The latest Google algorithm update has long been at the center of SEO strategies and techniques. But creating content that gets picked up by Google is a changing game.
As Google looks to offer the best experience for its users, the algorithm is constantly evolving to keep on top of the latest trends and techniques whilst also eliminating any attempts to navigate the algorithm.
To understand how to create the most SEO-friendly content, it’s first important to understand where we’ve come from. This allows SEOs and marketers to identify constant themes and trends that future content can be shaped around.
Here’s a history of Google’s algorithmic updates and how they have impacted the world of SEO.
Why do we need updates?
Constant Google algorithm updates are required to provide the best user experience for Google’s users. Updates are often focused on eliminating black hat SEO techniques, which are used to trick the algorithm rather than creating content that adds value to the user.
Examples of black hat SEO tactics include:
- Link farms
- Keyword stuffing
- Paying for backlinks
- Hiding content/keywords
- Creating new websites purely for backlinks
Biggest Google Algorithm updates
E-E-A-T
The Medic Google algorithm update that was mentioned before focused on E-A-T, but more recently the acronym received an extra E with the addition of experience.
The experience ranking factor refers if an author has first-hand experience of the issue they are talking about. For example, when reading a product review, ask yourself if the author has actually used the product.
With the rollout of E-E-A-T, the trust factor was also placed as being the most important ranking factor of the four.
Helpful content update
The helpful content update of 2022 aimed to focus on content created for people rather than search engines. Websites or blogs that write to a specific audience are the biggest beneficiaries of this update which aims to reward high-quality, useful content that’s written for a specific audience.
This hasn’t put an end to content marketing but it has changed the way you should approach it. For example, content that focuses on addressing certain pain points within your niche, like a digital marketing agency covering topics like how to improve your SEO as a local business would be a good example of helpful content.
Core web vitals
Core web vitals burst onto the scene in 2017 and have been a staple of SEO strategies ever since. Core web vitals look at the UX of a website, taking into account performance factors such as speed.
Core web vitals are broken down into three factors:
Largest contentful paint: This looks at how long it takes for the largest element of a website to load
First input delay: This measures the time between a user’s first interaction and when the website has processed the interaction.
Cumulative layout shift: The CLS of a website looks at how elements of a page move around when a user is using the website.
While core web vitals don’t have a massive impact on overall SEO performance, focusing on improving the factors mentioned above will also allow you to benefit from enhanced usability and UX.
BERT
Reducing the focus on singular keywords has been a constant theme through Google’s algorithm updates, and the BERT update was another example. Released in 2019, BERT focused on better understanding the human language.
BERT impacted searches that contain words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. Words like jam, bank, and sow could throw up some interesting search results depending on the query. With BERT, Google’s algorithm looks at words around certain keywords to understand the intent of the search query.
At the time, this was Google’s biggest step to date to reward good quality content. BERT’s ability to understand the human language meant content could be even less focused on keywords.
Medic
The Medic update of 2018 focused on sites that contained content on subjects like medicine and finance. Any site that claims to offer some form of authority or expertise probably found themselves impacted by the Medic update.
For companies in these fields, focusing on E-A-T signals is the best way to combat the Medic update. Having highly qualified guest authors on your site demonstrates expertise, a large number of strong reviews demonstrate authoritativeness and accurate content will signal trust.
RankBrain
Another 2015 update was named RankBrain. The update was designed to offer a more tailored set of search results depending on the user’s previous behavior. It also relied more heavily on AI to predict what a user is searching for.
Again, this further shifted the focus from keywords to useful content. For example, if a user was searching for the answer to a question, the answer they are looking for would not be a keyword in their search query.
Creating content that performed well after the RankBrain update meant focusing less on one singular keyword, and instead creating content that covered secondary keywords that would be of interest to the user.
Mobile
Surfing the web on mobile is a common practice these days. But back in 2015, businesses started to put a significant focus on mobile usability. Google recognised the direction in which the world was heading and a 2015 Google algorithm update was released with the aim of rewarding sites that offered good usability when being used on a mobile device.
More mobile-focused updates have followed since. As a result, you should carry out testing around the usability of your site on mobile, and you can also use tools like Screaming Frog to audit your mobile site.
Hummingbird
The Hummingbird Google algorithm update was focused on understanding human speech and language. Prior to this, Google would focus on how many times a keyword was mentioned within a piece of content or throughout a web page.
Post Hummingbird, it’s important to include variations of your keyword and include references to things that relate to your keyword. For example, an article about building muscle should mention things like protein, supplements, and weight training.
The Hummingbird update helped to further ensure that content that was deep and useful would be rewarded. On the flip side, content that simply stuffed keywords would not be rewarded.
Penguin
The Penguin Google algorithm update focused on a website’s catalog of backlinks and aimed to penalize sites that were being linked to poor quality sites or spam sites. It also cranked down on link farms.
A link farm occurs when a group of websites all link to one another in an attempt to boost SEO rankings of all sites involved in the link farm. Often sites would pay to be involved in a link farm and receive an SEO boost from the increase in links.
The Penguin update changed link-building strategies. Now, it’s more important that sites obtain links from high-quality websites with a varied array of backlinks. While you might be tempted to focus all your efforts on only securing links from highly authoritative sites, Google may recognize this as looking artificial. It’s best practice to have links from a range of sites.
Panda
The Panda Google algorithm update was released in February 2011 to penalize poor-quality web content. Poor content refers to content that has been duplicated from elsewhere or content that has been created purely to secure links.
Often this type of content can be identified due to lacking depth, being poorly written in terms of spelling and grammar, or being stuffed with keywords in an attempt to increase its algorithm friendliness.
If you manage a website, be sure to use sites like siteliner.com to check if your content has been stolen and uploaded elsewhere, this can hurt your own SEO despite you not doing anything wrong.
This was also one of the first major steps from Google in its efforts to promote more useful content. A factor that has now become far more important.
Advice for creating algorithm-friendly content
When it comes to producing content that performs well on search engine results pages, the game looks very different now to when SEO first became a thing. As already pointed out, there isn’t much room for black hat techniques anymore. But more importantly, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find ways to manipulate the Google algorithm.
As a result, the best way to create algorithm-friendly content now is by producing genuinely helpful content that is original and well-written. It’s also important not to lean too much into the rising phenomenon of AI. While this can speed up your processes, it’s likely to contain regurgitated material that already exists on the web.
In addition, expect AI crackdowns to be at the heart of future updates. Speaking of which, another way to optimize your content in this day and age is by keeping on top of the latest SEO trends. While Google tries to keep the best SEO practices under wraps, there are plenty of materials online that provide helpful tips from experienced professionals.
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