Good content on the website.

It all started in 2011. Mayday. Websites were full of spam, hidden content, plagiarism, low-quality content. Who wants to visit such sites? Google created the Panda algorithm and it began. As a digital marketing consultant, I have watched this evolution since the very beginning — and the rules have not changed as much as people think.

What is duplicate content?

AI generated image: "Duplicate content digital art in Malczewski style"

When I need to check for duplicate content I use professional tools, or I select a random section of your web page and paste it into Google. If the same section or paragraph appears in multiple pages or multiple domains — we have a duplication problem. Duplication is the most common reason for dropping out of search results.

A few words about spam.

AI generated image: "SPAM digital art in Witkacy style"

To find out what spam is, you need to type spam into Google often and read about spam. Spam sites do not always provide information about spam. The spam itself will not just drive a single text. The spam problem can affect the entire domain.

In this perhaps twisted way you see what spam is. To avoid spam at the level of domain analysis, there are factors that determine how many times a phrase is repeated and how many words you have on a particular URL in general. This is how spam could be defined in 2011. Today I consider monothematic content to be spam. However, more on that later.

Hidden content: the forgotten blackhat

AI generated image: "Black hat digital art in Fabian Perez style"

I remember a colleague from the first agency where I learned my trade. In the meta section he threw in a comma for the phrases he had in his contract with the client. 3/4 of the phrases went into the top 10 within a week. Because why not, because he could.

Now you can't. Recently I had analysed a client's site with one of the tools and it turned out that they had a problem with hidden content. Today, hidden content isn't just the content in the meta section. It is also content that is invisible if you turn off .js, or is under the footer, or is marked as font-size ZERO.

Low-quality content — a threat and an opportunity

To explain what low-quality content is, it is best to write about it by defining good-quality content. Good quality content fulfils one key requirement: usefulness.

In order to write a useful text, it is best to define who it is written for (who is the reader, the customer), what value is to be brought in this text (information that is presented, a problem to be solved, etc.). Just that. As much as that.

And so, writing category descriptions or product descriptions is no longer reduced to describing product features. What is important is the use, the description of the usefulness, the unique features, the emotions that the use of a specific product or group of products evokes.

Writing a blog is only theoretically simpler. You avoid the schema, the narrow product-specific issues. But are you sure? Imagine that your business contains 4 product groups and each of them can lead a Google user to your site via 4 phrases. So we have to develop a blog for 16 phrases. So you prepare 2 blog posts for each phrase per month. Without the necessary preparation, you will stop writing your blog after a maximum of 3 months. You will find that "everything has already been written".

Plan for content marketing

AI generated image: "Calendar digital art in Tamara Lempicka style"

But what if you make the plan? You'll have a rough plan, you'll come up with post titles separately from your client's perspective and yours. Now you already have twice as many blog post titles. Whether you're running a service or an e-commerce business, you can run the posts separately for men and women or however else you define the several audience groups.

My motto is 'the world is made up of individuals'. If you write a blog post "for everyone" you will not wow anyone, because everyone reading the blog post will feel "nothing special". Write a blog post for a dedicated narrow audience and you will notice the results quite quickly.

When we talk about good content, we are not talking about good text.

I strongly suggest you, when preparing content, focus on one main text — for example, a blog post for your website — and prepare several texts to promote your target content. Promote yourself on external portals and social media. Good content also needs a good home — which is why how you change the website navigation smoothly matters just as much as what you write.

Content preparation in the context of Google's algorithms.

Panda

I mentioned that it all started with Panda. The Panda algorithm is constantly being updated. Nevertheless, I have a feeling that the biggest rollout in the SERPs is behind us.

EAT

The EAT algorithm assumes that when a user accesses the website, they will feel that the content they have been provided with is prepared by a professional. If you produce concrete, write not only about concrete and tools, but about raw materials, collaborate with architects and provide content about concrete at every stage of its quoting and processing. If you run a hairdressing salon, write about how to prepare for a visit, where the nearest car park is.

FRED

A few years ago, Google published the Fred algorithm. This algorithm assumes, in a nutshell, the understanding of texts. Algorithms can already determine the specific meaning of a word from the context of the content. The introduction of Fred has created a lot of rollout in the SERPs. Spammer domains with very narrow contextual content saw serious drops, while others with very elaborate but coherent and well-structured content saw gigantic increases in traffic.

ChatGPT, AI and on-page content

Since we have had an open interface for AI published (especially from Open AI) I have seen a strong concentration of use of this tool for content preparation — or rather, to replace copywriters with text generators.

I was very relieved to see the EAT algorithm update to EEAT. Let's decode this acronym:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

Yes, experience has arrived — an element that AI will not do for us.

With this algorithm update, Google has practically killed the ability to automatically generate content for web pages. Google is clearly indicating that content is to be created by people and for people. So what is the role of AI in building content? AI can be used to build the content sketch or generate snippets of content. Personally, the model of working with texts that I execute, based on Ahrefs and Semrush, phrase analysis, competition, etc., gives me the ability to order content for copywriters very precisely. If you want to go deeper on this topic, read my detailed guidance on AI-generated content — including where it works and where it categorically does not.

In summary — how do I write good texts?

Good texts are those that are easy to read — simple sentences with a clear, easy-to-understand vocabulary. Users are more likely to read texts that are written for them specifically, so write to a specific user, use specific language, discuss specific issues. A good text has a friendly rhythm: arrangement of headings, paragraphs, paragraphs. To write a good text, it is essential to ensure uniqueness, relevance and avoid duplication.

I am a book author and have a light pen. Nevertheless, in my professional work, I leave the preparation of texts to the masters of the pen — copywriters.