google helpful content update Archives

Understanding People-First Content: What It Is and How to Write It

by Nicole Inge | Sep 27, 2022 | Content Marketing

It’s always been important that you develop content your audience finds useful, but for years, content that focuses on ranking because of SEO has saturated the pages of search engines. Now, the Google Helpful Content Update has finished rolling out, and the phrase people-first content is everywhere.

You might have heard of this phrase before, but if you haven’t, you’re likely wondering why it is so important and how it will impact your marketing. Understanding human-first content is essential for utilizing the Helpful Content Update. But you shouldn’t only be concerned about what this means for the algorithms of search engines.

Take this as a sign to step up your content strategy through content that prioritizes originality and helpfulness for your readers. By focusing on content this way, you can bring in an audience that organically resonates with your topics and find better-qualified leads.

Still worried you don’t understand people-first content? We’re going to help you understand what it is and why it helps you build authority. Then we’ll cover how to create it to put humans first and the best ways to optimize for search engines.

What is Human-First Content?

Put simply, Google’s mission with the Helpful Content Update is to reward creators who provide high-quality, people-first content to their readers. Content that dives deeply into a topic and shows a mastery of knowledge is more likely to perform well in the SERPs, while low-value content will rank lower.

When combined with Google’s other ranking signals, the algorithm can better detect content that is low-quality content or doesn’t answer the questions searchers have. This content will then be de-prioritized.

Content aimed at humans will deliver a satisfying experience to those who visit your site. The focus then becomes providing value and keeping people returning to your site because your content answers all their questions. They don’t need to search anywhere else.

Take a look at the content on your site. Do you provide solutions to problems that your niche addresses? Do you have pages that people find regularly and link back to as the perfect source for facts? If the answer remains unclear, your content strategy probably needs an upgrade. There’s no need to worry because Google has provided key questions to ask yourself about the focus of your content.

Once you’ve clarified where you need improvement, crafting the perfect content to build an enthralled readership is key.

Why Human-First Content is Important for Building Authority

Establishing yourself and your brand as an authority in your field is no easy feat. However, if you want to bring people to your site and ultimately turn them into customers, it is essential.

We know it can be hard to know what authority looks like for your niche. That’s why you’ll want to research your competition, commit to keyword research, and find the topics your target audience is interested in as you get started. From there, you’ll have a clear picture of what you have on your site already and what you need to add to become a trusted voice in your industry.

Setting up your content strategy this way centers your readership from the start. You already know what real people are searching for and where the gaps are. Then you commit to consistently creating quality content and steadily bringing in the right audience. They’ll see your thoughtful, in-depth posts to show them you care about what you’ve put on your site, not just SEO or rankings.

Understanding why authority is essential to content can be elusive. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

It’ll Showcase Your Expertise on a Topic: Odds are, you know a lot about the topics your brand covers, so share that knowledge. You can do this by creating well-thought-out, detailed, and in-depth guides on topics that interest your target audience. Proving that you know what you’re talking about is a great way to easily build trust with your audience.
Readers Will See You as a Dependable Resource: When your readers can count on you for high-quality, factual, and valuable content, they keep returning for more. Not only is that great for boosting website traffic, but those people become loyal readers. From there, they share your content with their audience and friends, helping you build a circle of people who are a great fit for your customer base. Because you nurtured them through your content – whether blogs, email, or social media – they know they can count on you.
It’ll Differentiate You from Competitors: You can find a high saturation of businesses online. The best thing you can do for yourself is research the gaps that you fill in your industry. You show your audience that you’re different than your competition by creating human-first content that addresses their needs and provides assistance your competitors can’t or don’t.

Keeping these factors in mind while you put together your content strategy will make you a stronger player in your industry. Your readers will take note, and searchers will find you faster on Google, so it’s best to go all in for content you’re passionate about that truly helps your audience.

How to Write Human-First Content

While your content should always focus on humans first, the Google Helpful Content Update adds some urgency to understanding how to write like this. We’ve put together some tips to help you make sure your content is helpful and valuable for your audience so creating people-first content won’t feel so overwhelming.

1. Ensure Your Content Sticks to Your Niche

It might seem like covering a wide array of topics will bring more traffic to your site. But Google doesn’t consider that a way to create helpful content. Your readers are less likely to experience confusion when they visit your site because all your content follows a similar direction.

Because searchers often have multiple connected questions when they seek out information online, having your content back catalog connected can keep folks on your site longer and provide evidence that you can be trusted in your niche. It also means your content can be linked internally, which is another great way to combine a human-focused mindset with SEO.

2. Choose Topics Your Audience is Interested In

Writing people-first content means crafting everything with your target audience in mind. They came to search engines to find answers, which means you have a great way to find what interests your audience and where they need help.

