Why Google’s Algorithm Rewards Content and Press Release Marketing

Many website rankings have seen big fluctuations downward since August. These changes were very likely caused by Google’s E-A-T algorithm update, also known as the ‘Medic’ update.

Google E-A-T algorithm update

As many people know, Google rolls out changes and tweaks to its algorithms on a near daily basis. Some are local changes, some changes are technical in nature but every change is designed to refine search results in one fashion or another to make them as high quality and relevant as possible for each user query and based on where the searcher is located.
In addition to these small daily changes, Google rolls out a core algorithm update that causes big shifts in how some websites rank on a less frequent basis but we see major updates usually several times per year..
Many people have heard of Google Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and others aptly named Google algo updates and the latest core algorithm update, which rolled out on August 1, 2018, is all about E-A-T and, for some industries, it’s certainly made its presence felt.
The “Medic Update” as it has been nicknamed, appears to be one of the biggest algorithm shifts we’ve seen from Google in close to a year. It was a global update and the ranking fluctuations have taken the best part of a month to settle down.

So what does E-A-T stand for?

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

“This is not a new term. First leaked in 2008 and published in its latest incarnation in late 2015, Google released a 160-page document detailing its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. These guidelines (last updated in July 2018) are used by the 10,000-plus ‘raters’ worldwide that Google contracts to assess the quality of its search results,” cites Hazel Jarrett of SEO+.

Google Page Quality Rating Guidelines

Consider these guidelines directly from Google’s Quality Guidelines, Section 3:

3.1 Page Quality Rating: Most Important Factors

Here are the most important factors to consider when selecting an overall Page Quality rating:
● The Purpose of the Page
● Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness: This is an important quality characteristic. Use your research on the additional factors below to inform your rating.
● Main Content Quality and Amount: The rating should be based on the landing page of the task URL.
● Website Information/information about who is responsible for the MC (Main Content): Find information about the website as well as the creator of the MC.
● Website Reputation/reputation about who is responsible for the MC: Links to help with reputation research will be provided.
Note: Some tasks may ask you to view the page on your phone, but to do research (e.g., finding website information and reputation) on your desktop. Other tasks may ask you to do everything on desktop. Please follow instructions in the task.

3.2 Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)

Remember that the first step of PQ rating is to understand the true purpose of the page. Websites or pages without some sort of beneficial purpose, including pages that are created with no attempt to help users, or pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive users, should receive the Lowest rating.
For all other pages that have a beneficial purpose, the amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) is very important.
Please consider:
● The expertise of the creator of the MC.
● The authoritativeness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website.
● The trustworthiness of the creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website.
We can see that Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness is listed here as an important quality characteristic, which is defined in more detail in section 3.2 of the guidelines:
Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
Since the quality guidelines have been published, these guides should been seen as a clear cut signal that Google wants to deliver search results full of pages created by trusted experts with plenty of recognized authority in their field.
In short, Google’s algorithm is looking for expertise, authority and trust flow. Satisfy Google’s hunger with EAT and you’ll have a happy customer.
So why and how does content and press release marketing satisfy this insatiable appetite to EAT?
Let’s take a quick look…
Expertise
The question marketers should be asking is, “How do I position my clients as an expert in their industry.” It comes down to the strategy of positioning.
This reminds me of two great books on the topic by the way called “Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind” by Ries and Trout and another book called “Blue Ocean Strategy” by Kim and Mauborgne. The concepts in these 2 books combined are a great lesson in the strategy of expert positioning.
Online positioning is a combination of strategy and signals in execution. Strategically speaking, getting a person or company published on high authority and high trafficked websites, especially if the are major media websites that are recognized as authorities like ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. These major networks are clearly recognized all over the world. The average person or company isn’t getting published on sites like this so those that do are strategically positioned as an expert over the average person or average company.
Expert positioning also takes strategic content with an outcome of expert positioning in mind with how the content is written, how it flows and the title is certainly critical in how the article is positioned. Words and keywords matter so pay attention to how you are positioning your client in these critical components of EXPERTISE.
Authoritativeness
Authority is nothing new under the sun when it comes to ranking in Google so no one should be surprised but this is a major signal the algo is looking for so agencies and marketers need to be always looking for strategies and tactics to build authority to the entity.
In fact, “entity authority” is really what is being missed by many SEO’s and agency owners. If the term is new to you, here’s a great article on entity authority that will open your eyes to the topic and get you thinking on different terms.
Authority link signals and engagement as the supporting pillar of authoritativeness are the two places to put focus on here.
Using content and press releases to build inbound authority link signals on a national level are a key component of why press releases are effective. You want more than just purely local signals to build greater authority over other local competitors. Take 3 competitors in any industry in any given local geo market and the logic of this is almost self-evident. If 2 of the competitors only have localized signals (ie. reviews, site content, local citations) and the 3rd competitor has all of the local signals too but also has inbound links from major media, TV, radio and newspaper sites from all over the USA, who has more authority in your opinion? If you can get your client’s content on authority domains all over the United States, you are going to send authority signals to the links in those PRs which should be links to the main entity website, the entity’s Google MyBusiness listing and other branded entity assets or properties like Facebook or LinkedIn. pages for example.
Building entity authority is a multi-faceted strategy that should also involve unique brand name whenever possible, branded social accounts, brand and NAP consistency, citation and location data management, engagement strategies and more.
Using high authority sites and strategic content placement on these authority sites is a foundational component of how we build entity authority to satisfy Google’s quality guidelines for authority. Press releases are a key part of this in no uncertain terms.
Trustworthiness

