There are two things I have been focused on with content for years now, but I think fit right in with Google’s Helpful Content Update and the launch of their Search Generative Experience (SGE) sometime later this year.
I don’t think either of these will surprise most people, but sometimes you need to be hit over the head with simple ideas before you realize just how important they might be.
First…
I want to end the user search journey
This is a phrase I use a lot with clients and content teams I work with. For almost any piece of content we generate, we want it to be the searcher’s final stop.
And this fits right in with the Helpful Content Update.
How do you do this?
In addition to creating a complete article that fully covers the topic, my focus is on giving the reader the answer to their search right away. You can go into more details about why the answer is what it is later in the article.
But give them the answer right away.
There are a few ways you can do this.
Right in the intro you can tell the reader, “here is what you are going to learn…”
You can use a quick summary callout where you list the main information of the article in bullet points. Again, you would do this at the beginning of the article somewhere in the introduction.
You can start with an answer right away with a promise to explain why in the rest of the article.
For example…
ChatGPT is a better tool for generating AI content than Jasper because it provides much more control, has a lot more flexibility, will give better quality output, and does it all while being priced at a fraction of what Jasper charges its customers.
Now let’s explore and compare each of these in more detail.
If you start an article like that, you are giving the reader what they are looking. The alternative you see many times is an introduction where they introduce both tools and promise an answer to you at the end.
The example I gave provides more of a hook to get people to read and engage with the content, while also giving Google what it wants: concise answers to search queries.
Stay tuned for the second thing I’m focused on in generating content next week.
