An SEO professional asked John Mueller about longer comprehensive articles, and whether or not covering a specific subject is something that would build trust with Google.
John replied that they don’t have any kind of measurement that declares “you have built this level of trust” with Google, or that you have done this by writing in-depth, comprehensive content on particular subjects.
Instead, they are focused on the user side of things. Does this type of content build trust with your users? Are your users getting value and do they really appreciate this content?
He explained that the most important part is to determine exactly which users you are targeting, and to make sure that you speak their language and address their needs.
For technical users, you might want to write more comprehensive technical articles on your topic. For more general information, you might want to create more simplified basic articles.
Focus on what kind of content they’re interested in, what they may be searching for, and write it in such a way that matches their search query.
He recommends not blindly going in and saying “I would like to rank for such and such keyword, so let’s bombard Google with long comprehensive content for that keyword.”
This happens at approximately the 26:15 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
Let’s see, “Does writing comprehensive articles covering a specific subject build trust with Google”?
John (26:24)
I don’t think we have any measure or metric or anything like that, where we’d say, you have built trust with Google, and you’ve built that based on writing comprehensive articles. I would see this kind of, I don’t know, work as being focused a little bit more on the user side. So does this build trust with your users? Do users appreciate this kind of content? That kind of thing. And hopefully, users appreciate that kind of content if you’re actually writing something comprehensive and useful for them.
The important part, I think here, is really to figure out which users you want to target and to make sure that your content actually speaks in their language. So for example, if you have technical content, and you write a really detailed, technical article about that, if your users are looking for something that is more general or more, I don’t know simplified, that explains the basic topics a little bit better, then maybe that that highly specialized technical article is not the best thing for them.
Whereas if your users are really kind of the specialized technical people, and they want to find all of this kind of highly technical content, then maybe that is the right match. So that’s something where you almost need to think about which users do I want to target? And what kind of content are they looking for? How can I write it in a way that matches what they search for and what they would like to find? And then based on that, you can kind of build out your website.
So don’t just blindly go in and say, “Oh, I would like to have my website rank for rental cars. Therefore, I will write long comprehensive content on rental cars.” Because probably that’s not what users are looking for. You almost need to figure out your users first and then work on your content.
