Will Google’s most recent content-targeted update announcement help or hurt your website?
Did you know that at the end of August, Google announced their “helpful content update” for content creators? It could have a huge impact on your website if you don’t understand what it is and how to implement it properly.
Google is rewarding content creators who focus on creating information that “is written by people, for people” which would make you ask “what other kind of content is there?”.
Content being created by AI (artificial intelligence) is starting to litter the Google landscape and while AI manufactures it quickly, it doesn’t always have the depth or nuance of topic that content written by a person would be able to create. And this is the content that Google wants to avoid.
Does this mean there is no place for AI created content? Google mentions that creators shouldn’t use “extensive automation to produce content on many topics”. What they appear to be aiming for is more of a partnership where the power of AI can help with the research of topics but the core content has to understand on a deeper level what the reader wants.
So what should you avoid?
- Stay away from writing about topics that fall outside your site’s core area of expertise in hopes of attracting attention from search engines.
- Don’t repurpose content that just repeats what has already been said.
- Only use AI as a compliment to your content writing, not to write an entire article.
- Don’t write shallow summary content that makes the reader keep on searching.
- Don’t chase arbitrary word counts. Google has already said that there is no real word count they work to.
As always, Google has produced guidelines on how to ground your writing in good practice for their latest update.
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