Contents
Introduction
Google has rolled-out its major update, also called December Core Update. Here is
The December 2020 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 3, 2020
After reading the article, I found that there is nothing new in this update. We can sum up the update into one sentence
Providing original, authoritative, errorless, relevant, easy, engaging, and most updated content to the users.
Google Search Central
Here are five important things to note from this major update.
Use of Long-Tail Keywords
Title of the article is the most important factor for ranking in Google. Hence, the very first task in the content writing process is to choose a suitable title. According to Google,
Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?
Google Search Central
Google suggests us to choose the title which tells what exactly the article contains. Here comes the need for the so-called “Long Tail Keywords”.
Long Tail Keywords are nothing but summary of the content. You can use
- Instant Keywords Suggestions Tool for long tail keywords suggestions from Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay.
- Marketing Keywords Tool for articles relating to products and services, reviews, coupon pages etc.
- Question Keyword Suggestions Tool if you have a community or need to create FAQ section in your content.
These tools are free to use. You can copy the keywords or download them as .txt file.
In addition to this Google asks,
Does the headline and/or page title avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature?
Google Search Central
In other words, Google recommends us to use titles which are simple, meaningful, natural and not have some kind of exaggeration or click-baits.
Here is an interesting article on Keyword Mapping.
Writing Original & Quality Content
Google has clearly said:
“We suggest focusing on ensuring you’re offering the best content you can. That’s what our algorithms seek to reward.”
Google Search Central
Bloggers need to write the best content. But what is the best content??? I have seen lots of people, agencies and self-proclaimed “SEO Experts” using technical terms to confuse bloggers and content creators, especially the newbies.
Here is an example of how these people fool us.
On contrary, I believe that in order to succeed in blogging we need to figure out what our audience exactly needs. This makes the meaning of “Best Content” varying. e.g.
- for a site which has school students as its audience, the best content is the one that is written in simple words, small sentences and in less than 400 words because a school boy has books and guides for detailed content. On the web, he searches for content which is easier and shorter.
- for a site which has bloggers as its audience, the best content would be the one which is long, detailed and problem-solving. e.g. a WordPress user will search “How to migrate data from one server to other”. The best content for this keyword would be the one which has details of each step along with pictures and preferably videos.
- for a Question-Answer based site (like mine), the best content would be the direct answers to the questions which users post. You can use Explore Keywords Question Suggestions Generator Tool for getting questions relating to any topic; and so on…
The other aspect of “Best content” is its originality. Mere spinning the articles from other sites for the sake of writing is a bad habit. I think, every blogger should do proper research before writing an article. In my case, I give at least 1-2 hours to read about the topic before writing on it.
Avoiding Factual Errors & Grammatical & Spelling Mistakes
I have often seen grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes and of course factual errors on many blogs, particularly those which are working on educational niche. According to Google,
1. Is the content free from spelling or stylistic issues?
2. Is the content free from easily-verified factual errors?
Google Search Central
These are the questions which we bloggers need to ask ourselves. Would we consider our content trustworthy if we read it as a third person? How would we feel if we find grammatical mistakes or factual errors in the content?
The best way to avoid these errors are
- Read the content at least 2-3 times so that no grammatical or spelling error may remain.
- Use grammar checker.
- Verify the facts from authentic sources of your niche and even cite the source from which you have took the information.
Backlinking
A majority of bloggers, especially the newbies have one thing in mind, “Backlinks”. They need do-follow backlinks because some self-proclaimed “SEO (not) Expert” has asked him/her to create backlinks in order to rank his/her articles on Google.
This is one of the worst mistake which most of us commit because we never understand what backlinking exactly is.
What I have understood, Backlinks are the links given from a page to yours because your article provides addition valuable information to the users. There can also be links from the pages which have quoted some part of your content, as reference.
Thus backlinks are supposed to provide the user additional information or source of the information. Here is what Google has to say about the backlinks,
Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s About page?
Google Search Central
Google recommends us to link back to sources (from which we take the information). So, giving links to other sites (authentic and related) is a good practice and we should not be miser in this practice.
The content which links back to the authentic or original source is preferred by Google. If we do so, our content also becomes authentic, genuine, trustable and will also be linked back by other pages.
Minimalistic Layout
I found an important point in Google’s article.
Does the content have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Google recommends us to serve minimum number of ads on our websites. This practice is good because if there are less ads on a page, the CPM increases and so does fill rate. In simple words, we earn almost same by showing fewer ads as compared to earning by serving a large number of ads.
Here is an example of how a website should not serve ads.
The red boxes show ads and the green boxes show content. As you can see, this site has bombarded ads in the content. I strongly recommend you to avoid this type of ad insertion.
Conclusion
Google updates are not some bolt from the blue. Rather they are making the search engine to provide the best to users. So, Google is trying to think like humans. We should too think like a normal human and not like techie or else we will end up doing this 😁😁😁
