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Content Marketing Blog

Don't Understand SEO? No Problem! Focus on Communicating What You DO Understand - Part 1

For a long time, it seemed as if SEO favoured large, nationwide brands with huge websites and massive online presence. Small businesses were finding it difficult to compete against these deep-pocketed digital brand marketers. Enter Local Search, which helped level the playing field a little. Now, if the user was looking for a local business, it became easier to find one. Today, users use search not just to find brands, but to find information. Search engines are constantly changing to give users relevant information, at whatever stage they are in their journey. We’re seeing another trend in search, that of search equity to give more businesses a chance to show off their expertise.

Google, SERPs and Ranking

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are the response to a user’s search. SERPs determine your page ranking in search. SERPs include paid advertising, organic search and featured snippets. The technical aspects of SEO have been the primary tool for driving SERPs. Small businesses who don’t have the budget to invest in SEO can’t often compete with large brands. There is a lot of content produced by small websites that is highly relevant, but it may not register in SERPs because the producer (generally a small business owner) doesn’t have the resources to manage the many technical aspects of SEO.

How Can Businesses Compete? 

The current structure of SERPs is broken, but thankfully, on the mend. Google wants relevant content from experts, but creating content takes time, money, and knowledge. Not every business has the resources to hire an experienced SEO writer to create high quality digital content. There’s still a huge gap between SEO and content with substance. The business owners that create high-quality content find it difficult to see a payoff for the work. It’s ironic that so much content is created each day, that Google has a “question hub” for times when the content isn’t available.

Search Equity Rewards High-Quality Content 

Online search has been moving toward understanding content more effectively for many years. Search equity lets sites compete for ranking on the SERPs without the technical structures. Google has introduced technology that lets their machines understand content without being driven by keywords, tags, meta data and other secondary signals. Google recommends that copywriters “write naturally for users” and is pushing for more “expertise, authority and trustworthiness” of pages. When your business writes about what it does know, there is a higher chance of ranking in the top positions in SERPs.

Is SEO Dead? NO!

Although search is moving toward a greater level of relevance, SEO is not going anywhere. Focusing on content best practices while including technical SEO elements can help your pages rank more effectively in local search. Search equity is simply helping to level the playing field for businesses who have high-quality content without the corresponding technical SEO skills and big budgets.
At MintCopy, our focus has always been to create high-quality content for the reader while including SEO best practices. Our content agency partners with you to produce relevant, meaningful, insightful, and even entertaining content that resonates with your audience and dominates the search engines. Contact us for information on how we can help you develop a content plan

Use our online form to get in touch. You can also follow us on Facebook LinkedIn, and Twitter to stay up-to-date with the latest content marketing trends.

Resources:

https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2021/03/10/is-google-moving-towards-greater-search-equity/

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