It’s important to know how to self-assess SEO content, and Google’s guidelines for SEO can’t be ignored. Creating content that ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs) and serves your audience’s needs has become more crucial than ever.
Google’s Helpful Content Guidelines have set a clear direction – content should be created for people first, not search engines. This recent emphasis has transformed how SEO and content creation should be approached. Keyword stuffing and thin content can no longer achieve high rankings. Today’s successful content strategy requires a delicate balance between SEO best practices and creating genuine value for your audience.
This comprehensive checklist will help you navigate Google’s guidelines while providing actionable strategies to create content that not only ranks well but also builds trust with your audience. You’ll learn how to align your content with the guidelines while maintaining strong SEO practices, which will ultimately lead to better search visibility and increased user engagement.
Keep reading to discover a method for self-assessing your past, present, and future content to ensure it doesn’t disappear into the search engine void.
For successful SEO content, you need to know what makes good content according to Google, and its Helpful Content Guidelines represent a fundamental shift in how search engines evaluate content quality. At their core, these guidelines emphasize the crucial principle stated above: content should be created primarily for people, not search engines.
Let’s look at the two aspects of this principle.
User-first content is created for people to enjoy and learn from. It should demonstrate several key characteristics:
Google explicitly warns against content that’s created primarily for ranking purposes. Red flags include:
To make sure your content aligns with these two aspects and follows the main principle, we have developed a 15-step, easy-to-follow checklist broken into five phases:
Before you start creating content, you should establish a few key details. This sets you up to create SEO content that puts people first and serves a genuine purpose.
This is one of the most crucial stages for audience-first SEO. You need to identify who you’re creating content for and why they would want to view it. Consider your existing or intended audience’s specific needs and what problems they might be trying to solve. Think of their level of expertise in the topic or niche and keep common questions and pain points in mind.
Here are some methods for learning more about your audience:
Setting keywords for SEO success is important, and that starts with research. Approach keyword research strategically by focusing on search intent rather than just search volume. Look for long-tail keywords that indicate specific user needs and group related keywords to create comprehensive content.
You can use some of the following tools for your initial keyword discovery:
Here’s how to perform keyword research:
Now that you’ve researched your audience and keywords, it’s time to brainstorm and plan the actual content. Here are four tools and services to ensure your creation process is as smooth as possible:
Google emphasizes the importance of originality and value addition, so make sure you have a plan before writing.
By this point, you should have all the information you need to get started, so it’s time to get creative.
Wordsmith your content for SEO while creating something that will be beneficial to your audience and demonstrate your expertise.
Make sure your content is structured so it’s easy to consume. You don’t want people to ignore what you’ve created just because it looks bad.
Nothing turns a reader off faster than reading something filled with errors. Building trust is crucial for long-term success.
Although the writing is finished, the work isn’t done. It’s time to polish and make your content into an SEO masterpiece.
To make your content creation process easier, you can take certain steps:
SEO writing and organization will boost your rankings in SERPs. After you have finished creating your content, take some time to optimize and make sure the technical SEO elements have been implemented carefully.
It’s crucial that your content is easy and enjoyable to access.
Beyond being enjoyable, it’s important for your content to encourage user interaction.
Once you’re consistently producing quality SEO content, you’ll want to occasionally check over everything to make sure it’s still as effective as it needs to be.
Take a good look at your content and search for any areas that can be improved.
Whether your goal is local SEO or more far reaching, check over everything one more time to ensure you have the best content.
For peak SEO, you need to regularly put out new content and update your existing material. It’s also possible to repurpose content for new audiences.
First, check your existing content and see if there’s anything you can do to make it better.
After reviewing and checking performance metrics, you’ll have a better idea of how you can improve your future SEO content.
This comprehensive checklist ensures your content meets both user needs and search engine requirements while maintaining high-quality standards. Regular review and updates of your content using this checklist will help maintain its effectiveness and relevance over time.
Remember that following Google’s helpful content guidelines, its E-E-A-T criteria, and implementing proper SEO best practices is an ongoing process that requires consistent attention and updates. Think of this checklist as a living document – update it as new guidelines and best practices emerge.
By using this checklist and staying updated, you’ll be well positioned to create content that performs well in SERPs while providing genuine value to your audience. But don’t let your content slip in quality. If you want to ensure that all your words make an impact, Proofed’s advertising and marketing department is here to help. Our specialized proofreading services will not only make all of your marketing material flawless, but we’ll tailor it to your target audience or industry. Schedule a call with us to see how our experts can help.
The guidelines center around four fundamental principles:
These principles emphasize creating content that demonstrates genuine expertise, serves a clear purpose, and provides substantial value beyond what’s already available. Key components include focusing on your site’s primary purpose, demonstrating first-hand knowledge, and ensuring content comprehensively addresses user needs rather than just targeting search engines.
The frequency of content assessment should align with your industry’s pace of change and content type. For rapidly evolving industries like technology or news, monthly assessments may be necessary. For more stable industries, quarterly reviews might suffice. However, certain triggers should prompt immediate assessment:
Regularly monitoring key performance indicators can help you identify when deeper assessments are needed.
Effective measurement of user engagement involves analyzing multiple metrics. The most important ones are listed in #14 of our checklist (including bounce and conversion rates), but there are other valuable metrics to track:
The key is focusing on metrics that align with your content goals rather than tracking everything possible.
E-E-A-T significantly influences how Google evaluates content quality. While the criteria itself isn’t a direct ranking factor, it serves as a framework for multiple ranking signals.
Strong E-E-A-T can improve SEO performance by building user trust, encouraging return visits, and attracting natural backlinks from authoritative sources. Following the criteria can reduce bounce rates through credible content and increase content sharing and engagement. This is especially crucial for Your Money or Your Life topics, where Google holds content to higher standards.
Competitor analysis serves multiple strategic purposes beyond simple benchmarking:
However, the goal isn’t to copy competitors but to understand market standards and find ways to provide unique value that better serves your audience’s needs.
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