How to create helpful, reliable, and people-first content according to Google's August 2022 Content Update

Google's automatic ranking techniques are geared toward returning relevant, high-quality results in Searches with users in mind rather than search engine optimisation.

Evaluate your writing to see how effective it is

The answers to these questions might serve as a checklist for evaluating the quality and usefulness of your content writing efforts. In addition to introspectively pondering these issues, you may also want to solicit the opinions of trusted parties who are not otherwise involved with your site.

Take into account doing a review of any declines that may have occurred. For example, where and when did tremendous damage occur, and what kinds of searches did they affect? Please pay special attention to them in light of the criteria described below so that you can gauge how they would be evaluated.

Questions on relevant and high-quality inquiry topics

• Does it include first-hand accounts, reports, studies, or analyses?
• Does it provide a good, thorough, or extensive account of the subject?
• Is there any analysis or information presented that goes beyond what is immediately apparent?
• If the content uses other sources, does it avoid just restating or paraphrasing them, or does it provide crucial new information that makes the piece stand out from the crowd?
• Is there a brief, informative overview of the content in the header or page title?
• Is there an absence of hyperbole or shock value in the top headline?
• Would you save this page for later, forward it to a friend, or recommend it to others?
• How likely is it that you'd find this information in a printed magazine, encyclopaedia, or book or that one of those works would mention this content?
• How helpful is this page more than others that appear in the search results?

Concerning the Experts

• Does the content provide information in a manner that makes you want to trust it, such as a clear source, proof of the expertise involved, and background information about the author or the site that publishes it (such as links to an author page or the site's About page)?
• Users should consider whether they would feel confident in the content's veracity if they were to do some background investigation on the website that created it.
• Is the author an established authority on the subject matter, or do they only claim to be one?
• Does it include any factual mistakes that can be checked?

Problems with production and presentations

• Can you see any typos or poor style in the text?
• Is the content well-made, or does it have a shoddy or rushed feel?
• Is the information mass-produced by a large team of people, distributed over a wide variety of sites, or otherwise created in a way that makes it less likely that any one page or site will get substantial maintenance or upkeep?
• Is there an overwhelming quantity of advertisements that makes it difficult to focus on the subject at hand?
• Does it look well on mobile devices?

People-First Content

Simply said, "people-first content" is content for actual people and not just search engines. The question is how to measure how well you put your audience first while developing a content strategy. If you can confidently answer "yes" to the following questions, your "people first" strategy is likely to be successful:

• Do you plan to develop a following for your company or website that would find this information helpful if they were to come to you rather than some other source?
• If you're writing about a product or location that you've seen or utilised, do you make it apparent that you have first-hand experience with both?
• Do you have a central point or goal for your site?
• Can readers feel like they've gained enough knowledge after reading your work to continue with their project?
• Will someone who reads what you've written feel like they've accomplished something?

Keep away from writing for search engines

If you want to do well in Google Search, we suggest switching your emphasis from providing content for search engines to creating content for humans. If you find yourself answering "yes" to any of the following questions, it may be time to rethink your approach to content creation:

• Is the emphasis of the content on pleasing search engines?
• Are you trying to improve your search engine rankings by creating loads of content on various topics?
• Do you use great automation to generate content across multiple subjects?
• Aside from reiterating their points, are you offering anything to the discussion?
• Do you write about topics only because they're famous now rather than because you're interested in covering them for your regular readers?
• Do people who read what you've written feel they need to go elsewhere for more complete or more up-to-date information?
• Have you heard or read that Google has a recommended word count, and thus you're trying to stick to that? Unfortunately, that's not the case (and we don't).
• Did you go into a specific field of study in which you had little to no background knowledge in the hopes of attracting readers via search engine results?
• Do you claim to have information that you don't? For example, do you say a product, movie, or TV programme will be released on a specific day when you know that date hasn't been set in stone?

What about search engine optimisation methods?

Some actions you may take will directly impact search engines' ability to index and categorise your content. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the umbrella term for all these practices. Google has SEO guidelines you should follow. However, SEO may be beneficial for content created with humans in mind rather than search engines.

Learn the acronym E-E-A-T and the standards used by quality raters.

Google's automated algorithms consider various signals to determine where high-quality content should be placed in search results. After deciding what information is useful, our computers will sort through it and give preference to the most promising results. They achieve this by identifying various criteria that may aid in determining whether information displays E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness).

A combination of variables that can identify the content with strong E-E-A-T is valuable, even if E-E-A-T isn't a particular ranking criterion. For example, when it comes to information that might significantly influence people's health, financial stability, safety, or the welfare or well-being of society, Google’s systems give such content even more weight since it fits with its strong E-E-A-T. YMYL, which stands for "Your Money or Your Life" themes.

We use search quality raters to check the efficacy of our adjustments by giving feedback on the quality of the search results generated by our algorithms. In particular, raters learn to identify high-quality E-E-A-T in the content. Our search quality rater guidelines detail the criteria that they should utilise.

After reading the guidelines, you should be able to evaluate how well your content performs from an E-E-A-T standpoint, identify areas where you can make improvements, and bring your content more closely in line conceptually with the various signals used by our automated systems to determine rankings.