SEO tools have made it much easier to find what people search for. For example, checking Google Analytics will populate a list of terms that got people to your website. Knowing what terms got people to your site can indicate topics that are popular within your industry. Plus, you’ll know how long folks stay on your site when they get to that page, so you can determine if you need to add or update the content on those pages.

Additionally, you can use software like Ahrefs and Semrush to examine keywords and popular terms within your industry and find topics that are trending and how difficult it is to rank for a keyword.

You can also pay attention to the posts that your audience engages with on social media. From comments to likes, knowing what posts people see and which ones they want to learn more about. Keeping up with this information is helpful because you can test different content on different platforms while making sure your content strategy is cohesive anywhere you post.

If you want to take things to the next level, hop on a market research call with people in your target audience. You can do individual calls or host one group call with multiple people. This gives you the chance to ask them what they’d like to see from you.

Finally, you can even analyze your competitors and see the topics their audience responds to or requests. Look for any gaps in their content strategy that your brand can step up to the plate and fill, then create even more in-depth content.

3. Prioritize Solving the Problems of Your Readers

By creating valuable content, your audience can show appreciation for the solutions you give to their problems. When you listen to the pain points of your client base and those involved in your industry, you can provide content that answers questions with ease. Having an ear to the ground for these problems will also help your content get noticed in the SERPs.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of poor-quality content on the web. Rushed content, pieces that address too many topics at once, and click-bait content are everywhere. We’ve all likely searched for something and ended up on a blog that doesn’t actually answer the question asked. Then you’re left feeling frustrated and like you’ve wasted your time. You don’t want your readers to leave your site feeling like that, do you?

This is why you should ensure you go above and beyond with your published content. Provide tons of helpful information in every piece of content you create so your reader never feels the need to conduct a second Google search. You’ll see how grateful your audience can be when they keep coming back to your blog before they, too, join your client base.

4. Make Your Topics Easy to Understand

Writing content that’s helpful and your readers understand can be a balancing act. You don’t want content filled with industry jargon if your target audience is filled with beginners or novices in the industry.

One of the best things you can do is pinpoint who your readers are and meet them where they’re at. This goes beyond knowing their interests and pain points. Establish how knowledgeable your audience is likely to be for each topic. Then you can create content they can keep up with, which is way more appealing to readers (so you’re more likely to retain those folks).

Using images in your content is one way you can help people follow along with your content. One statistic even says that people who see visuals with text are 323% better at following directions than when they just see text. Overall, marketers have seen an explosion in the effectiveness of visuals in their content, so it’s worth keeping in mind for your own content.

5. Bring Empathy to Your Content

Using empathy in your content is an important way to build a connection between yourself and your audience. It shows you understand the feelings and struggles of your audience from their point of view because you can put yourself in their shoes.

One of the biggest things you’ll see as a refrain with people-first content is that you need to understand who your target audience is. We’ve mentioned that you need to determine their struggles and pain points because you can then create more effective content. It focuses on solutions and hits the helpful content guidelines from Google by meeting their wants and needs as a searcher.

One great way to connect is through sharing personal stories or anecdotes that help your reader see that you can relate to what they’re going through. Not only does this build a stronger connection between you, but it can be an effective way to establish trust. It’s something that you’ll see in many viral posts on social media and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Obviously, you don’t want to lie or fabricate your story, but authentically sharing the struggles you’ve faced humanizes your brand in a way that can be invaluable.

6. Don’t Neglect Overall User Experience

Delivering a satisfying experience to those who visit your website was essential before the helpful content update. Now it’s even more important. So how do you deliver on this? Write content that reflects the way you help your audience. Then pair content with your site design to create a frustration-free website flow.

One way to do this is to consider the overall user experience on your website. It used to be that slow-loading pages were the norm, but that’s not the case anymore. You need to make sure your website loads quickly because your conversion rates will drop by an average of 4.42% with every additional second of loading time (between seconds 0-5). You don’t want to lose potential leads because they couldn’t access your content easily.

When considering your user experience, ensure your site is easy to navigate and isn’t cluttered with too many ads or pop-ups. Your site navigation should link to internal pages as well. So consider a content-first design when creating or updating your website.

How to Optimize Your Content While Still Writing for People

Many of us pour a ton of time and effort into appeasing the Google algorithm because we understand that SEO is important to writing content online. However, it’s now important to find a balance between satisfying your reader and search engines.

But how are you supposed to do this properly if your number one focus is your human reader? The best way to think about it is that SEO is a great asset to get you closer to the audience you haven’t reached yet while focusing on the readership you’ve already earned. This way, you can create high-quality, optimized content without becoming robotic.

