What’s the first thing you would do if you want to rank your website? You’ll find the relevant keywords and stuff them in your website as much as you can. Good old days! But sadly, that won’t work anymore. Google’s content update in March 2024 is moving far away from it. The websites that use tricks like keyword stuffing won’t rank anymore. The websites that truly educate and help readers will be front and centre.
This is no bad news in any way, shape or form. It might be bad for people using shortcuts to manipulate search rankings with low-quality content or unoriginal content in search results. But for the websites that provide helpful content and enhance user experience, it is great news. Let’s see in detail what this new content update is all about.
Unhelpful Content will be removed from Search Engines
What is unhelpful content in the eyes of the algorithm? Your content is unhelpful if:
- A large chunk of the content is sourced from other websites
- The majority of the content is generated by AI tools
- Your content is redundant or repetitive
- Your content covers a wide array of topics
This update entails improving and adjusting Google’s fundamental ranking algorithms to identify webpages that are not useful, provide a poor user experience, or are created for search engines rather than human users. This will effectively decrease the presence of low-quality content in Google search and drive more traffic to useful and high-quality websites.
Scaled Content Abuse is against the Guidelines
If you’re creating content through automation, STOP. It is now considered search ranking manipulation. The revised policy will target the abusive and inappropriate practice of churning out a large volume of content to improve search rankings, regardless of whether automation, human effort, or a mix of both is used.
Scaled content mostly targets frequently searched queries and because they are pushing out a huge amount of content at scale, most of the time they don’t satisfactorily answer the query. This will no longer be acceptable for Google algorithm.
Site Reputation Abuse is now SPAM!
There’s a term called parasite SEO in the world of SEO. In this phenomenon, low quality content from external sources is used to leverage the ranking elements of these external websites. This is also called guest blogging.
Under the revised Google Content policy, any third-party content posted without the oversight of the site owner will be viewed as spam and could lead to lower rankings. This doesn’t apply to every third-party content. The content that is hosted haphazardly and with the sole aim of SEO manipulation will be targeted.
Expired Domain Abuse is SPAM, too
Expired domain abuse is where expired domains are reused or repurposed to enhance the search engine ranking of low quality content. Users might think the new content is just part of the older website but in reality, it isn’t. People can no longer purchase these expired domains and promote new content on them. This content is now considered as spam.
If reading the March 2024 core update has set off alarm bells in your head, you can calm down. This is an opportunity, not a punishment. Now the ones taking shortcuts primarily for ranking purposes won’t get ahead of you. The search ranking of low-quality content will definitely go down. The ones who are truly investing in good content and following the right path will be rewarded. It is time to truly showcase your expertise and engage the audience like you’re supposed to. Still feeling a little lost? Let us help you navigate through your SEO journey with our expertise. Connect with us today!
