My team and I have been helping brands reach their SEO traffic and conversion goals through content and links for over 10 years. Recognized by industry leaders and household brands as an authority in both organic content and digital PR.
Content Caffeine #10: What we learned about SERPs from Google, the case for premium content and more.
Content Caffeine: North Star Inbound's newsletter for the content-obsessed. |
Happy New Year everyone! This year, I'll be experimenting by bringing you a few additional sections. We'll be pitvoting based on your feedback, so please hit that reply button and let me know how you like the newsletter. We're also introducing our referral rewards! Those of you who are enjoying the newsletter and sharing with friends will now be rewarded with $100s of freebies! News & AnalysisIn the past few months, Google’s antitrust lawsuit has highlighted how Google REALLY works. At the same time, recent search results are absolutely riddled with low-quality spam. It’s as bad as it’s been since the days before the Panda algorithm update. Maybe even worse. So what’s going on? And for those of us who are dedicated to producing great content, why bother? First, let’s review how Google works. Google’s first steps are crawling and indexation. A couple of highlights about the index is that it is much smaller than you think–around 400 billion documents. And Google is trying to make it smaller–not bigger. As Nayak said, you can have a smaller index that’s just as thorough by removing the “junk.”
Now that it has its index, for every query it needs to create a much smaller list of relevant documents. This is ranking. To do this, Pandu Nayak, Google's VP of Search says there are maybe over a hundred ranking signals. But the core signals are the document itself, topicality, page quality, reliability, localization, and Navboost. Navboost is a memorization system that memorizes 13 months of user interaction data (it used to be 18 months) in order to learn things about documents. There are also other ranking systems that, similarly to Navboost, use user interaction data and information satisfaction scores to help decide rankings. So back to what that means for us. But it’s pretty bad at telling good content from great content. So, it leverages people or the troves of click data at its disposal. Unfortunately, people are also bad at telling the difference between good content and great content. GPTs helped cheap, scaled content go from really bad to okay (or Goog enough). How many people read through Sports Illustrated or Bankrate articles and never knew the difference? That’s why AI content is proliferating wildly. And for every story of the heists gone bad(opportunity to cite social media), there are untold stories of websites that Google hasn’t caught. That’s why many organizations with a decent publishing process writing from first-hand accounts or experience sometimes struggle to rank. Again, their content is good but not great. In fact, most organizations I speak to don’t have what I would consider great content. From poor organization or a misunderstanding of search intent to bad sourcing or a lack of point of view, their posts are consistently missing a key ingredient to great writing. So, if Google can’t tell the difference and people can’t tell the difference, then what’s the point in investing in great content? Well. I said I believe Google and people are both bad at discerning. Not that they can’t. Click data can’t capture what doesn’t exist. If 90% of what you see is bad content, and 10% of it is good, but absolutely none of it is great, would you be able to tell me what a great piece of content looks like? The truth is most can’t. If, instead, I show you 89% bad content, 10% good content, and a single great article, could you tell me which piece is the great one? Absolutely. Investing in great content is hard. It’s hard to find people who excel at great content. It doesn’t easily scale. It’s not reproducible by AI or the masses. But for those who do it, they are creating a moat with their success because it’s hard, it doesn’t scale well, and it’s not easy to replicate. If you found this helpful, here are a few articles for further reading: I hope these insights help. For more tips, follow me here. To explore our work further, reach out here. InspirationIn this section, I'll feature awesome content case studies for inspo. It earned 85 links, including from Psychology Today, Entrepreneur, MarketBeat, and Business Insider. Let's break it down a little. If you've got a content campaign you're proud of, let me know. We'd love to feature awesome work. Upcoming PR & Seasonal DatesJanuary 15, 2024: Martin Luther King Jr. Day National Black History Month
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Content Caffeine
My team and I have been helping brands reach their SEO traffic and conversion goals through content and links for over 10 years. Recognized by industry leaders and household brands as an authority in both organic content and digital PR.
Content Caffeine For content-obsessed marketers and SEOs Hi there, It's been a privilege and pleasure to write this newsletter for you in 2025, and I appreciate the time you take to open, read, and reply to my letters. Your support and interest are my incentive to keep going in 2026 - thank you! Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year to you! Today's highlights include: 7 Bold SEO and AI Search Predictions for 2026 11 SEO rules that AI can't override Why Google's spam problem is getting...
Content Caffeine For content-obsessed marketers and SEOs Hi there, Is the end of 2025 approaching fast enough for you? Like me, your list of things to achieve before the holidays is probably too long. Do yourself a favor and delegate, defer, or delete something now :) Also, Google is still working on the next core update, but they wouldn't do that to us at New Year…would they? Today's highlights include: Teaching AI: Brand Building and Digital PR Why every AI search study tells a different...
Content Caffeine For content-obsessed marketers and SEOs Hi there, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. If you're relaxing on the sofa today, I've put together some lighter reading to go with your leftovers. Today's highlights include: The signals to monitor in search GEO 'gold rush' Using Web Guide for SEO Random snippets As always, thanks for being here. I'll be back on December 11.Nicole P.S. Scroll to the end for a little entertainment. I want to share your: Big news, latest resource,...