Consider this text in Section 4 of Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines:

“4.2 A Satisfying Amount of High Quality Main Content
The quality of the MC is one of the most important criteria in Page Quality rating, and informs the E-A-T of the page. For all types of webpages, creating high quality MC takes a significant amount of at least one of the following: time, effort, expertise, and talent/skill. For news articles and information pages, high quality MC must be factually accurate for the topic and must be supported by expert consensus where such consensus exists.
For each page you evaluate, spend a few minutes examining the MC before drawing a conclusion about it. Read the article, watch the video, examine the pictures, use the calculator, play the online game, etc. Remember that MC also includes page features and functionality, so test the page out. For example, if the page is a product page on a store website, put at least one product in the cart to make sure the shopping cart is functioning. If the page is an online game, spend a few minutes playing it.
The purpose of the page will help you determine what high quality content means for that page. For example, High quality information pages should be factually accurate, clearly written, and comprehensive. High quality shopping content should allow users to find the products they want and to purchase the products easily. High quality humor or satire should be entertaining, while factual accuracy is not a requirement as long as the page would be understood as satire by users.
The amount of content necessary for the page to be satisfying depends on the topic and purpose of the page. A High quality page on a broad topic with a lot of available information will have more content than a High quality page on a narrower topic.”
As you can glean from this, building Trust is directly correlated to Quality of the Main Content on the website and quality of the content on off-page sources (such as press releases). Let’s not fool ourselves and think that Google’s algorithm isn’t sophisticated enough and have a sufficient amount of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the majority of this test for quality content and whatever might be left to human intervention is directly addressed here in Section 4 of the Guide. In short, “Look and test for quality content,” which is essentially defined as content where it’s obvious that it took “time, effort, expertise and talent/skill” to produce.
In short, there are no shortcuts when it comes to content. We never use spun content. NEVER. Spun content fails the time and effort test by and large and I just don’t believe that sacrificing quality is worth it because Trustworthiness is largely going to be tested under the test of quality content.
Produce strategic, quality-written content with the aim of “expert positioning” and then focus on distributing and placing that content on high-authority websites to send authority and trust through the links and connnectivity you establish in your links placed inside that quality content. Add in advanced strategies like PR stacking, content syndication to branded social accounts and varying your distribution and link footprint and you will see the results come in 3-6 months in most scenarios.
Hopefully, this article helps shed some light on why press releases and strategic content marketing are critical components of a proper SEO or web presence strategy. Google’s algorithm has a hunger to EAT quality content and it especially likes to consume quality, expert content on high authority websites with bona fide traffic.
The following post was first published on Why Google’s Algorithm Rewards Content and Press Release Marketing and is republished from Quantum Newswire. See more on:} Quantum Newswire Blog North Carolina