Have you ever created content that gets no love? Blog posts, videos that can’t be found…
Crafting helpful content is key to SEO success, and it all starts with understanding what Google looks for in high-quality content.
By focusing on people-first content that provides value, insight, and expertise, you can increase your chances of ranking higher in search engine results.
Here, in this post, we’ll guide you through 10 imperative steps to create content that resonates with your audience and search engines alike, helping you drive more traffic, boost engagement, and ultimately, achieve SEO success.
Key Takeaways:
Contents: Jump to a Section
- Focus on people-first content: Create content primarily for people, not to manipulate search engine rankings. Ensure your content is helpful, reliable, and provides value to your audience.
- Evaluate your content’s quality and expertise: Assess your content against questions that gauge its originality, completeness, and value. Consider having others evaluate your content to ensure it meets these standards.
- Provide a great page experience: Ensure your website provides a positive user experience across multiple aspects, including loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and content quality.
- Avoid search engine-first content: Refrain from creating content primarily to attract search engine traffic. Instead, focus on creating high-quality, people-first content that provides value to your audience.
- Understand E-E-A-T and quality rater guidelines: Familiarize yourself with Google’s E-E-A-T framework, which prioritizes experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness in content. Use the quality rater guidelines to self-assess your content and improve its quality.
Crafting Helpful Content
For your content to be successful in terms of SEO, it’s imperative to focus on creating helpful, reliable, and people-first content. This means your content should be designed to benefit your audience, not just to rank higher in search engine results.
So, how do you craft helpful content? Let’s dive deeper into the key elements that make your content valuable and trustworthy.
Evaluating Your Content
An imperative step in crafting helpful content is to evaluate your content against certain questions. Ask yourself these questions:
- Does my content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
- Does my content offer a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does my content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
By evaluating your content against these questions, you can gauge if your content is helpful and reliable. Additionally, consider having others you trust but who are unaffiliated with your site provide an honest assessment.
Providing Original Information and Value
Any content that draws on other sources should avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources. Instead, it should provide substantial additional value and originality. Your content should offer something new, unique, or valuable that sets it apart from others.
It’s crucial to remember that providing original information and value is not just about presenting new facts or data.
It’s also about offering a fresh perspective, insight, or analysis that helps your audience understand the topic better. By doing so, you can establish your authority and expertise in your niche, which is imperative for building trust with your audience.
Quality Questions to Ask Yourself
If you want to craft helpful content that resonates with your audience and search engines, you need to ask yourself the right questions. Evaluating your content against these questions can help you gauge if the content you’re making is helpful and reliable.
Content and Quality
With a focus on providing value to your audience, ask yourself:
- Does my content have a unique spin and is it unique?
- How does my brand and my business hine through?
- What are the key take aways for my clients or website users?
Expertise and Trustworthiness
Google and other search engines want to provide reliable resources to people who are searching for information on their platform. Imagine if you searched for something and received a referral to a website that was filled with spammy content and had ugly design. Would you trust the search engine? Google has it’s own reputation to protect. So, creating quality content that you’re proud of that also helps others is what you need to do.
Quality content is trustworthy and reliable. Ask yourself:
- Does my content present information in a way that would make others want to trust it? Would you trust it?
- Have I outlined my expertise in the topic clearly? (You or your author should have some authority on the subject)
- Is the content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?
Litmus test: By reading your own content, would you trust the information and the person or site behind it? Would you perhaps expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book? Is it that good? To rank well it should be!
Creating a Great Page Experience
Once again, Google’s core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with Google’s systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience.You need to provide an overall great page experience across many aspects.
Focusing on People-First Content
With people-first content, you’re creating content primarily for people, not to manipulate search engine rankings.
How can you evaluate if you’re creating people-first content? If you answer yes to these questions then you’re likely to be on the right track:
- Would your customers, website users or stakeholders find your information useful, helpful and satifying, if they came directly to your site and no other?
- Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge?
Avoiding Search Engine-First Content
Avoiding creating search engine-first content is crucial. We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search, rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings.
What does that mean?
Over-optimising content and keywords, keyword stuffing, excessive backlinking, compromising your text to include keyword strings and more.
Is the answer to these questions a “YES?”
- Are you creating content primarily to attract visits from search engines?
- Are you producing lots of content on many different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
If the answer is YES, then it’s a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you’re creating content.
By focusing on people-first content, you’re more likely to create content that resonates with your audience and provides a great page experience.
Bear in mind, Google’s automated systems are designed to prioritize content that seems most helpful, so focus on creating content that adds value to your users, rather than trying to game the system.
Understanding E-E-A-T and SEO
Unlike other search engine ranking factors, E-E-A-T is a unique concept that plays a crucial role in determining the credibility and trustworthiness of your content. To create helpful content that resonates with your audience and search engines, it’s necessary to understand what E-E-A-T is and how it relates to SEO.
What is E-E-A-T?
What sets high-quality content apart from low-quality content is the presence of E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These four factors are crucial in determining the credibility and reliability of your content.
The Importance of Trust and Expertise
When you create content that showcases your knowledge and experience in a particular field, you establish yourself as an authority, making it more likely for readers to trust your information.
Read the previous sentence again!
And then, once more 🙂
The importance of trust cannot be overstated.
According to Google, trust is the most critical aspect of E-E-A-T, and it’s what sets apart high-quality content from low-quality content.
When you focus on building trust with your audience, you’re more likely to create content that resonates with them and search engines.
By demonstrating expertise and authoritativeness, you’re showing your audience that you’re a credible source of information, which can lead to increased engagement, shares, and ultimately, higher search engine rankings.
Final Words
Upon reflecting on the 10 steps to crafting helpful content for SEO success, you’ve now equipped yourself with the knowledge to create content that resonates with your audience and search engines alike.
By focusing on people-first content, providing a great page experience, and ensuring your content meets the E-E-A-T criteria, you’ll be well on your way to achieving SEO success.
Remember to regularly self-assess your content, ask yourself the right questions, and prioritize quality over quantity. With persistence and dedication, you’ll be crafting content that not only ranks well but also provides real value to your readers.
FAQ
Q: What is the primary focus of Google’s automated ranking systems?
A: Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results.
Q: How can I evaluate if my content is helpful and reliable?
A: Ask yourself these questions:
Does my content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
Does my content offer a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does my content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
Q: What is the difference between people-first content and search engine-first content?
A: Create content for people, not search engines. People-first content prioritizes user needs, demonstrating expertise and providing valuable information. This leaves readers satisfied and informed. In contrast, search engine-first content aims to attract search engine visits, often through automation, but leaves readers needing more. Focus on people-first content for success with Google Search.
