Based on the latest Google update that launched on April 12th, 2023, we can see that there is now a heavy focus on review content, which will be a critical piece of the puzzle to get right for affiliate marketers and review site owners. This update takes a look at the signals of experience and measures them to rank a site according to defined quality parameters.

Google has published new Search Central documentation that could provide some insights for site owners as to how they are supposed to write review-based content and will give them a glimpse into how Google wants you to format your reviews and what type of content signals it is looking for in order to boost your site’s rankings.

The new reviews documentation seems to focus heavily on the E-E-A-T system, which is a quality framework that is provided as a guide for site owners and was introduced in December of 2022. These new rules are an improved version of the E-A-T system which focused on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness; these are all traits that are deemed worthy of an increase in rankings within Google’s measuring system.

The additional E that has been added and now makes up E-E-A-T stands for experience. This has provided much speculation that “hands-on” reviews produced by reviewers who have actually purchased and used the product may be deemed of much higher value and cause a rankings increase.

We can still only speculate why this change may have taken place, but we can suspect that it may have been due to affiliate marketers promoting products that they haven’t purchased and, in general, producing a massive amount of low-quality review pages that clogged up the search engine result pages with reviews that had no depth or didn’t add any additional value to consumers.

While we may never know how Google works, we can always draw some logical ideas. Results pages that have low-quality reviews are just taking up space and not adding any real insight that the review section of a major retailer couldn’t provide. Instead, your reviews should have some form of unique value and insight that a consumer can’t find on other sites.

The new Google update regarding products has shown us that Google values a wide range of new signals that would indicate experience. These include visual evidence, links, measurements of quality, and even audio. In other words, you can and should use a wide range of mediums to reach the audience and demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the product that is being reviewed.

A site that reviews products should be able to demonstrate that the product has been tested, handled, used on a daily basis, and has some measurement of quality assigned to each of its features. A score out of 10 would be a good example of how to assign quality, and a set number of uses, such as over a 10-day time span, would enable you to clearly see if the product has any negative or positive features rather than a single-time use.

For visual evidence, it would be a good idea to take your own photographs of the products being used rather than just using a stock image or an image taken from a retail site that you might be an affiliate for. Providing your own unique image demonstrates you are willing to provide in-depth unique content that Google wants to see and shows to your site visitors that you actually used the product rather than just summarizing what other reviews have said.

We can see from this update that it has been scaled over multiple languages including English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. This is a major update that affects different languages of the world and in different industries. Each one of these is now going to have to rework the content and reviews in order to boost search rankings.

In March, Google confirmed a core algorithm update which rolled out; we can see from these changes that it will have a large-scale impact for SEOs and website owners who must pay close attention to the new changes and adapt accordingly.

Website owners and SEOs should focus on what matters at the core of Google rather than chasing update after update and reacting to each one. Instead, Google recommends focusing on site metrics, quality content, and optimizing the technical aspects to maintain a strong presence in Google search results.

Focusing on the user is the latest news from Google, and sites that focus on how best to help the user will be at the forefront of search results in the future, so now is the time to make a transition towards doing that and focus on providing helpful content so you no longer need to worry about the impact of future updates on your website’s rankings.

Google has a long series of history with regards to core updates and shaking up the search results. It’s important during these update times that you are focusing on the long term rather than assuming the worst. Sites will be shuffled around in the search results pages until the update is completed, and even then we may see some turning back of the results. As always, be patient and focus on the long term.

Each update provides some new insight into how Google thinks about search results and how different websites are evaluated. It’s becoming very clear that Google is more than willing to adapt to new rules and a new way of thinking about how best to serve the results that consumers value. This means that SEO professionals and website owners must take a look at the documentation and also experiment to see the best way to optimize and build a website.

Based upon past updates, we can see that you need to be very patient when it comes to Google updates. It can take many weeks for an update rollout to be completed, and during that time the crawlers will index and reassess your website and see if your website contains quality content that adds value to the market.

Tracking your numbers is a great way to keep a tight focus on what could be improved on your website. This will likely require some software and regular tracking of rankings to see an area you should focus on improving in. Measuring your metrics after each update will show you the area that was targeted and how you could improve. Reading over the Google documentation is a good idea to get a peek behind the curtain at what is now valuable.

Creating valuable content for users of your site is by far the best long-term strategy to implement. It will allow you to build a database of knowledge that can be linked to by other sites but also provide a valuable resource for users of your site, which can lead to better on-page metrics such as time on site and more. Adding unique content that is not found on other sites within your industry is a great way to start building a brand name.

The last long-term strategy that always pays off is to focus on your site’s technical aspects. This includes optimizing for things such as site speed, mobile friendliness, helping to get pages indexed in other search engines, and many more. Building a clean website that loads quickly and is well designed and functions on a wide range of devices will help with Google rankings in the long term.

We learn brand new things about what Google is looking for after each core update. It’s vitally important that if you are involved in the SEO industry or own a website that gets search engine traffic that you should focus on the things that really matter, which is the long-term strategies that keep both Google and site visitors happy.

If you focus on building out a quality website that provides value to the web and also links out to great resources that could help your site visitors, then you will notice your site gaining ground. There are no shortcuts to ranking well, but getting more content on your site is always a great idea; it helps the internet and the searcher find more information without needing to visit multiple sites.

When you update your site with new and fresh content, you signal to Google and other search engines that you are a great brand that focuses on current events and can adapt to new market information. Becoming the first to market with new information can help you gain an edge on the competition, but another route you could take is to create a unique piece of content that is not found anywhere else online. This helps to create separation of your brand in the mind of both search engines and website visitors, which can prove profitable in the long run.

Overall, with core updates, the recommended advice is always the same, which is to focus on providing long-term value to both search engines and website visitors. Create the type of content that you want to read, create new formats for information such as videos or audio, be the first to market with a new piece of information, or even go back to the drawing board and create a totally unique piece of information that provides new insights and adds value to the web.