In April, Google detailed plans to pro­vide users with “access to rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion from the most reli­able sources avail­able” in its so-called Project Owl, which includes changes in rank­ing and feed­back, as well as addi­tion­al trans­paren­cy about Google prod­ucts.

In par­tic­u­lar, Google said it has improved its eval­u­a­tion meth­ods and made algo­rith­mic updates to sur­face more author­i­ta­tive con­tent and it has also imple­ment­ed new search qual­i­ty rater guide­lines to pro­vide “more detailed exam­ples of low-qual­i­ty web­pages for [human] raters to appro­pri­ate­ly flag”. It has also adjust­ed its sig­nals to “help sur­face more author­i­ta­tive pages and demote low-qual­i­ty con­tent” and imple­ment­ed direct feed­back tools for fea­tures like Auto­com­plete and Fea­tured Snip­pets that allow users to flag sen­si­tive or unhelp­ful con­tent.

“We plan to use this feed­back to help improve our algo­rithms,” Google said.

On one hand, focus on author­i­ta­tive con­tent and best-serv­ing user needs is noth­ing new – par­tic­u­lar­ly for SEOs that have been play­ing by the book all along. How­ev­er, upon clos­er inspec­tion, Project Owl cre­ates both oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges for brands and mar­keters as Google itself tries to pro­tect its own rep­u­ta­tion.

Accord­ing to Scott Lit­vack, direc­tor of organ­ic search at SEO and PPC firm Wpro­mote, the move is “part PR and part SEO”.

“As a way to com­bat fake news, it has to appear that Google is tak­ing action,” he said.

Jen Van Ider­styne, senior strate­gist at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Over­it, agreed, call­ing Project Owl a “pub­lic dis­play” that sup­ports exist­ing prin­ci­ples of qual­i­ty SEO, which include build­ing sig­nals of author­i­ty via links and cita­tions and using con­tent and tech­ni­cal SEO to cre­ate sig­nals of rel­e­vance and com­pre­hen­sive­ness.

But there’s a lit­tle more to it than that.

Per Van Ider­styne, Project Owl opens oppor­tu­ni­ties in Fea­tured Snip­pets, as well as in long tail and obscure queries that often return results from forums, Q&A sites and oth­er sources where answers may be less vet­ted.

“But on both counts, author­i­ta­tive sites that have been craft­ing con­tent to direct­ly and clear­ly answer com­mon­ly searched ques­tions had a chance of suc­cess with these strate­gies pri­or to this change,” she said.

Here are six oth­er tips for brands and mar­keters in light of Google’s changes:

1. Focus on authority.

That’s because author­i­ty is more impor­tant now than ever.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly Google had a trend of giv­ing weight to results that were pop­u­lar regard­less of the valid­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion,” said Paul O’Byrne, head of dig­i­tal strat­e­gy at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Tin­der­Point. “While this could still hap­pen, the focus is shift­ing more to authority…means cred­i­bil­i­ty of sites is now an even more impor­tant fac­tor than before in order to increase rank­ing.”

Lit­vack agreed Google will empha­size the author­i­ta­tive­ness of con­tent over exact match­es in con­tent and tags when rank­ing results, which is some­thing it has been dri­ving toward for some time.

“It will be inter­est­ing to see how Google gives weight to more author­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion that may not be as pop­u­lar,” added Anto­nio John­son, head of SEO at online mar­ket­ing agency Pow­er Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing.

On a relat­ed note, Jon Clark, founder of mar­ket­ing agency Fuze SEO, said the devel­op­ments could prove chal­leng­ing for small­er, less author­i­ta­tive sites.

“With the change, my guess is that Google is boost­ing the abil­i­ty for author­i­ta­tive con­tent to rank bet­ter against con­tex­tu­al­ly explic­it con­tent. This means unless you’re a trust­ed site in Google’s eyes – think Wikipedia, the NY Times, etc. – your con­tent might not per­form as well,” Clark said. “Google will be giv­ing pref­er­ence to these trust­ed sites.”

2. Beware abuse via new reporting tools.

The feed­back tools may also open oppor­tu­ni­ties for abuse, said John Caioz­zo, SEO ana­lyst at SEO firm SEO Inc.

