Where a website ranks on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) has a big impact on the amount of traffic it receives. The higher it appears, the more organic traffic it will receivetherefore, it is essential to optimize the content, following Google’s quality guidelines, to always appear in the top positions of the search engines.
Google wants quality content, created by experts, with attention to detail and that is truthful.
Many of the changes that Google implements in its algorithms aim to ensure that the content is as good as possible for users. If we follow these guidelines, we will be able to create content that ranks very well organically, which will make our pages and websites receive a lot of traffic.
In this article we will go over how to create this type of content, avoiding penalties, creating fresh, evergreen and good performing content.
Focus on quality content
One of the first things we must be clear about is that Google does not like what is called “Thin Content”. Thin content is low quality contentthese are usually articles with superficial information, with a poor choice of keywords or with dubious techniques such as “keyword stuffing”.
To position, we must create high quality content. Each topic we deal with must be explained in depth and must offer real value to the user.
how can we make sure that our content is of quality? First of all, it must solve a problem or be helpful to our users. It must also be created by an expert, it must contain reliable sources and, whenever possible, it must be regularly updated.
Expertise, truthfulness, accuracy and detail
When determining the quality of searches, Google places special emphasis on the veracity and legitimacy of pages, seeking to avoid content that is unreliable or contains information that has not been contrasted.
Google penalizes the contents of pages such as “Your Money or Your Life“(YMYL), which are pages that are intended to make the user spend money, as well as those involving health issues. In this type of content, misleading or poor quality content can have very dangerous implications for the reader.
what content does Google classify as YMYL? News, government topics, legal and financial information, online shopping, and health or medical topics.
These types of pages are more closely monitored by Google and quality guidelines are more severely enforced. As we have said, this type of content poses a greater danger to the user, as they could lose their money in investments or expenses, as well as put their health at risk by following bad advice read on a web page.
Ideally avoid this type of content. However, if we have to deal with this kind of topics, we have to analyze in depth each content, consult with experts and, use and link to reliable sources.
Analyze the competition
If we want to appear at the top of the SERP, we have to know the contents that are already positioned on that page.
These competitor contents can offer us a good guide to what the audience is looking for, what are the contents they like, which are the keywords that rank better and, most importantly, we can find unanswered questionsthat allow us to expand our own text and make them better positioned.
Although many tools can be used to analyze these contents, it is enough to read the contents and analyze what they are doing well, as well as any faults or shortcomings, something we can discover by reading user comments and looking for any frequently asked questions among them.
Consider users’ search intent
By adjusting our content to the audience’s search intent, we can improve the user experience, something that Google takes very much into account, which improves our SEO positioning.
We have to create specific content for each stage. For example, for informational searches, we can create content containing examples of how to use a product, as well as guides and tutorials. For transactional searches, it is best to create content with coupons, discounts and special offers.
