Content is one of the best means to reach prospects, drive traffic to your website, and grow your business. Ideally, you must tailor your content for human consumption rather than search engines. That’s why producing helpful content that provides value to users is also beneficial for businesses in 2024.
Nowadays, the content marketplace has also become vast. For your brand to survive, you must make content that is unique and valuable. Also, all companies allure search engines into ranking the content highly on their result pages.
With the growing popularity of the internet among people, every business is trying to establish an online presence. Building a user persuasive website or a web app can create a solid front door for online operations. If you don’t have an internal team, then you can contract remote developers for this purpose.
First-of-all, make your objective to create helpful content that fulfills the needs of users. Whether it is your website copy, blog posts, or content that you generate on third-party mediums. Similarly, this concept also applies to other forms of content, including visual content.
Come up with a content-driven website that better serves the needs of the users. Also, every kind of content that you produce must add value to users. It is the sole purpose of Google’s helpful content update as well that we discuss moving forward.
What is the helpful content update by Google?
The helpful content update from Google rewards the content satisfying users and targets the content meant for search engines. This new search algorithm update helps Google to analyze your content to ensure it is informative enough for users. For the last few years, Google was already working on this concept progressively.
In case, your content is valuable to users, then you have nothing to worry about. As long as the purpose of the content is to answer the questions of users, you are good to go. So, mold your content around the requirements of the users, and you will perform well in the search results too.
Google began rolling out the helpful content update on 25th August 2022. This followed the major updates like page experience update, product reviews update, and May 2022 core update. Google gave hint that the rollout process may continue for approximately 2 weeks.
The initial rollout of Google’s helpful content update was completed on 9th September 2022. So, the procedure took one day over that estimate. Google plans to strengthen this algorithm update with future refreshes.
Top ways to build valuable content to facilitate users
Here are the best ways to produce helpful content, that is worthwhile for users during 2024.
- Target a specific audience
- Feature your expertise
- Showcase yourself as an authority
- Make your content trustworthy
- Satisfy the needs of the searchers
Now, we briefly discuss these methods of creating helpful content for users.
Target a specific audience
One thing that can make your content appear as helpful is if your audience can relate to the message. Your content (website copy, blog, or article) should target a specific group, instead of generalizing it to all and sundry. Moreover, they should find your message engaging.
Focus on a critical point to draw your prospects to your website as they interact with your content. Just in case, you are selling washing machines. Then, it’s best to speak directly to house owners and tenants searching for such home appliances.
While at it, explain the different washing machine types, brands, and models and their typical advantages and shortcomings. You can also include the average price ranges. Such details are helpful to homeowners, and they’d want to find out more about the household appliances you suggest.
Feature your expertise
Your content should be professional and deep in knowledge. It shouldn’t be too obvious or half-baked. All the information you provide in the article, or audio/visual content must offer value to the user.
Share your expertise on the subject matter. The more knowledgeable you appear, the more influence you will have on the users. Expertise is the first of the elements of the E-A-T concept in the Search Quality Raters Guidelines by Google.
If you’re selling a beauty product, your content should provide insights on the purpose of such items. Convey the benefits of using your product, but don’t leave it at that yet. Likewise, you can offer extensive information on specific ingredients.
Such information educates your customers on the importance of using your product rather than its alternatives. Comprehensive information helps consumers make an informed purchase decision. Above and beyond, you should disclose the advantages and disadvantages of the product according to your original research.
It’s not enough to only sell the benefits without mentioning the drawbacks. Your content must provide substantial value in comparison to other pages from the search results. Also, this concept works well in the services industry as well.
Showcase yourself as an authority
You must always practice what you preach. The more knowledge and experience you have, the more valuable your opinion becomes. Accordingly, you move towards establishing yourself as an authority in your industry.
Once you reach that level, showcasing your authority is the way to go. Authoritativeness is the second element of the E-A-T concept on Google’s Search Quality Evaluators Guidelines. Building on this trait, you can affect the online buying of users.
