“Content Is Finally Going To Be King“
Hey! SEO experts, the time has come to recreate your entire content marketing strategy for websites because here’s Google coming with a Beast algorithm update possibly on 25th August 2022 (Is currently Live and Rolling Out Now) and may be expected to be live till 2 weeks from the date of the rollout. Google named this update “Helpful Content Update”. However, it may not be of any help to the SEOs, but the algorithm update is for Google search users so they get the most informative, unique, moreover helpful content on their search queries. Basically, the content that has been written by people, for people will get more attention on search.
The ideology behind “Helpful Content Update” is to rank content that is Focused on People-First Content. Let’s understand People-First Content in detail.
What is People-First Content?
People-First Content is the type of content that is able to create a satisfying experience for the readers. Basically, the type of content which covers everything about a particular topic in detail with facts and figures and useful information. The content should also have to be up to the mark on SEO best practices to bring searchers additional value while reading.
Now, the term satisfying experience is in itself a matter of discussion, but Google already explained what they really mean by saying Satisfying Experience.
However, the identification of useful content could be based on a couple of factors:
- User interaction duration length with the page
- How much time they are taking to do next scroll
- Content length
- Web Page Structure
- Length of paragraphs
- Usage of bullet points
- Usage of Heading Tags
- Types of Questions and how well the answers have been described
- Links to other useful sources on the web
- Contextual internal links toward other related and informative web pages on the site
- Usage of useful media materials
- How often the published content has been re-updated or revised
And all other guidelines are shared by Google here.
How to Ensure If Your Content Is Aligned to “Helpful Content Update 2022” Guidelines?
Creating content on the web is not rocket science and if you are an industry expert then fulfilling the criteria of “written by people, for people” can be easily achieved by keeping in mind a people-first approach. For this, all you need is to understand the below points while writing the content.
- Be an industry expert. Content written with first-hand experience are always stand on the top of others because they have a crisp of freshness, uniqueness as well as personal experience touch that users would like to read and share with others.
- If your targeted audience visiting directly to your website then make sure they must get something useful information. Does not matter if the information is for a product, place, service, or thoughts on anything.
- Always make sure to stick with your thoughts so you set a primary focus with your content.
- Write in a way the topic in itself feels like it is a complete source of information on the topic so readers can feel satisfied with the information they read.
- Also, keep in mind to implement all the necessary On-Page activities and align your website structure, mobile-friendliness, and other parameters as per Google’s latest Core Updates and Product Review Algorithm Updates.
- Use images as an example wherever required or necessary
- Use bullet points, quotes, videos, and other helpful material within the content to make it more attractive and easy to understand for the users.
- Do not use long paragraphs as they create a bad readability experience for users. However, using small and short paragraphs are always more appealing and offers better U/I to readers.
How to Avoid the Negative Impacts of “Helpful Content Update 2022”
Long story short: Old school practices will not work anymore!!!
Well, that’s true! It is expected that this algorithm may change the way SEO’s perform SEO. Especially the strategy for the content writing on targeted landing pages.
I had a meeting with SEO team at MysticDigi with all SEO experts and content writers to understand the best practices we should opt for client’s landing pages content and below are some key points we discussed.
- Avoid excessive use of keywords (However, we’ll be using them in the basic areas like Title, Slug, Heading, and In the Body but with limited and contextual usage.
- There will be no limit on the number of words. That means the content should be a complete source of information for any particular product or service for that specific landing page.
- We may also avoid creating multiple landing pages on the basis of the grouping of keywords and hence we may now target all LSI terms as well as top-level terms on the same page.
- For local SEO projects creating multiple location pages may also be avoidable because the major challenge, in that case, would be to create unique content for each location page that should be a complete source of information on its own, because the “Service” is same. This will still undergo some trials and research before we come to a conclusion if it works.
- There will be no extra usage of a particular word and even the keywords will be placed in between very contextually so they do not give a feel of intentionally added for no use.
- We’ll also discussed to take help from clients to make the content informative because they understand their business industry better and only, they would be able to share useful and first-hand experience things what we can use for publishing.
- The content will be like a Q&A so it make sure to cover all minor and major questions asked by users on a particular product or service.
- Before going promotional, we’ll be trying to be informative with the topic so it gives a sense of usefulness to the readers.
I will keep on sharing new insights on this update as I get to know more things after research.’
But it’s a fact, that this “Helpful Content Update” is going to be a HUGE thing Google is going after years or after their “Penguin” update.
Things are going to change a lot and there’s no doubt about it.
