Are you one of those content creators whose primary focus was to attract people from search engines one way or the other? If that is the case, you may need to change your content creation strategy now. Google has rolled out a new “Google Helpful Content Update” which requires creators to create content for readers instead of ranking on search engines. The search engine is hailing this update as one of its primary efforts towards a broader approach to content creation for humans by humans. Here is everything you need to know about Google Helpful Content Update and what it entails for the content creators:
People-First Content Creation
Google Helpful Content Update emphasizes upon rewarding content which is useful for the users instead of content which is created to rank on SERPs. It means that content creators have to put all their focus on creating expert-curated content which will satisfy the readers if they wish their content to perform well on Google search engine.
However, creating people-first content does not mean that you entirely neglect recommended SEO practices. Infact, it means that your content creation efforts should be focused on striking a balance between people-oriented information and SEO practices that help you rank.
How to Create Content for Google Helpful Content Update?
Now, the main question is how to create content that aligns with Google Helpful Content Update. Google, in its official announcement, has shared a list of Google’s Content Quality & Helpfulness Questions that offer useful insights for content creators with respect to molding content creation efforts. Here are some top changes you can make in your content creation to comply with Google’s Helpful Content Update:
Create Content For Your Audience
Create content for your existing and/or intended audience. Keep your audience’s interest, problems, wants, desires and needs in view while creating content and find points of interest that will satisfy your readers. It is important to figure out what information to share with different audience segments related to your content instead of writing content for all types of audience.
Demonstrate First-Hand Experience
By far, this is among the most important recommendations made in the recent Google Helpful content update. When you are offering solutions to your readers’ issues, you shall link your information to first-hand experience and anecdotes. Write about what you learned from different sources and how you deal with different situations relevant to your audience. Your examples, facts, anecdotes and expert advice shall stem from personal experience and/or expertise.
Define and Refine Your Website’s Niche
Have you established a niche for your website? Are you well-aware of the industry you are targeting using your content? If not, then it is high time that you start to think about which niche you want to target. Google recommends establishing a primary focus or purpose for your website, so that the relevant audience can read and benefit from your content. For Example, if you are writing about automotives, decide whether you want your site to be about electric vehicles, automotive parts or latest launches.
Comply with Google’s Affiliate Content Guidelines
Affiliate content creators rely heavily upon user reviews. Google has launched a core update to refine the product review guidelines time and again. Moreover, in the recent Google Helpful Content update, the search engine has urged affiliate content writers to review and follow the product review guidelines. [1]
Help Your Audience
Ensure that your content is meaningful, helpful and relevant to your audience. It means that your content should help your readers fulfill a certain goal once they are done reading your content. Thus, you shall shift your focus from sharing random tips to offering actionable assistance to your readers so they can fulfill a goal once they are done reading your content.
Google and AI Generated Content – Everything You Need to Know
Google has always been an advocate of providing the users with meaningful experiences through its search platform. Thus, Google always aspires to evolve higher standards of content quality consistently. Therefore, it pushes the content creators to raise their content creation standards as well.
Google has its own AI Content generator, called the GLaM which is trained over 1 trillion parameters. However, the most commonly used GPT3 model is trained on only 175 million parameters. Although this development was not much significant in the near past, it is speculated that the AI content creation will get more advanced over time. [2]
Now, the question is: Will Google Penalize AI Content?
Google is incredible in distinguishing poor quality content from high quality content. According to Google’s AI generated Content Policy, the platform is strictly against spammy content which leads to poor user experience. Since the search engine is so efficient in determining bad quality content, content creators have to be very careful while using AI to create content. [3]
Google deploys a simple yet powerful detection algorithm to see whether the content is offering value to readers or not. To track the success of content, Google tracks other metrics like bounce rates, and on-page user time as compared to other websites. If you are using AI to create a multitude of articles on various topics without any manual checking and editing, your blog has high chances of being pushed down in SERPs only after a few weeks.
Google will penalize your AI generated content if: Your content does not offer any value. If you post simply a copy paste, baseless version of AI generated content, the content will be penalized. Moreover, it will penalize AI generated content if it offers no value to the users.
So, What Can You Do?
It is advisable to refine the input that you give to your AI content writing assistant. Thus, it means that you need to carefully understand the requirements of high-quality content and give input to AI writer accordingly. The common mistake most AI writing tool users make is to give a bland input and expect something amazing out of it. Remember that the output you get from AI writers is only as good as the input you provide. That is why these tools are categorized as AI writing Assistants.
Here are some more recommendations to write content using AI that fits Google guidelines:
- Tweak the AI generated content manually.
- Edit and polish different sections of your blog to fill any gaps.
- Bring more value to your content using personal experience, Anecdotes stories, and useful expert advice.
- Ensure that the tone is consistent with the tone and theme of your blog or website.
- Double check and facts to remove any bias or errors.
- Correct any grammatical errors and fix the flow+formatting of your AI generated content.
The simple trick is to ask the question “does this content offer value to my readers?”. If your answer is yes, you can use the AI generated content confidently.
Be Ethical, Be Personal and Be Meaningful
Google Helpful Content Update refines the positioning of AI writers and human writers in the content creation world. It emphasizes on adopting ethical and personal practices to create people-centric content instead of focusing on ranking on websites. The above tips can help you get better and consistent results with the new update.
Also Read:
References:
[1] Write High Quality Product Reviews – Google
[2] GLaM – AIGoogleBlog
[3] Auto Generated Content Policy – Google
