I’ll cut to the chase.
1. Google says they want E-A-T long-form content, yet the prevalent thought is nobody’s going to read that much.
So, what’s a content writer supposed to do?
I’ve read on every blog about SEO that long-form authoritative content is in. And one of the indications of authoritative content is the length of the write-up. So, say you write some 3000 words on “Pickled Cabbages Are Good for Health”, you are more likely to see your hard work pay off than if you wrote 500 words on the same subject, because Google believes you know more about picked cabbages.
(Google goes so far as to say that a table of contents would be really nice too! Are they expecting little novellas on the top 3 spots?)
Yet!
People (SEO Analysts and others in the industry) go around saying no one reads long form content, so don’t waste your time on it.
Readers just rely on Passage Ranking to pick out the exact part they need to read and then leave the site. Wouldn’t that increase the bounce rate? So, shouldn’t long form content automatically get demoted? But that doesn’t happen. They still rank pretty high as my tours around the internet have proven to me. But SEO analysts and content writers want crisp, short, to-the-point articles, talking only about the topic and not deviating from it. They are very wrong, in my opinion because Google doesn’t mind digressions as long as it somehow related to the main topic.
So, what’s the deal here?
2. Answers to the <H1> on the top or at the bottom?
I don’t get this one.
Say you write an article on “The Best Content Course in Mumbai”. Should you inform the reader of the best course and wrap up (this will make them leave your site faster), or should you put the answer right at the bottom, after you’ve told them why they need such a course, how to choose such a course, what modules are typically available at these types of courses? That will make them stick around to the end of the page (that is, if you don’t have a table of contents) and they end up spending more time on your website.
I was “taught” to put the exact answers to questions at the beginning and pad the ending with other relevant nosh. So, I began to simplify and write the answers to the topics posed in the <H1> in the open paragraph itself so the reader didn’t have to go through the entire article. Is this foolish or wise?
Because if the reader gets their answer in the first 3 lines itself, they ain’t sticking around for more!
3. I write a 150–160-character meta description. Yet Google won’t use them. Why?
I’ve written a lot of meta descriptions. Yet Google doesn’t use them.
Also, I still see a ton of truncated meta descriptions on really good sites that I know know.
Are meta descriptions auto generated, and if they are, why are we bothering to write them with so much care and effort?
4. Has anyone “played” the Google algorithm?
I know we’re up against a machine, which is half the fun of my job, and I enjoy playing Google’s NLP algo on a daily basis. But what I want to know is has anyone reverse engineered the Google algorithm? Have you cracked the SEO code? Do you know what it takes to write an article that will reach #1 every time?
5. Does guest blogging still work?
And lastly, does guest blogging work? Because I’ve checked for a couple of guest posts, Google hasn’t even indexed them and it’s been a month. So what’s the point of guest posting to build backlinks if Google won’t index the page?
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