Shoppers aren’t the only ones who are judging your content to make informed buying decisions. Google is also looking at your content to decide whether or not it’s good enough to show up in search results.
If your content is poorly created and doesn’t answer important questions during the shopper journey, your website could be vulnerable to a massive drop in traffic and rankings.
On average, Google updates their algorithm once per day with several large scale, core updates throughout the year. When these large core algorithm updates take place they often cause large fluctuations in search rankings.
Big brands aren’t safe if their content is less than stellar.
Don’t believe me? NFL.com just lost 20% – 30% of their traffic overnight during the last Google update.
In the past, most brands were completely in the dark with how to not only reverse these trends but also how to prepare for or be proactive and get ahead of them.
Luckily for us Google just released a blog post covering this topic and giving us parameters on how we should think about the content we create. Google’s suggested fix if you’ve suffered a sudden drop in traffic is to “focus on content” but what does that mean?
According to Google, some of the questions to ask yourself when creating content is as follows:
- Does the content provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?
- Does the content provide a substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
While this may seem obvious to the most seasoned content creators, it’s not always obvious to large, global brands. Why answer such obvious questions when millions of people everywhere already know what you stand for?
Content creation, especially in Google, is extremely competitive. If a brand doesn’t take the time to answer these questions on their digital properties then others will while taking ownership of these keywords and the conversation.
When you write content you’re tapping into important keywords that millions of people search for to make informed buying decisions.
Why are these keywords important?
If done right, they drive millions of dollars of revenue and give people a reason to buy different products provided by brands. These keywords drive people to make informed buying decisions on Amazon, Walmart, and Target every single second of the day.
People usually start their shopper research in Google. By the time they get to Amazon, they’ve already decided why they want to buy something and all they need is one final nudge to make the purchase.
It is important for brands and retailers to have a strong keyword strategy and stay up-to-date on SEO updates in order to ensure their products stay top of search and top of mind for consumers.
Contributed By: Arash Ghaemi, Senior SEO Manager, Integer Denver
Image Source: Unsplash
