So, any good seo consultant, that doesn’t keep their finger on the beating pulse of SEO, is going to get left behind. And with the sweeping changes that are happing at Google, and the other major search engines, well, there’s a lot of important changes happening, and us SEO’s plus businesses investing in the process need to know about.
We would say that throughout this whole article your going to see two words cropping up time and time again, those two words are “artificial intelligence”- and if your like us, the first thought that springs to mind, is the film “I-Robot” with the lead actor Will Smith. And this conjures up thoughts of AI being good and bad, and this is kind of the mindset that we are taking here at Ryan C Walsh, in that it could be really good, offering more useful results in the SERP’s, yet a question we ponder is, will just mean that AI generated content marking is flooded across websites, and we are left with generic content marketing, with no original thought perspective? Only time will tell.
We return to basics: Google is demanding your content marketing is useful and original
So, when you read some blog posts, on various seo company websites, which talk about how SEO will change in the year 2023, well, they bore the socks of you, quite literally. So, they may as the number one spot, put a rather boring pointer, “your website should have a mobile version” sure- well, thankfully, we want to provide you with some more useful advice.
And although we are in the year 2023, some things don’t change, but for some businesses they may need to radically change their approach to writing content marketing, so what do we mean by that.
Well, we live in a fast paced society, drink coffee, drive fast, move fast, or you will get left behind right? Well, no, sometimes we all need to slow down a bit and think a bit more slowly, and this is definitely true when it comes to writing content marketing.
In recent years businesses have become obsessed with thinking of content marketing like it’s a generic product, like your buying a mop for your house- any mop will do right?
So, here’s the mistake some businesses have made
Keep using AI generated content until the wheels fall off
Make a cup of tea, press the button, and hey presto, its writing an article for you- great right? Well, depends, is it real AI, or is it content that’s bit like back in the old days of “spinning an article”- what comes out the other end is readable, but is it insightful?
Do you walk away with the impression you have gained the perspective of an expert? Or do you walk away thinking you have just read an article that sounds generic, a bit bland, that feeling, I am sure I have read that somewhere else- any you might have?
So be original, here at Ryan C Walsh, we are great fans of the late Steve Jobs, a true pioneer, yet as he always said “think different” and that’s the best advice we can give you when trying to write content marketing- think differently- write your own perspective.
So, lets give you an example, lets say you run a business, lets say you sell ski equipment, shoes, skis, hats all that stuff, so this might be made by lets say three main brands.
So how many retailers retail the exact same products, thousands, right?
So if they all copy and pasted the same product descriptions, well how does Google’s algorthim decipher which business should rank on page one? How does Google know, which business is going to offer the best user experience, how does Google know which business is going to best answer that query if one thousand businesses all have the same copy and pasted product description on their website?
Well they cant.
Yet, lets say you have a group of company employees in your company that are sking experts, they review each product, they write the benefits of owning that product, so the product description is unique, Well Google, and more importantly Google’s EAT, its going to see that page has been written by an expert on ski equipment, that the page has authority, because an employee has written lets say a 500 word unique product description, and it has trust, because if I am buying a product, its nice to know what an expert thinks of the product, rather than reading lets say 10 bullet points, which are bit boring to read.
So be original, and think different.
Write boring content, because they need to hit a word count.
So the other mistake businesses make is to simply write boring content marketing, and this wont work, it wont cut the mustard.
Lets say for example a blog post about SEO, you could start writing about Googlebots, crawling and indexing, Google’s Rankbrain and how Google Hummingbird changed SEO so much, that the difference in the SERP’s after the roll out of the algorithm change was night and day, great, but if you don’t make it an interesting read, well your going to lose your readers interest, there going to fall asleep, or more likely leave your website.
And this could mean when you open your Google Analytics account, because you have written blog posts, that you have such a high bounce rate, no lets reword that, an insanely high bounce rate, so will this work be helping to get your business higher on Google? Because it has a high bounce rate, no, its doing the opposite, its going to damage your businesses seo.
