Google is currently rolling out the “helpful content” algorithm update and I believe this is the most significant one yet. Allow me to deconstruct what this means for marketers: 1. Websites with high amounts of unhelpful content are unlikely to perform well. G’s take: You know all those SaaS blogs with hundreds of useless pages? Go delete that shit. If you need help doing a content audit, send me a DM. Brian Dean got this right with his approach to growing Backlinko. Every page is useful, highly valuable and well maintained. ——— 2. Your website will benefit if it has a clear and primary focus. G’s take: If your company is rolling out different products across many categories, it will be difficult to win if you are too dilutive. If your brand is strongly associated with one thing, you are better off leading with your flagship “Job to Be Done” and then cross-selling, rather than trying to “land and expand” too aggressively. ——— 3. Your website will benefit if the content clearly demonstrates first hand expertise and depth of knowledge. G’s take: Let’s say you are writing about “the top Italian restaurants in Miami”… you should personally go and eat at all of them, take pics and record videos, and publish a detailed pros and cons list with comments about pricing, customer service, etc. Don’t just scrape a bunch of other lists and regurgitate the same generic information. ——— 4. Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience? G’s take: This directly contradicts techniques widely preached by “growth hackers” - excessive pop ups, banners, annoying ad placements, paywalled content, obnoxious lead capture modals, etc. ——— 5. Content created primarily for search engine traffic is strongly correlated with content that searchers find unsatisfying. G’s take: Write naturally, while following optimization best practices. Avoid using extensive automation to create content. Avoid targeting trending topics because you want to “newsjack” meanwhile it has nothing to do with your core audience’s interests. ——— 6. After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal? G’s take: Teach before you reach. Your content should aim to be the most comprehensive, accurate and helpful document on a subject. It’s not about achieving word count quotas, but if your content is a thinly veiled ad for your products, your website will suffer. ——— This goes beyond SEO. It’s about being customer-centric instead of looking for shortcuts to do lead gen and sales. #marketing 🚀
There's nothing more frustrating than clicking on a search result and realizing the info provided is completely useless because it was created only to be on the top results of Google. Hard-to-read landing pages, newsletter subscription button pop up after 2 seconds, lack of price transparency, 300 distracting ads on the page, not mobile optimized, and so on... It's been very hard to navigate websites without getting stressed. What's more important: customer experience or tricking the algorithm these days?
Ok, so, optimize for real readers and true helpfulness vs. algorithms and (alledged) ranking variables?
Hubspot’s in trouble!
Does that mean Google will be emphasizing more on bounce rate & duration? I am still a bit unclear.
So well put G! Love this. I am seeing quality of content is a major ranking factor currently, in fact this is how we at TopicRanker.com look for articles which you can overtake in SERP these days: 1. Readability of the content - score and analysis 2. Flesch Reading Ease score (needs to be around 7th/8th grade - fairly easy) 3. Topical depth of the content score and analysis 4. Whether title tag and introduction satisfies user search intent 5. Length and architecture of the article - are bucket brigades and bullet used? How often? 6. How often is the content updated - every 3 months? Every 6 months? 7. Page and speed experience on mobile I recently ran an experiment on a Moz DA 2 domain with no authority: 1. I published an article, it ranked on Page 9 for its target keyword. 2. I significantly improved topical depth, readability, reading ease and speed insights. 3. I now rank #1 for “Which Keywords Are Best To Target” - check it: https://lnkd.in/ehTVGpZR I laid out the details of what I did here if you are interested to check it out: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6972638826003324928/
I think no.2 is very limiting; For some individuals or companies, diversity is key - such as The Marginalian (originally Brain Pickings) - where do these belong now, and will they be considered "bad"?
I fear the amount of effort businesses must now put into satisfying Google’s algorithms just to get noticed is a significant drag on the economy. For a small business, it’s time-prohibitive to be doing that much writing (assuming they even have anything to say), and dollar-prohibitive to hire an employee or agency.
I appreciate the detailed analysis, Gaetano. I can imagine so-called "growth hackers" will have to do serious rethinking of their SEO growth hacking strategies. Regarding #3, it would be wise for small business owners to manage content by themselves or delegate it in-house (someone who is deep in the day-to-day operations and customer relations, and knows inside out the value proposition of the organization). You can't simply outsource this one to a freelancer in Bangladesh for 8 USD/hr.
Huzzah! I’ve always been big on number three. I want to see first hand experience … otherwise I don’t believe ya! I used to write blogs for an e-comm maternity brand and the editor was always amazed at how well my blogs did — it’s because I told interesting, helpful first person stories THEN optimized for search.
Author of six books, including "Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors" and "The Business of Expertise" and called "the expert's expert"--NY Times. Advise entrepreneurial experts in marketing field.
1yThe best approach is to ignore Google and pay scant attention to SEO. Instead, just write good shit, consistently, to be helpful to your audience. Ungate it, don't orient things around key words, don't get too hung up on personas, don't worry about being too religious with a content calendar. Instead, just think about your audience and write for them regularly. This is the strategy I've been following since 1996 and I never worry about all this "gaming Google" stuff. I can't believe how much we over-complicate this.