What would you say if I told you that you could write a blog in a matter of minutes, without any effort at all but a few steps and clicks to make sure your key points are covered? Feels too good to be true doesn’t it? Well it isn’t, because unless you have been living under a marketing rock you will know that there are lots of tools out there that will now do exactly this.
And Google is not happy about it!
The recent update from Google looks to combat content that is written for ‘SEO purposes’ which is a nice way of saying ‘generated by websites for SEO’. The update will look to demote content that appears to be written in this way and instead promote what they are calling ‘person focused content’. This means content which is as genuine as it can be and is clearly written with the reader in mind, instead of the search engine.
The fascinating thing about this is that we can see in real time, platforms, tech and search fighting against each other for a space at the top. With a boom in content across every area from social to video to blogs – the saturation is real and Google is looking to make sure that the user experience and the person searching is still the number one priority.
If you work in marketing you may have been feeling the squeeze over the past few years to produce content better, faster, more viral and more everything – but at a lower cost. Or just more for the same cost. This squeeze has sent many people overseas to look for cheaper labour which in turn has meant that quality has dropped in some areas as the demands have increased.
So what happens next?
Well, if you are a content producer, marketer or a brand then you can see that Google and social platforms alike are working to make sure that content produced for content’s sake does not start to creep to the top of our searches. So if anything this should be the fire that makes us all sit back and invest more in high quality, unique content that is written and produced for the person not the search engine. The challenge is that there is still a high demand on speed and quantity of content which doesn’t look to be going anywhere any time soon. So in the short term it is a case of balancing both quality, quanity and price along side staying up to date with the changes that Google and other platforms sends our way.
Have you seen the effect of Google’s recent update on your rankings? Let me know in the comments!