5 Google Videos you Should Watch Before you Write Another Word

The search engines are changing on a regular basis. While information about the changes is made public, frankly most people don’t see it because they are too busy, don’t know where to look or they don’t realize anything new has taken place.

While I was on the Google YouTube channel the other day, I found several videos that answer common questions I get. These have great advice about different aspects of writing content/copy and, in my opinion, should be viewed before you write another word.

All of them are short (under 10-minutes each) so it won’t take you long. Once you’re done, if you have questions, leave them below.

How can content be ranked if there aren’t many links to it?

Matt says, in these instances, Google pretty much depends on the text on the page. One thing Google looks at is quality including keyword use. “It doesn’t really help you to keep repeating a keyword over and over and over again. In fact, at some point we might view that as keyword stuffing and then the page would do less well.”

Will backlinks lose their importance in ranking?

Backlinks still have many, many years left in them, according to Matt. For the most part, people care about the quality of the content on a particular page (the one that they landed on). Over time, Matt speculates that backlinks will become a little less important.

How can small sites become popular?

In three words? Do. It. Better. Matt says it’s going to be hard at first (that goes without saying) and recommends that you focus on one niche at first and cover it really well. Remember the old saying, “Fast, Good, Cheap: Pick any two?” It’s true! If you want it fast and good, it won’t be cheap. If you want it fast and cheap, it won’t be good.

Thin content with little or no added value

First and foremost, don’t use doorway pages. Using content that is identical with only slight differences (changing the city or the color, etc.) equates to thin content. These are typically found with ecommerce sites, affiliate sites and some service-based sites that have multiple locations.

How does Google handle duplicate content?

Duplicate content does happen legitimately sometimes. Every instance doesn’t mean it is spam. And, unless it’s an extreme circumstance, Google doesn’t “penalize” sites for duplicate content. What they do is group the dup pages together and show one page then crowd (filter) the other ones out. Duplicate content is not really treated as spam.

Another good source of information about duplicate content is this article from KISS Metrics.

Want more in-depth, easy-to-understand info about writing with keywords? There’s a course for that! Let me show you my 5-step process for creating Penguin- and Hummingbird-friendly copy.