Google Helpful Content Update

In August 2022 Google announced an algorithm update called “Helpful Content Update”.

 What is the Helpful Content Update?

The Helpful Content Update is a Google search algorithm update aimed to improve the quality of search results by reducing the volume of low quality content.

Low quality content includes content that is

• Unoriginal
• Thin and lacking depth
• Written to rank rather than to help people

Google is looking to improve what content is found when people search for a specific topic. They don’t want people clicking on links to find the content not helpful or relevant to what the user searched for. They want content to be related to the website’s core topic/focus.

This algorithm is applied site wide. If Google considers your site to have a lot of ‘unhelpful content’ then the site will be classified that way. This can negatively impact your rankings.

Google explains this in more detail and in their supporting documentation.

Why is Helpful Content Update important?

Google is all about user experience and helping the customer get to the information they need quickly. Google wants customers to be happy with what they found and come back to your site again and again.

How can we achieve this? When a customer clicks on the link it should:

• have the perfect answer to their search
• detailed enough without going too far
• trustworthy
• useful

Google’s announcement was very simple and clear.

“We continually update Search to make sure we’re helping you find high-quality content.”

“This ranking update will help make sure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn’t rank highly in Search.”

They provided a good clear example of how we can improve the quality of our content:

For example, if you search for information about a new movie, you might have previously seen articles that aggregated reviews from other sites without adding perspectives beyond what’s available elsewhere.
This isn’t very helpful if you’re expecting to read something new.
With this update, you’ll see more results with unique, authentic information, so you’re more likely to read something you haven’t seen before.

What are some tips you can do to help improve your website’s helpful content?

Focus on people first content

 Does the visitor to your website find your content useful?

The content should be related to the general topic of your website. For example, are you talking about the latest movie review, but your website is a financial services website? This would be considered not useful to the visitor. Websites shouldn’t be posting content that isn’t directly related to their business offering and expertise.

The visitor is expecting relevant content.

Don’t write about subjects you aren’t qualified to write about.

Write content that you qualified, experienced and knowledgeable in.

It’s ok to outsource the content writing if you are not a writer or don’t know the subject well. Just make sure your content writer you are hiring is the right fit for the content topic. If a writer is genuine enthusiastic about the subject matter, they will naturally write content that is filled with knowledge and insights.

Don’t write content for search engines so that you can increase your rankings for keywords that are not relevant to your business. Target keywords that are relevant to your services. You need to create content for the right reasons.

Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?

 Hopefully your site has a primary purpose/focus/niche.

You can use your website to help educate your customers or be the thought leader in your industry.

Your content should be focused around your main purpose/focus points.

You want people to feel like they have learned enough about the topic to help them achieve their goal. You don’t want people searching for a question, clicking on the first link finding it doesn’t answer the question at all.

Remember the old days of Yahoo searches where you had to click several links to get to the answer? Think about your current Google search experience? You probably get your answer in the first click or two! Google wants you to find the answer in the first click.

What are some tips to write useful content?

• Content should be original
• Content should be well researched
• Content should be relevant
• Content should have supporting material
• Content should be insightful
• Content should feel like a comprehensive answer
• Content should be exert-led, authoritative and trustworthy (E-A-T)
• Content should be structured well
• Content should be free of grammar and spelling errors
• Content should include appropriate images or videos
• Content should be good enough for people to share it
• Content should be accessible

Content length is important

The minimum words for your page has been increasing over the years. Studies have reviewed top ranking pages and found that pages with high word counts rank higher than pages with thin content.