular keyword relating to the sneaker company seeing a shot to exploit it for SEO. This might turn out to be a nice informative article for others but the ones who open that website to find any recipe may even feel disappointed.
A Single Site Should be Devoted to Only One Topic; Not Multiple
It is important to have a niche for your own website. Every single thing of different topics cannot be included in one website itself. It is not only unwieldy for the users but also creates a barrier for search engines. For creating contents on multiple topics it is better for you to create multiple websites instead of cluttering all the information in one.
Try to Satiate the Thirst of the Users at All Costs-
Writing content for a search engine may include a lot of things that may not hold any value or meaning. But when writing it for the people we should be answerable to any of their doubts. For that, include an article with a Q/A section or maybe include every possible thing in the course of it. It’s up to you as long as it assuages the purpose behind. This will help them disentangle any concern they had for which they clicked on your website in the very first place. You should write such content that does not compel the readers to search further to get clearer information from any other source.
Readers Experience is More Important for you Than Anything Else-
Always think about the overall experience of your website while creating your content. It might be such that you meet all the criteria mentioned for a good article but still do not provide something that captures the attention of the readers. For instance, textual information is not bad but including a few pictures and videos make it visually attractive and easy for the users to go through. Your aim should be to make it such an experience for the readers that they would not want to wander around anyone else.
Do Not Spread Rumors Knowingly or Unknowingly- Answering
Answering questions that have no confirmed answers to it might cause any irrelevant hype amongst the crowd. If after that the information turns out to be false, the readers will immediately lose their trust in the website. So, always keep in mind to not utter any information about anything that might not be factual.
Following Google Guidelines For Any Major Updates-
If you were following the core updates made by Google; then the latest ‘Google helpful content updates’ would only be beneficial for you. It is always better to keep it on track. If not, then starting to go by the guidelines will help your website to not get caught up with the other unhelpful websites.
How to Guard Your Site from the Effects of Helpful Content Update?
Once caught up can take several months to recover from the backlash. Some of the points you can keep in mind to escape the effects are-
Keep on returning to the core basis-
Always keep in mind why you started the topic in the 1st place. This will help you not to get too strayed away from it and also write about the core topic itself. This will help your website have less probability of getting singled out by the update.
Avoid too much dependency on AI-
Taking use of AI might not be too bad, but excessive usage might bring out unwanted results. It might focus more on the search engine words rather than the satisfaction of people and you might end up in the claws of the update.
Make yourself unique by providing values others can’t-
Writing creative content is what everyone does but focus on providing worthy content to your readers; something that is true to its words, visually attractive, to the point and makes them want to come back for more. This is what will set you apart from the others.
Be more specific with your content-
Providing too much generic content might cause the readers to lose interest in what you write as the content is too broad. Instead, providing something specific might jerk up their interest a little. It helps them get to know about the stuff in more detail.
Get yourself a target audience-
This can be done only if you dedicate your one site to only one category of things. For instance, if you want to keep a page dedicated to fashion, then you know who your target audiences will be. Once you start, keep your page dedicated to only that subject. Writing about various other topics on that site may lead the readers to slowly surf for other sites.
Avoid the fluff-
Remove all the unnecessary stuff and words from your website to come up to the ‘word count’ because there is nothing like that on Google. Adding it might make Google think that your site lacks depth and might be unhelpful for the readers
Research with trusted sources-
Include as many graphs and statistics and percentages and facts as you can in your data. This will show the accuracy of your content. Just make sure that the data you have given is reliable and the facts and figures are correct and received from your trusted source.
Conclusion
As notified by Google, the update will be implemented in the following week. It will be an ongoing process. The update is somehow forcing the content creators to ensure that the quality of their content is of the topmost quality. That means the users should get the content from you they will find nowhere else. This way they are preventing themselves from going after the SEO and providing useful content on their own. This is automatically getting unhelpful sites out of the game and giving the users a quality search. They are trying to make the content as user-friendly as possible so that it is easy to read and understand at the same time. All in all, it is good news for the creators who are accustomed in providing great quality work right from the start as they will get the recognition that they should.