Google Says You Need Expert Writers: Content Standards From the New Search Guidelines by @JuliaEMcCoy | Dramel Notes

If you’re in the world of SEO, copywriting, or inbound marketing, it’s likely that you’ve already heard about Google’s release of the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines in November 2015.

Designed to help Google’s own site evaluators master their jobs and wade through Google’s complex ranking system, these search guidelines are 160 pages of pure SEO goodness. But what do they say, exactly?

One of the most important takeaways from the guidelines as a whole is the need for expert writers to add a true level of authority to the content. Someone who, as Google says, has real-life experience in what they’re writing or talking about. Hence, a big need for expert writers and authors to produce content in an industry they already know.

Let’s discuss this and what you need to know.

The 101 on Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

Despite all of their genius, ingenuity, and innovation, Google is a notoriously opaque organization and it has always been difficult at best (and impossible at worst) to understand their ranking algorithm.

While Google released a compressed version of the guidelines back in 2013, people wanted to know more. Recently, The SEM Post got ahold of a leaked copy and provided their own analysis on it. Google responded by releasing the guidelines in full in November of 2015, in this blog post, and the full 160-page PDF of Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines in its massive entirety.

While the guidelines don’t simply tell marketers how to win at Google, they do provide a huge amount of information about what exactly Google evaluators are looking for, what makes a high-quality page, and how content should be written. It’s the last part we are especially interested in.

The Need for Expert Writers, According to Google’s Search Guidelines

It’s no secret that Google has always loved original, useful, and well-written in-depth content. Many of Google’s recent algorithm updates have been designed to reward high-quality pages that feature clear, concise, professional writing and to down-rank pages that feature duplicate, scraped, or careless content.

What is interesting about Google’s new guidelines, however, is that they place a huge emphasis on the need for expert writers, especially on pages that Google views as being very important. While it’s clear that Google has always valued quality content, it seems as if they’re now placing an increased focus on things like authority, as well.

E-A-T: Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness Page Standard

E-A-T is Google’s acronym for what exactly makes up a high-quality page. E-A-T stands for “Expertise, authority, trustworthiness” and it sums up exactly what Google is looking for in high-quality pages.

According to Section 4.3 of Part 1 of the guidelines, “High-quality pages and websites need enough expertise to be authoritative and trustworthy on their topic.”

At first glance, that may seem a bit vague, but Google goes on to clarify. The guidelines state that, in order for a page to possess those qualities, it needs to feature “expert” content written by “expert” writers:

• Complex medical advice should only be given by people or organizations that possess appropriate accreditation. It should, likewise, be written in a professional style and will need to be reviewed, updated, and edited regularly in order to ensure that it remains current and authoritative.
• Complex financial advice, tax advice, or legal advice should be written by expert writers and will need to be updated regularly.
• Important advice pages that may affect a person’s finances or well-being (this includes investment pages, home remodeling pages, and parenting pages) needs to be written by an “expert” source.
• Hobby pages on topics like hockey, horseback riding, or photography, require expert writers.

Pages that don’t feature this level of expertise or pages that cover a dense topic but offer little information will be marked as low-quality by Google’s evaluators. This is also true for pages with low-quality main content or content that is simply distracting or unhelpful.

What Makes an Expert?

Now that you know which pages require an expert writer, you may be wondering exactly what an “expert” is. Google makes it clear that that depends greatly on the topic at hand. Product or restaurant reviews, for example, can be considered “Expert” even if the person writing it isn’t a mystery diner or secret shopper. As long as the reviews are detailed and helpful, Google considers them expert content.

The same is true for forum-type discussions. In this case, Google provides the example of a cancer support community forum at Cancer Compass, where average people provide information about how long their loved ones lived with cancer. While these people are not doctors and are thus not qualified to write “expert” medical content, their firsthand experience (what Google calls “everyday expertise”) with cancer makes them qualified to write such content.

The takeaway? Pages require different levels of expertise. While advice on liver cancer itself needs to be written by an M.D., advice on coping with it in a family situation can absolutely be written by a layperson with firsthand experience.

Y-M-Y-L (Your Money or Your Life) Page Standard

There are some pages that Google places under special scrutiny. These pages are called, “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) pages. Examples of these pages include:

• E-commerce pages that provide a platform for purchases, money transfers, bill pay, etc.
• Pages that offer information about investing in stocks and bonds, planning for retirement, purchasing a home, financing college, buying insurance, or filing taxes.
• Pages that offer specific information or advice about health conditions, drugs, mental health, and nutrition.
• Pages that offer legal information on topics like child support and custody, divorce, becoming a legal citizen, and writing a will.

