Following 2024 Google core update release in March this year, our Senior Account Manager and resident SEO expert at Patch Towers – Charlie, gave us all the lowdown. He talked us through what the algorithm update entails and ultimately, what this means for venue and events marketers and content creators.
There’s a lot of information to digest and implement going forward, especially if SEO isn’t an area of your own expertise! In this blog, we’ve broken down some of Charlie’s key insights and takeaways, helping you understand best practice for producing your own effective content strategy, while maintaining search engine visibility.
What is it?
We should start with the pre-cursor to the March update – the Helpful Content Update launched in September 2023. This was designed by Google to tackle the rapidly increasing surge of AI generated content being published far and wide. It recognised that most blogs written using AI tools were mainly focused on driving organic traffic, were of a poor quality and therefore unhelpful to users. By refining its Helpful Content algorithm to have more importance when scoring a page, it could easily target and penalise anything that could be classed as spam.
What does the March 2024 Google Content Update entail?
This was one of Google’s biggest core algorithm updates to date. Essentially, the March release saw a doubling down o
n the consequences for websites that failed to adjust to the new standard. Although the search engine doesn’t prohibit the use of AI for content creation, it strives to reward quality and content that provides genuine insight and value to readers.
In its mission to tackle low-quality content, one of the most significant changes is that the weighting of Google’s scoring and ranking system has shifted. This now prioritises site quality over page quality, so if you have any weak content pages on your website, the whole site is likely to take a hit. Google states: “Based on our evaluations, we expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.”
What does this mean for my venue or events business?
- Your whole website’s visibility will rise and fall based on the aggregate of all content.
- Producing a few blogs or pages targeting SEO traffic is no longer enough to boost your rankings if you neglect the content across the rest of your site.
- To ensure anything you’re publishing will be deemed helpful content, you must always demonstrate Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (EEAT).
- Adopt a people-first approach. In Charlie’s words: “If you’re writing content and its only got the algorithm in mind, rather than the person who’s going to be reading it, discard it and start again!”
- Local SEO has not been affected by this update, so remains a viable approach for location-based digital marketing.
Here’s our top tips for creating helpful written content for event planners:
- Research your subject thoroughly – industry trends shift so draw on a range of sources to find original insights based on the latest information, adding your own unique perspective.
- Write about your topic comprehensively – aim to educate and where possible, provide actionable tips and takeaways that will benefit your readers.
- Pay attention to the language used. Ask yourself this – could your blog or web page have just as easily been written using AI? If so, start again!
- Utilise your team’s industry experience and knowledge to showcase combined expertise and your passion for delivering world-class events.
- Ensure your content fulfills a purpose – this could be in the form of a beginner’s guide or suggesting ways to overcome common challenges in events management.
- Focus on including trustworthy and accurate information, clearly linking to any credible sources.
- Double-check the readability of your content – be concise and make sure to fix any spelling or stylistic issues.
- Focus on the user experience – is your content designed to deliver tangible learning opportunities to event planners, rather than simply hit keywords for search engines?
- When creating new content, always refer to your website’s primary purpose and ensure the additional content reinforces or strengthens this.
We get it – frequently producing high-quality content that engages and educates your audience is no small task. Many busy venues and suppliers don’t have the resource or skillset within their team to write this in-house, which is why the use of AI has skyrocketed. But taking this approach could be doing more damage to your site than good if you don’t understand and adhere to the principles of Google’s Helpful Content Update.
We are here to help. Copywriting and content marketing is one of the many services we specialise in at Patch, find out more about our approach.
If you’re ready to get started, contact us to request a free SEO audit of your site.