To ensure your readers and Google enjoy your content, there are a few things to remember every time you dive into content creation mode:

Choose the Right Keyword: A huge factor in optimization success is getting your keyword right, which starts with smart keyword research. Get inside the mind of your human reader by considering the keywords they’d search to end up on your piece. Search volume, competition, and difficulty are important aspects of this process.
Use Your Keywords Naturally: This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to avoid keyword stuffing. Using the focus keyword too frequently in your content will feel forced, making it difficult for your reader to consume what you’ve written.
Format Your Content for Readability: Reading a huge block of text is likely not your favorite activity. That’s why you need to take time to properly format your content before hitting publish. Shorter paragraphs that are easy to scan are a great place to start formatting. Then use headings to break your blog posts into sections and include your focus keyword. You can also utilize bulleted and numbered lists where appropriate for further scanability.

These aren’t the only steps you should take to optimize your content, but they are some of the easiest to get started with. And if you’re still stuck, Google has a list of guidance for SEO best practices you can consider. By combining these tactics with quality writing, you’ll knock your content out of the park every time.

Get Human-First Content Created by the Experts

Need an SEO copywriter who understands the importance of people-first content? Express Writers is the content writing agency for you. Our team of writers and editors understands SEO best practices without sacrificing quality. We’ll get you the content you need to become an authority in your industry.

What Does the Google Helpful Content Update Mean for Content Marketing?

by Nicole Inge | Sep 20, 2022 | Content Marketing

As an online content creator, it’s essential to pay close attention when Google makes algorithm updates.

These changes can directly impact how your content ranks on the search engine results pages (SERPs). This means being prepared to adapt your strategy to the algorithm to secure a spot on the coveted first page of Google. You might think this task is challenging, but it’s all about staying up to date with Google’s best practices.

The most recent update, announced in August 2022, is the Google Helpful Content Update. The update seeks to better identify low-value content, meaning high-quality, people-first content will generate more organic traffic and rank higher.

And since it finished rolling out on September 9^th, we wanted to explore everything you need to know about the Helpful Content Update and dive into what it means for you and your content marketing efforts.

What is the Google Helpful Content Update?

To better connect people with information that brings them value, Google says that they prioritize ranking “original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

Combined with the rest of Google’s ranking signals, this update will settle into an algorithm that detects low-quality content lacking meaningful engagement. It is a site-wide signal that homes in on sites with a large quantity of unhelpful content before penalizing them by decreasing site traffic.

Frustrated users express on social media or blogs that they land on pages that provide no solutions to their search questions but rank on top pages in search engines. So, Google has taken these conversations to heart and wants to use the algorithm to reward creators who provide human-first content to their readers.

The Helpful Content Update is just one part of a large effort to make it easier to find helpful content when searching. While this update might not feel widespread yet, it has caused some shakeup in search results as the algorithm works to recategorize sites.

What Does the Google Helpful Content Update Mean for Content Marketing?

Since websites that engage with their audience to provide helpful content will climb higher in the SERPs and generate more organic traffic, it’s important to know what will affect you as a content marketer.

After all, when Google makes changes, you’ll also need to make changes to your content strategy. Here’s what you should know:

Focus on People-First Content

The term “people-first content” comes directly from Google. But what exactly does this mean? First and foremost, it’s about providing great content and a positive experience for your website readers.

If you post content to your site, it’s your job to think about the target audience of your content and write with them in mind. Does this mean you should abandon the SEO best practices you’ve been implementing all this time? Absolutely not. It just means you should focus on creating high-quality content first and then incorporate search engine ranking factors to provide additional value to searchers.

To ensure your website and its content have a people-first approach, Google encourages you to ask yourself the following questions. If you can answer yes to them, you’re likely on the right track.

Does your intended or existing audience find the content useful because it came directly from your business site?
Does your content establish first-hand expertise and in-depth knowledge?
Is the purpose or focus of your site clear?
When someone reads your content, will they leave feeling they’ve gotten enough knowledge to achieve their goal without needing to search elsewhere?
Will reading your content leave someone feeling like their experience was satisfying?
Is guidance for core updates and for product reviews kept in mind?

Don’t Make Search Engines Your Primary Focus

We get it. You want your content to rank, so you implement all the SEO best practices the experts recommend. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it does become an issue when that’s all you’re focused on. If you aren’t prioritizing your human reader, your content (and rankings) will suffer.

To determine if you’ve previously been taking a search engine-first approach with your content, Google has shared the following questions to ask yourself. If you answer yes to the majority of these questions, consider reevaluating the content on your site to focus on people first.

