If your site was affected by the recent Google helpful content update, you should notice a dip in search traffic that occurred since the update rolled out between August 25 and September 9, 2022.
You would expect that this circumstance is only likely if your website has a lot of low-quality content that isn't beneficial to users. However, this search engine update affects many sites that didn't do anything wrong.
This article will help you better understand Google's helpful content updates. We will briefly discuss the following key points:
- Define and determine how Google's helpful content update works
- Explain how the update affects websites
- Learn how to recover and rank content based on Google's update
Table of Contents
What is Google Helpful Content Update?
Google's helpful content update aims to provide users with engaging, valuable content.
Your content strategy should adhere to basic SEO standards and keyword rankings and be beneficial to humans and relevant to their search engine queries.
SEO is useful when applied to people-first content. But keep in mind that content created primarily for search engine traffic is strongly linked to content that searchers find disappointing.
Get data-driven insights to know how your website is doing after Google's search engine update.
How Does the Update Work?
This update adds a new site-wide signal to the mix used by Google to rank web pages. Google automatically detects content that has a minimal value or is unhelpful to individuals conducting searches.
Any content on sites that have been assessed to contain a relatively high percentage of unhelpful material overall is less likely to do well in Google Search.
Google encourages newly launched sites, and older ones have a deep understanding of their existing audience.
The update promotes less attention on preferred word count and more emphasis on providing valuable content.
What Does the Update Mean to Your Website?
The update is part of a more significant effort to ensure that consumers see unique, helpful material written by people for people in search results.
Here is how Google's helpful content update can affect your business:
- Google will utilize a site-wide ranking signal to assess if you have helpful content.
- Google considers AI-generated content spam and will detect it using its machine learning system.
- Content created for ad revenue and clicks will no longer work.
- You may lose organic visibility, but there will be no manual penalties.
- Detection becomes increasingly visible across a greater volume when aggregation becomes a concern.
You can also take a closer look at how Google Helpful Content Update affects your site through SEO Leverage’s Update Impact Report.
It analyzes each Google Helpful Content Update and tells you which of your pages got affected. To do that, simply click the update you want to explore, and it will give you an overview of how your impressions, clicks, CTR, and position fared.
What Should I Do to Recover From Google's Helpful Content Update?
If the helpful content change impacted you, the best way to recover is to conduct a comprehensive content audit of your website and upgrade or delete low-quality content.
This move can be a massive task for some websites, especially if you have many older blog posts from several years ago.
Here are the essential actions you must take to adapt to Google's helpful content update:
| Identify your audience | Define your existing or intended audience and create material, particularly for them. |
| Audience research | Invest time and effort in learning about your target audience and what they require from you. |
| Content relevance | Once you've identified your target audience, ensure that each piece of content is relevant. Avoid posting content solely for views from larger, irrelevant people. |
| Topical focus | Keep your content subjects narrowly focused on your business and target audience; fight the impulse to go out for irrelevant keyword prospects. |
| Expert knowledge | Ensure you can publish content on the areas you cover. |
| Content depth | Provide detailed information without adding fluffy words. Artificially inflating word count can impact your website's ranking. As much value as possible, delivering quality content is a particular word count. |
| Helpful content | Ensure each piece of information provides value to its intended audience. |
| Use humans to create content | Avoid using AI technology to develop auto-generated content. |
| Offer something fresh | Instead of merely repeating or summarizing what everyone else is saying, offer something unique and valuable. |
| People-first content | Avoid writing content for the sole purpose of driving traffic from keyword opportunities. |
| Positive reader experiences | Do everything possible to provide a positive experience for users as they interact with your site and content. |
| Stay true to your promises | If you offer something in your titles, search listings, intros, and so on, make sure you follow through on it within the same piece of content. |
| Conduct regular audits | Analyze your content regularly to verify it is valuable and eliminate or replace flawed pages. |
SEO all-inclusive will help you assess, strategize, and recover from the dip in search traffic.
9 Tips to Help Your Website Rank under Google Helpful Content Update
Understanding what Google deems as high-quality material and not just unhelpful content is essential. It will help your site rank on a relevant search.
Here are some tips on what you can do to guarantee you're producing people-first content based on Google's recommendations.
Focus on people-first content
The recent update is designed to reward content when visitors are rewarded with a good experience.
Content that doesn't satisfy visitor expectations will most likely not perform well. Thus, websites should create content that helps users rather than focusing on ranking in search engines.
Once again, you can confirm if your audience finds your content helpful through the SEO Leverage App’s Update Impact feature. It shows you the differences before and after the update was deployed.
Exhibit First-Hand Experience
Writing about products and services you haven't used yet could be an aspect of developing search engine-first content. These contents are usually accompanied by affiliate links, which generate a commission for the author.
Because the author does not know the subject matter, the content isn't as valuable as it could be.
If you have personal knowledge of the product, service, or location you're writing about, make it apparent with original images or observations.
Stay on Your Key Topic
Creating content for search engines occasionally entails publishing articles that are outside your niche.
For instance, you have a recipe website and notice an opportunity to capitalize on a high-volume skin care keyword.
While the post may be helpful, a current audience who visits the site looking for recipes is unlikely to find it beneficial.
Answer Searchers' Questions Sufficiently
Creating content for search engines frequently entails writing a lot without saying anything helpful.
When creating content for people, you should assist them in answering a question or resolving a problem that brought them to your website in the first place.
Consider the Entire Reader's Experience
It is possible to accomplish all of the above criteria yet still need to deliver a gratifying experience.
For example, reading a first-hand product evaluation that does not include images or videos.
While textual content may be appreciated by searchers, a visual display of the products would complete the experience.
Instead of leaving searchers wanting more, meet their wants and expectations.
Avoid Combining Multiple Topics into a Single Website
A website should only focus on a niche. It cannot be everything for everyone.
Multiple-topic website is complicated for people and needs to be clarified for search engines trying to grasp the site.
Create a website around a single topic. You can always construct many websites to publish material on various topics.
Don't Respond To A Question With No Confirmed Answer
If you're writing about something rumored or inconclusive, make it evident to the reader.
This advice is best for developing and retaining trust with your readers and complying with useful content updates.
Follow Google's Guidelines
Google reminds you that the guidance for core updates and product review updates also applies to helpful content updates.
If you're already following Google's recommendations for core updates and product review pages, chances are you'll benefit from the valuable content upgrade.
Ask for an Expert's Help
Good content needs more than just using keywords and conforming to a word count. SEO is critical for any website, and it would be best if you use it properly to your advantage
Unfortunately, some websites use unethical SEO practices to rank better, such as buying backlinks or spamming keywords.
SEOLeverage™️ professionals assist in the creation of original, compelling data-driven content. You can also get the SEO Leverage app and know the impact of each Google Helpful Content Update on your website through the Update Impact Report.
Final Thoughts
Top Google search rankings are not always guaranteed by high-quality material. High domain authority also does not. It is also not dependent on the amount of content on a page or the number of pages published by a website.
Expect a presence among the top rankings of search engine result pages if it's evident that you're an expert in your field. If you have the correct answer to a search query, you'll be more likely to appear high on search results.