“There won’t be much change with the new [Project] Owl update for most sites, how­ev­er, I expect it will have some impact on the qual­i­ty of Fea­tured Snip­pets,” he said. “Although Google has good inten­tions with this update, I see the oppor­tu­ni­ty for ram­pant abuse with the feed­back forms that could be used to take down com­peti­tor Fea­tured Snip­pets by label­ing them as offen­sive.”

What’s more, Michael Berti­ni, search strat­e­gy senior man­ag­er at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing firm iQuan­ti, said it may be awhile before we notice a mean­ing­ful change in part because Google is rely­ing on users for feed­back.

“Now think to yourself…when was the last time you went in and changed any of your Google search set­tings? Heck, I know SEOs who did­n’t even know they could do that,” he said. “Google said…‘We plan to use this feed­back to help improve our algo­rithms.’ That is what they told us years ago about link dis­avow and they still don’t have that right. My take is that it will be sev­er­al years before Google is able to fil­ter out fake news.”

Berti­ni also not­ed if Google man­ages to accom­plish this, it may come off as biased to spe­cif­ic sources.

“I…personally feel TMZ.com spreads lots of fake news, yet they rank for 2,133,648 key­words on Google and I don’t think Google is going to start tak­ing their key­words away any­time soon,” Berti­ni added.

3. Appeal to human raters.

If Google is rely­ing on human feed­back to deter­mine whether con­tent is offen­sive with its team of 10,000 or so Search Qual­i­ty Raters – as well as every­day users via feed­back forms, Michael Quoc, CEO of e‑commerce incu­ba­tor Zipf­Works, said SEOs need to pre­pare for a world in which human edi­to­r­i­al review will play a larg­er role in rank­ings.

“So beyond more tech­ni­cal fac­tors dri­ving SEO, such as link author­i­ty and on-page met­rics, your web­site must fea­ture con­tent that will pass muster with a human rater,” Quoc added.

And John­son not­ed these qual­i­ty raters will be vital in giv­ing a true human per­spec­tive on obscure search­es in par­tic­u­lar.

“Over­all the three most impor­tant rank­ing fac­tors – con­tent, links [and] RankBrain – have not changed, but the increased empha­sis on writ­ing style – does the con­tent seem pro­fes­sion­al­ly writ­ten – and [the] look and feel of the site when rank­ing con­tent is some­thing that SEOs and brands should con­sid­er,” Lit­vack said. “Mak­ing sure that any con­tent that is being put on your web­site reads pro­fes­sion­al­ly and is infor­ma­tive as well as the aes­thet­ics of the web­site is key to SEO suc­cess.”

4. Think like a journalist.

David James, founder of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Busi­ness Growth Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing, said Google is improv­ing the qual­i­ty sig­nals asso­ci­at­ed with web con­tent, but he also not­ed SEOs have been work­ing towards this for a while.

“So it is an evo­lu­tion from just cre­at­ing con­tent that will get shared to share­able con­tent that can also ver­i­fy its sources,” James said. “Men­tion­ing quotes, sourc­ing exter­nal links or being linked to from author­i­ta­tive sources might be a few of the sig­nals that Google will start pay­ing atten­tion to.

5. Mine Google’s own content to better inform keywords.

What’s more, Ria Fisci­na, SEO depart­ment man­ag­er at SEO firm Active Web Group, said by explain­ing the role qual­i­ty raters play on its How Search Works site, Google is also pro­vid­ing insight into its rank­ing sys­tem.

“While it is way too soon to be cer­tain, this peek into the rank­ing whys and hows could assist savvy SEMs to make more author­i­ta­tive key­word selec­tions and pro­vide more finite con­tent to improve rank­ings and to achieve greater leads, con­ver­sions and rev­enue,” she said. “Time will tell.”

6. Suggest your own content.

SEO con­sul­tant Ryan Ander­son said brands and mar­keters should also use the feed­back option to their advan­tage.

“These search results these days often return a top answer direct­ly in the Google results,” he said. “Being able to sub­mit feed­back will give an avenue to sub­mit a bet­ter arti­cle. Being able to sub­mit your own con­tent as a bet­ter option will be a huge win for SEOs and the busi­ness­es they help.”