Does content draw people from search engines over prioritizing content made for humans?
Do you produce large quantities of content on different topics in hopes that some could perform well in search results?
Do you use automation extensively to create content on many topics?
Do you end up summarizing other existing content without adding new insight?
Is your content focused on what’s trending instead of topics you’d write about for your existing audience?
Do readers finish your content and feel like they need to do another search for better information?
Is all of your content a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (They don’t.)
Are you exploring a niche topic area but lacking real expertise because you thought you’d get search traffic?
Does your content promise answers to questions that have no answer, like mentioning a release date for a product, movie, or TV show that hasn’t been confirmed?

How to Abide by the Google Helpful Content Update

There are a few things you can do to transform your content strategy moving forward. Following these tips will ensure you focus on your readers and keep Google happy by extension.

1. Stick to Your Niche

Once you’ve narrowed down your niche, Google’s advice is to stick with it. After all, it would be a little confusing if we started publishing recipes on The Write Blog, wouldn’t it? We know our niche and understand that our audience comes to us to learn everything possible about creating high-quality online content.

If you’ve been publishing content outside of your niche, it’s time to make a change. You don’t want Google to think you’re more focused on search engines and rankings than your human reader. From here on out, focus your approach and create content that establishes your authority in your industry.

Confused about what your niche should be? There are a few things you can do to find your business niche. This is essential to show your industry differentiators to your audience through the content you craft. You’ll know for sure your base comes to you for your product, and now that you’re creating quality content, the leads that find you will know from the beginning why they ended up on your site over a competitor.

2. Showcase Your Expertise and Authority

Are you helping your readers when you write about topics you don’t have experience in or passion for? Probably not. These topics require a knowledge base you don’t have, and a reader can usually tell when you have the correct experience. For instance, the last thing you want to do is write a review about a product or service you’ve never even tried.

Instead, focus on content that allows you to showcase your expertise and authority on a subject. Which topics can you talk about confidently for hours on end? What does your product do, and do you have a long-form blog to help your potential clients understand why it’s important? By putting thought into the content you produce, your strategy is more focused on the authority you have in your field.

In time, people will begin to see you as a trustworthy resource. This keeps people coming back to you when they need information about your industry. Now, you’re establishing your brand and building a back catalog of content people can return to over and over.

3. Make Sure Your Website Has a Clear Purpose or Focus

It can be tempting to cover a wide array of topics on your website to attract more readers. However, this is unlikely to generate the best results. For one, your target audience will have a harder time getting to your website, and they’re the ones whose attention you need to grab. And now, the Google Helpful Content Update craves focus for your website’s content.

The content that you publish should have a primary purpose, and Google has the ability to crawl your site and find the focus of your content. If readers can’t find the main idea because you’re all over the place covering every topic under the sun, they won’t find your content helpful. Instead, they’ll be confused. Additionally, search engines will have a difficult time understanding your website, and it won’t be categorized correctly.

If your content has one main subject area, Google will know where to put you when searchers start looking for information that’s part of your expertise. You’ll avoid falling victim to trending topics that are outside your niche, and your target audience will find you more easily.

4. Provide Plenty of Information to Address a Reader’s Questions

When you open a blog post you found after conducting a Google search, you expect it to answer all of your questions, right? But in reality, we know that far too often, this isn’t the case. We stumble upon lackluster content that barely addresses our needs. It’s frustrating and winds up sending us back to the Google search page to find another resource instead.

Even before the Google Helpful Content Update, your content marketing should center on a human-first approach. Provide articles with statistics, verifiable evidence, and information so your reader doesn’t feel the need to conduct a second search to find better content. One way to determine this is to look over your content and search for specific statements that offer actionable advice or information to answer questions successfully.

Don’t be afraid to go above and beyond by providing detailed, long-form blog posts. Not only will your reader appreciate having access to all of their desired information in one place, but Google will reward you by pushing up your page in the SERPs.

5. Always Deliver a Satisfying Experience

The overall experience you provide to your readers makes a difference. If you want people to come back to your site and Google to rank you high in the SERPs, you need to deliver a satisfying experience every time. This means that your content should be clear, answer all the questions a reader has, and focuses on the topics that interest them. You want your audience to stay on your site for longer, and when they leave, they should be satisfied with the answers they found.

It’s also smart to consider the user experience of your website. The last thing you want is to send a reader running because your website is slow to load, has confusing navigation, or is cluttered with too many ads. If you’re not sure if your website is impressing visitors, have a friend or colleague visit your website and give honest feedback about how they think your site functions.

Get People-First Content Written by the Experts

Express Writers is a content writing agency focused on developing people-first content for our clients. We aim to provide you with the highest quality articles to boost your business. And our SEO content writers understand Google’s algorithm as an additional asset. That means we make sure to put your audience first with every piece of content we craft. This way you can be sure you always deliver a satisfying experience.