User:

How do I focus on People First Content?

Assistant:

Google’s definition of People-first content is content that’s created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings.

How can you evaluate if you’re creating people-first content?

Answering yes to the questions below means you’re probably on the right track with a people-first approach:

– Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
– Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
– Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
– After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
– Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

Please keep in mind that these questions are meant to serve as a guide, and does not guarantee content will rank if these conditions are met. They simply provide a starting point for analyzing your content against what you know about your audience, and what they should find the most helpful.

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content

User:

How do I avoid creating search engine-first content?

Assistant:

We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search, rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings.

Answering yes to some or all of the questions below is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you’re creating content:

– Is the content primarily made to attract visits from search engines?
– Are you producing lots of content on many different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
– Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
– Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
– Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
– Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, they don’t.)
– Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?
– Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?
– Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?
– Are you adding a lot of new content or removing a lot of older content primarily because you believe it will help your search rankings overall by somehow making your site seem “fresh?” (No, it won’t)

Please keep in mind that these questions are meant to serve as a guide, and does not guarantee content will rank if these conditions are met. They simply provide a starting point for analyzing your content against what you know about your audience, and what they should find the most helpful.

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content

User:

What about SEO? Isn’t that search engine-first?

Assistant:

There are some things you could do that are specifically meant to help search engines better discover and understand your content (this is automatically handled for content published to BlogrBee and our Partner Sites).

Collectively, this is called “search engine optimization” or SEO, for short. Google’s own SEO guide covers best practices to consider. SEO can be a helpful activity when it is applied to people-first content, rather than search engine-first content.

However, Google Search is now sophisticated enough to distinguish between content made for people and content strictly designed to rank. Therefore, it’s best to strive to provide value to your reader **first**, and trust that Google and other search engines will discover your content based on the value you’ve provided.

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content