Make your content trustworthy
By all means, your content shouldn’t mislead anybody. Don’t provide false information to impact your readers in a certain way. Should they find out your tricks, they’ll immediately lose trust in you and head off to your competitors.
So, strive to get as truthful as possible. All the information on your content should have verifiable references and supporting evidence. Especially, that’s critical for health benefit claims.
Someone visiting your site will likely trust you if you give in-depth information on the subject matter. It is valuable to quote features that set a given product apart from its competitors. Also, you can use comparisons to enlighten the reader on why they should choose your products.
Besides, conducting thorough research helps you develop a well-organized outline. This makes your content trustworthy and captivates your reader. Remember that trustworthiness is the third element in Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines.
Satisfy the needs of the searchers
The reader should leave your website feeling they’ve got knowledge on a particular topic. Your content should give them satisfaction and answer all of their questions. In essence, a reader should find all they need in your content.
What if the reader gets to your content and needs to search again to get more information? It means that your content wasn’t helpful. If the content has enough valuable tips, it’ll surely rank highly and attract more viewers.
Efficient mediums to promote user-centric content online
Thanks to digital marketing, you can promote helpful content to users over the internet. Therefore, you can reach prospective customers who are looking for such valuable content. Subsequently, businesses grow online and also reap profits from informative content.
Through 2024, some of the techniques to market your helpful content to users online include the following.
- Guest posts
- Social networks
- Emails and alerts
- Referral programs
- Influencer campaigns
Next, we look at these channels that you can utilize for promoting helpful content to users.
Guest posts
Writing guest posts works perfectly with non-competing businesses that can have similar customers as yours. For example, a website that sells sofas is a perfect match for another selling coffee table. The idea is to publish unique content on a reputable website and get a backlink for your website or blog.
Social networks
Apart from publishing your content on your website, you can use social media platforms that promote content sharing. For instance, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest. It helps you gain more traction for your content, given that most people hang out on social networks.
The more places you share your content online, the higher your chances of getting visitors to your website. So, don’t limit yourself to only one social networking platform. Go all out and try all social networks possible.
An excellent approach to ensure your content reaches your target audience is by creating a business profile at OnlyFans. Today, people are spending more time on social media, including OnlyFans. Consequently, it is better to take advantage of this platform.
Followers who pay to view your content genuinely have an interest in your brand and products. Henceforth, you may want to promote OnlyFans on UseViral or any reliable social media growth service. So, penetrate the market and reach your potential customers.
Emails and alerts
Regular visitors to your blog can subscribe to periodic email newsletters. Every time you publish a new post, they get a notification in their email. Thus, they’re more likely to read your blog.
On top of that, you can set up push alerts for alerts on desktop systems and smartphones. Ensure you regularly publish new posts to update your blog, so that your subscribers always expect a post from you. Making such a routine helps in building loyal followers.
Referral programs
Your audience can turn out instrumental in promoting your content. You can reward them whenever they refer your content to their friends. Furthermore, they can bring referrals for your products/services, which works similarly to influencer marketing to some extent.
Influencer campaigns
Entice influencers to promote your helpful content to their subscribers or livestreams. Also, contact people with many followers on their social media profiles and ask them to share your content. You can pay them for newsletter subscriptions, genuine visits to your website, product sales, or lead generation.
Conclusion
Search engine algorithms are now more innovative and moving towards becoming fool-proof. According to Google, content is helpful if it targets a specific audience, answers the readers’ questions, and provides credible information. So, don’t get into the unethical techniques of keyword stuffing and other tricks, thinking you can outsmart search engines.
Businesses and people must take time to create helpful content that perfectly resonates with their users. Once done, promote valuable content on suitable online and social media platforms. After all, the sole purpose of making informative content was to reach customers and help them solve a problem.
Don’t let the content lie idle on your blog. Actively reach out to prospects and encourage them to read your blog. Ultimately, you’ll generate more traffic, increase the sales of your products, or get more leads for your services.
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