The Helpful Content Update
Google has released a very important update, its called the Google Helpful Content Update, and what does this mean for businesses which are trying to improve their organic SEO? Well, the answer is simple, you must make your written work helpful, what we mean by that is helpful to your visitors to your website.
For too long businesses concentrated on writing content marketing, such as ever green content marketing just with the sole purposes of mentioning keywords they wished to rank for. For example, some seo agencies believes they had the magic formula, and believe us its no magic formula it doesn’t work, to mention say a keyword they want to rank for so many times in a thousand word article.
People-first content
So, what do we mean by “people first content”- well, what a marketing agency should do, is have a good think about the sort of questions the business often gets asked, then write content marketing to answer these questions. Then the marketing company needs to do two things, write the article, or present the YouTube video in a way were your offering the best possible advice you can for your customers, SEO, yeah sure its important, but concentrate at first on your customer, offering quality advice to them.
By concentrating on the customer you are making sure your creating “people first content”- content marketing for the customer, and your not just doing it to try and improve your seo.
Too many businesses in the past, and now in the present just write article, after article with the sole intention of trying improve their seo, by lets say mentioning keywords over and over again, this method doesn’t work.
Then some businesses watch YouTube videos, on so called experts on seo, that say you should write the keywords in the title, in the url, in the meta description in the page titles so many times, again this doesn’t work, because what your doing is writing to try and improve your seo, your not focused on offering best possible advice you can for your customers.
So, what’s our advice?
Write your articles as if your talking direct to a customer, offer the best advice you can.
Then our second point in this,
Aim to be the best in world
Were not asking much right?
Well, you should do this, aim for the stars, aim to be the very best, and you do this by answering that question better than your competitors can.
You might have an expert in your company, who you think is the best in the country at what they do, lets call that person Joe.
Then, you need to work with Joe, and ask Joe, will he help to write an article, but not just any article, the best article in the world on that subject.
Here’s the thing, Joes in your company, if there’s something worth knowing about the product or service you sell, well Joe knows about it, so Joe and a marketing company can come together to join forces, and write a good article, the best article, and together, with Joe’s expertise, you can move your business up Google’s ranks.
Google EAT
We have to refer back to Google’s EAT, and that is Google likes work that shows expertise, on the subject your writing about.
And you might think well, sure that’s common sense, how can you write 1000 words on something without any expertise.
But this is exactly what happened for a long time, with many businesses, which were paying copy writers minimal amounts of money, to write an article, and what happened, well you end up with a content thin article.
What’s a content thin article?
A content thin article, is the sort of article that you start to read, and you notice its just non-sense, generic boring article, lets say it has a title like this “10 things you need to know about fireworks”- its likely to be a boring, dull read.
So, to avoid this, a company needs to write an article that shows expertise, such as “how much does a firework display cost at a wedding”.
That’s the sort of question someone might ask, if they are planning on having a wedding.
Have a look at your old blog posts / content marketing- could it be further improved?
Its likely, like most businesses, you have content marketing that simply is not performing that well.
And it’s a bit like having wood worm in a section of your house (bear with us we will explain) you could just ignore it, through a nice carpet over the flooring, and it looks good, but eventually it will get worse, and you might end up going through the floor.
Well having rubbish, content thin, poorly written content marketing on your website is like wood worm, you could ignore it, leave it there, add some new blog posts, that are much better, there more interesting to read, engagement is good, Google Analytics says, you know what, you have 10,000 organic visitors this month to that blog post, however, here’s the thing.
The content marketing, that has a bit of wood worm, it could be dragging your whole website down, it could be like an anchor dragging you back.
So first, before we lay any new carpets, we need to address the wood work, how do we do this?
Is there any content thin content marketing on your website?
Have you written any content marketing in a blind rush to get down the pub?
Is there content marketing that when you read over it, think well that’s a half-baked attempt at answering the question, and if so, well you need to improve it, you need to edit it, make it better.
You could elaborate a bit more, add some statistics, or just make it better by adding say a youtube video.
No organic traffic at all, dead as a door nail?
