Content is king, but only if it’s quality content. Google has been committed to penalising low-quality content for some time. Spammy content for the sole purpose of manipulating search rankings, fails to fool Google. Instead, the search giant positions low-quality content lower down the search rankings in a bid to improve the quality of search results.

Since 2022, the company has been working on limiting unoriginal and unhelpful content from search results. This month, it is stepping up its drive to reward high-quality content through the release of significant search quality enhancements.

NextGen Marketing, specialists in creating and marketing content designed to rank well on the search engines, takes a look at the latest Google Update and what it will mean for content creators.

Google’s March 2024 Core Update – announced on March 5 – is designed to improve the quality of Search by showing less content that feels like it was made to attract clicks, and more content that people find useful. The Core Update, which Google says is more extensive than its usual core updates, includes algorithm changes to improve search result quality and new spam policies.

Google aims to reduce unoriginal, low-quality content in search results by 40%.

It states: “We believe these updates will reduce the amount of low-quality content in Search and send more traffic to helpful and high-quality sites. 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%.”

Spam policies are designed to address practices that can negatively impact the quality of Google’s search results. In the latest Core Update, spam policies are being updated to remove the ‘lowest-quality’ content from search results. The three new spam policies against bad practices being implemented are expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse.

Expired domain abuse refers to an expired domain name that is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate search rankings through the hosting of content that provides little to no value to users.

Scaled content abuse involves pages being generated principally to manipulate search rankings while bringing no value or use to users.

Site reputation abuse is when third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight.

“We encourage content creators to review all of our spam policies and ensure they aren’t engaging in such practices. Sites that violate our spam policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. If affected by a spam manual action, site owners will receive a notice through their registered Search Console account and can apply to have the action reconsidered,” says Google.

The March 2024 Core Update has already started to be rolled out. Websites have just two months to comply with the new content reputation policies, so it is vital that businesses and marketers act quickly to avoid being penalised by the search engine.

As always, if you require assistance with the creation and marketing of website content or have any concerns or questions about the March 2024 Core Update, get in touch with the NextGen Marketing team on 020 8064 0221 or hello@nextgen-marketing.co.uk.