Keeping up with Google’s temperamental nature can be rather stressful for your content. What used to be a simple procedure is now complex, with marketers asked to be agile in how they create content. As click-through rates and organic search is on a steady decline, what do businesses need to do to in terms of content marketing for Google SERPS?
Content Marketing for Google SERPs
This week, we shall take a look at the zero results update, mobile web, featured snippets and Google’s “biases” can give us a lot of information regarding our steps for the new year. This will help to ensure a bright future for content.
Mobile
Mobile web has recently undergone a range of changes. While the stats may be overwhelming, the stakes have never been higher for creating worthy content on the platform. Over the years, Google seems to have shown preference to mobile over desktop. In 2015, “Mobilegeddon” created a path for content to perform well on mobile search. Since then, we have seen a number of activities aimed at improving customer experience on mobile.
However, while experience and usability take top priority, this has had to come at the expense of someone else. Rand Fishkin pointed out in his BrightonSEO talk this year that, “Google used to have two types of users – content creators and searchers. Now, they only have one… searchers.”
Fishkin makes this statement to draw attention to how SERPs are changing. Those who produce content must now do more to compete for clicks. Early in 2016, 60 per cent of searches produced clicks to an organic result on mobile and 65.56 per cent on desktop. Since then, while the statistics for desktop remain unchanged, mobile search has seen a drop in just under 30 per cent of organic clicks. No click searches are now in the majority.
This rise suggests that users are getting everything they need from Google without leaving the search page. However, the response should not be to disregard mobile web. Instead, we should prioritise it and find ways to optimise content to work with Google’s biases. This is less about viewing SEO as a game, but about creating content for a specific searcher and making the most of the space available.
Snippets
Making sure that data is accessible for users is essential for Google’s SERPs. Google’s impressive comprehension of what its users want is shown in additional features such as the features snipper that sits in “page rank zero”. These snippets give users little reason to leave the first page on Google or even scroll down the page. What we are looking for is right at the top.
By optimising for featured snippets, Google can scrape and repurpose your content for the user, whether it be a paragraph, list or table. Snippets appear to be more relevant than ever, with them and related questions appearing in 40 per cent of queries.
Considering this feature when you create content will force you to treat Google as a customer. You give them what they want to then pass down to their customers through their own business. This bazaar cycle of events to appearing in the featured snippets becomes more intricate when discussing link building. Content marketers face the ongoing battle of relying on other sites to link to our content so it can be optimised by Google.
Luckily, a crucial feature of virtually all of our content is to integrate data into the work. Answering questions that already exist and will likely be searched again are one of the few ways to find yourselves ranking in featured snippets.
Answer the Question
Ultimately, your content needs to answer the question that people are asking. What seems like a given action for any marketer or content creator is often lost in a sea of things that seem like a smart choice at the time.
Content is created for a variety of reasons and different audiences. However, the growing dominance of Google demands that we consider them at every point of production. Google will always make it their mission to put the user first, which is why it’s important for us to do the same. That way, everybody wins!
Let us Create the Content for you
Of course, we understand the time it takes to create this content. Bringing in users is a crucial way to build up customers, but we know you would much rather spend your time running your business. This is why having a company like Search and More to take online reins will be a huge help. We can take your company ethos and reflect it into your content, bringing in the customers you need and boosting business. To learn more about our services, get in touch with Search and More today.
