To stay optimised for search engines, writers and site owners need to keep abreast of the latest Google updates. After a year of Helpful Content updates, Google’s March 2024 core update has changed the game yet again. Here are three important writing tips you should keep in mind this year.
Write From Experience
Google’s previous E-E-A-T and Helpful Content updates have made it clear that they value writing from experience more than ever before. Now that they have been absorbed into Google’s core updates, content creators should lean on their experience if they produce reviews or tutorial pieces. Google’s new guidelines can understand context, so it’s mainly blog posts that are judged for experience.
Google flags certain keywords based on predicted intent, so things like information-gathering searches are held to more scrutiny. Sites that offer products or digital services, like iGaming for example, don’t have their pages held to the same standards. There’s a difference between writing a tech tutorial versus the information page on a site where you can play slingo online. If a user searches for that slingo game, then the search is more preoccupied with serving the biggest and best iGaming websites. With longer blog posts, however, the content needs to give accurate and well-researched information that’s valuable to both humans and Google’s bots alike.
With that in mind, writers should take a quality-over-quantity approach. Site owners shouldn’t just create new content using that strategy, they should revisit and reoptimise older content. As per the March 2024 core update, having just one unhelpful or spammy page on-site can impact the site’s whole SEO profile. Naturally, you should consider running a website audit after each Google core update finishes rolling out.
Learn E-E-A-T Well
E-E-A-T was introduced in 2022, but it is essential to Google’s current helpful content framework and the newer March 2024 core update. You may know what it stands for (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) but you need to know exactly how these are judged and ranked. Think of each letter as a layer, meaning the T is actually the foundation on which all the other letters sit.
If your site isn’t trustworthy, it isn’t ranking. Most trustworthiness concerns are related to web design and backend SEO – the things you do to make your site appear like the real deal. If the site has outdated formatting, no security certificate or other red flags, Google will stop your blogging career before it begins.
Working backwards, authoritativeness can be summed up as your reputation. Many big websites rank highly purely on the power of their brand, or a legacy of legitimate reporting online. This means you achieve authoritativeness by following the two Es, while making content for a site that passes the T test. For both experience and expertise, prove your bona fides when possible with an on-site profile page and links to LinkedIn and other well-established, business-oriented social media.
Lean on Visual Content
Our last tip isn’t strictly about writing, but it’s one of the best SEO boosts you can give your content in 2024. When writing, lean on visuals to help you out when needed. If the visuals are produced by you/your online business, even better. Video content has been dominant for a while, and this is starting to shape the SEO scene. Mobile and video SEO are arguably the most important focal points for optimisers hungry for growth. Using the best video SEO practices, your written content can get an edge over competitors who lack visual elements.
By making your own video content to add to blog posts, you can also open up other avenues for traffic. Besides your site, you can host videos through sharing sites like YouTube or social media sites, which are increasingly pushing visual content over written posts.
By adhering to these tips, and adding visual content wherever possible, you should be in the best position to rank pages in 2024. More Google updates are always on the way, however, so there’s no telling how blog writing will adapt in the future.