YMYL pages are subject to special Google scrutiny because low-quality pages can easily negatively impact a Google user’s health, happiness, or finances. For this reason, it is especially important that these pages feature a high level of E-A-T and are written by qualified expert writers. That said, if you’re working on any topic that could have a major impact on users (car safety and repair, for example) it’s worthwhile to hire an expert writer.

Conclusion

While we’ve always known that Google loves high-quality content, it’s obvious that now more than ever, Google values content that is written by authoritative and trustworthy experts.

As we move into the new year, we can expect to see content that possesses these traits be rewarded while low-quality, low-expertise content is down-ranked. While expert writing has always been important, Google’s recently released guidelines make it clear that hiring expert writers is now necessary for a website to earn quality rankings. Webmasters are going to have to invest in a real author who knows their industry—an industry copywriting expert—instead of just the more general SEO copywriter.

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photo #1: Alexey Boldin/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photos #2 and #3: Image by Express Writers. Used with permission.
Screenshot by Julia McCoy. Taken December 2015.

[Read more]

15 Copywriting Tips That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level by @JuliaEMcCoy | Dramel Notes

Copywriting is an art. One that many writers have managed to hone over years of dedication to the craft.

Every copywriter has managed to come up with their own version of copywriting tips that enable them to create well-crafted content that gets the job done, whatever that job may be.

Copywriting tips vary from individual to individual, meaning that everyone has come to some conclusion regarding how they develop their copy.

15 Awesome Copywriting Tips to Start Crafting Better Copy Now

The masters of the art tend to have the same formula for success—and it’s these highly effective copywriting tips I am going to focus on here.

1. Do Even More Research

The “Father of Advertising” David Ogilvy is known to have said you should “stuff your conscious mind with information” so as to always have material to work with. In the world of copywriting, the more you know the better off you are. To this end, you should try to learn as much as you can about as many things as you can. When you think you’re done, research a tiny bit more. This will give your content the edge of great research. The thing about creating good copy is the more places you can draw on for inspiration, the better your final product is likely to be.

2. Write Intriguing Copy

Although you might think copywriting tips like this are obvious, creating interesting copy is more than just developing copy that draws an audience. To make copy truly compelling, you have to include things to push the user’s buttons. Make it controversial or make it visually appealing. In the modern world where attention spans are shorter, developing engaging copy requires you to make that copy bite-sized and scannable so your reader can get the gist of it in an instant. Fascinating copy isn’t easy to write, but is sure is rewarding when you get it right.

3. Use and Integrate Your Personality

Creating a persona through which you can reach out to the audience is important in developing great copy. As far as copywriting tips go, this one is particularly important tin the twenty-first century. The reason why is because a lot of people think that ad copy is “lame”. They have an aversion towards being sold to. By developing a persona, you jump this hurdle by making your interaction with the user more about what they can gain out of your product. Developing a rapport with the audience is key to closing a sale — and writing great copy helps you do just that. 

4. Craft Compelling Headlines

Many users simply scan a headline, and the vast majority of them skip reading it if the headline is boring or plain. Many professional copywriters include developing stimulating headlines as part of their copywriting tips. In order to get in touch with your audience, you’re going to have to put together headlines your readers are going to want to read. You can do this by writing the copy first then pulling out the most powerful phrases to develop the headlines. A great test for how interesting a headline is this: If you see that headline posted as a classified ad with a phone number at the end of it, would you call?

5. Don’t Get Too Complex

Most fiction writers have heard the acronym KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid. In copywriting, the aim isn’t to dumb it down as much as possible but to make it able to appeal to a wide enough audience. Obviously, if you start including jargon in your copy on the first line and confuse the reader,  it’s unlikely they will feel the urge to continue reading. You are a writer first and foremost, which means your communication should be clear and concise. Keeping it that way ensures more people are able to understand what you’re saying.

6. Incorporate Storytelling

The importance of storytelling to developing great copy is well documented. Most professional copywriting tips include a point where they inform you how effective storytelling is for inducing an emotional response. Storytelling allows you to interact with your audience and give them something that they want. Offer them a place in their own story that resonates with their emotional core and drives them to do something about it. Storytelling is the most effective way to unlock a reader’s emotional response.

