The frustration of landing low-quality content by searches on Google is about to be a thing of the past. Google released a new algorithm update designed to help users find the best content on the web, dubbed the Google Helpful Content Update.
The Google Helpful Content Update aims to help searchers find “high-quality” content and reduce frustration with stumbling across an “unhelpful” website.
This article will discuss all you need to know about the Google Helpful Content Update and how it can benefit your website content.
What is the Google Helpful Content Update?
The Helpful Content Update is part of Google’s ongoing effort to improve the overall quality of search results. Helpful Content aims to surface more valuable and informative content to users by targeting websites with highly unsatisfying content written for search engines.
These “unhelpful” websites are those with keyword stuffing, thin or copied content, and doorway pages.
The Helpful Content Update is currently only looking at English-language content globally, with plans to expand to other languages in the future.
Target Audience
The Google Helpful Content Update will particularly interest website owners and content creators looking to create high-quality content and pages boosting traffic from google searches.
However, if your website contains a lot of low-quality or unhelpful content, this update could negatively affect it.
Google says that these types of content may be impacted and targeted:
- Arts and Entertainment
- Online educational materials
- Shopping
- Tech-related
This is because these sites depend on viewers and visitors, with most of their money generated from clicks and ads.
Site wide Algorithm Update
The Helpful Content Update uses the Site wide algorithm, unlike other Google updates working on a page-by-page basis.
If the machine learning algorithm detects a website with high “unhelpful” content, the entire website is flagged, not just the pages. The good news is that this machine is continuously running and automated.
What Should I Do If Google Helpful Content Impacts Me?
If you think your website may have been affected by the Helpful Content Update, there are a few things you can do to fix it.
The first is monitoring your website’s performance in Google Search Console and checking for any manual actions.
Google also recommends removing any low-quality or unhelpful content from your website.
You can also try improving the quality of your existing content by adding more helpful and informative information.
Reversing the effect of the unhelpful content penalty takes several months; yes, you read that right. Google needs you to prove that the content on your website is helpful to users in the long run.
Creating Human-First Content
Google has given a few guidelines on how to create helpful content:
- Would you be satisfied with the content if you were the searcher? Does your content meet the searcher’s needs and answer all their questions?
- Is the content comprehensively first-hand and original with valuable information, or is it just filled with basic shallow information?
- Is the content written on subjects or topics easily relatable to users or just choosing topics based on search rankings?
- Do you have an existing audience, or will you have to build one from scratch?
Final Thoughts
The Helpful Content Update will likely be a significant update that search engines and website owners will appreciate in the coming years.
Now is an excellent time to review your website’s content and ensure it is up to Google’s standards and search engine optimization best practices.
