The latest Google search update March 2024 – is aimed at tackling the issue of unoriginal content and rewarding/prioritising helpful, reliable, people-first content in search results.

This is important for anyone with a website. I have wanged on about this forever (writing for humans), BUT it’s worth repeating. You need to create content that genuinely serves the needs of users (answers questions) rather than looking solely at ranking in search engines.

Google recommends asking questions like “Who, How, and Why” about your content to ensure it demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, E-E-A-T.

• Create high-quality, helpful content for users.

• Provide value for your audience.

• Get rewarded by Google’s search algorithms.

Some other useful random titbits from Google’s advice include…

• Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t.)

• Does the main heading or page title avoid exaggerating or being shocking in nature?

• Does the content have any spelling or stylistic issues?

• Is the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?

As well as rewarding helpful content, Google has also implemented manual actions to notify website owners when their content violates Google’s guidelines, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content. This enforcement aims to improve the quality of search results by addressing the proliferation of low-quality, unhelpful and unoriginal content (which we all know is legion).

In short, write helpful content for people and not to rank in search engines. If you have already done or are already doing this. Good. If you aren’t and need help then do get in touch.