7. Focus on Benefits, Not Prices

Once upon a time, if you wrote a piece of copy selling a business and didn’t mention how affordable their prices were, that copy would have been rejected. Now, partially as a result of the fact that people hate being sold to in this generation, price of a product doesn’t matter that much. Instead, tell your audience WHY they’re paying that price. As most business and management students realize early into their career, if you create a demand for a product, people will be willing to pay more for it.

8. Don’t be Afraid to be the Devil’s Advocate

All customers have doubts. If you were spending your hard-earned cash on something you’d want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. That’s why many copywriting tips lists tend to include a section on playing the devil’s advocate. This involves meeting the queries a customer usually has head on. Probably the most obvious example of this type of marketing copy is through new car sales. Scientifically, users tend to agree with your position when you play devil’s advocate and illuminate their side of the argument. This makes them more sympathetic to your copy and more likely to spend money on whatever it is you’re selling.

9. More Doing, Less Describing

In an analysis of persuasive college application letters to Harvard, it was found that students that describe their actions in verbs as opposed to adjectives tend to be the ones that are more highly considered for admission. Verbs are more decisive and more specific, giving sentences more of an active feel than a passive one that adjectives tend to do. Don’t describe what something is. Instead, spend your copy describing what it does and how it helps the user.

10. Don’t be Too Crazy Clever

If you’re a writer who was trained in the original art of writing, with long, sweeping prose that goes on to describe the very nature of a scene, this copywriting tip is for you. As a copywriter, you’re less concerned with clever wordsmithing and more concerned with being clear enough to be understood easily. There’s a time and place for showing off your mastery of the English language in all its glory, but that time and place is nowhere near your copywriting jobs.

11. Get a Swipe File

Fiction writers walk around with a small notebook in order to jot down ideas as they pop up in their mind. The equivalent for a copywriter is the swipe file to organize all the impressive copy you’ve come across (or at the very least a link to them) so if you’re stuck on a headline or simply in need of some inspiration, you can turn to your swipe file and find what you’re looking for in minutes. This helps jumpstart your creativity and keep you motivated from the start to finish of a job.

12. Create With Purpose

When you develop a piece of copy, it should be purpose driven. Some copywriting tip lists say you should create as much content as possible. This is the opposite of that, telling you to create copy when it has a purpose, not just for creation’s sake. Copy exists as a cog in a larger machine, your overall content plan. If you start creating content all over the place without a mind towards how it affects your content strategy, then the result is a ton of mediocre content that does nothing to help you achieve your overall content goals.

13. Keep Distractions to a Minimum

No Facebook or Instagram-ming when you’re supposed to be writing.

Although it would be nice to shut yourself away and simply create content, the fact of the matter is many of us simply don’t have a sequestered study dedicated to writing. The result is we’re limited to cutting our distractions down to a minimum. I suggest you avoid using flashy programs when constructing your copy. Instead, use programs that are simple word processors such as Baara’s Q10 or Notepad++ to keep distractions from the program you’re working on to a minimum. For drastic measures, disconnect your internet connection so you aren’t tempted to end up on social media – the number one killer of productivity. 

14. Use Hard Facts to Backup Your Claims

This only applies to topics that have hard facts relating to them. If you’re lacking facts then you can’t make up statistics to support your position (as inviting as that might sound). If you do have hard facts, it becomes easier to write good, truthful content that focuses on the benefits you get from your product as supported by these hard facts.

15. Start With Your Strongest Point

Chess players learn from an early age that the strength of your offense depends on the strength of your strongest piece. The same goes for copywriters. The point with the strongest argument behind it should be your leading point. You can build on the hard-hitting success of that point to convince the reader and increase your credibility.

Conclusion

These copywriting tips represent a compilation of some of the best ideas that professional copywriters have when it comes to developing good, interesting, and efficient copy. I’ve used all of them myself.

As you spend more time in the field of copywriting, you’ll end up developing your own tips and tricks in order to create great copy that sells. The most important piece of advice I can give is to take lessons from both your successes as well as your failures. This will help you grow as a copywriter, and I’ll even venture to say, mature as a professional.

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: BONNINSTUDIO/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photo #1: marvent/Shutterstock.com

[Read more]