How Google’s “Helpful Content” Algorithm Update May Impact Your Business
Happy 2023 from Fearless Foundry! We’re constantly scouting for the most up-to-date industry trends and changes so you don’t have to. Google’s helpful content update is first on our “must share” list. The update was dropped late 2022 to weed out content on websites that’s written primarily for the purpose of ranking in search engines—this kind of content is often loaded with keywords, location phrases, second-hand experiences, poor customer experiences, and more unhelpful fillers. The update will "help make sure unoriginal, low-quality content doesn't rank highly in search,” says Google.
How Does the Helpful Content Update Work?
With the new algorithm, Google’s bots will identify content on the internet that has high search rankings but is not useful to users. Once the algorithm has identified and flagged the unhelpful content, it will then adjust that piece of content’s ranking accordingly and replace its ranking with more people centric, helpful and user experience centric content.
What is “Unhelpful” Content?
The Google helpful content update targets websites with relatively large amounts of “unsatisfactory” content. But what does that mean? According to Google, “People-first content creators focus first on creating satisfying content, while also utilizing SEO best practices to bring searchers additional value.”
Google developers recommend reflecting on the following questions to determine whether or not your content is helpful:
Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge?
Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience?
SEOs have taken the above guiding questions and added to the list, considering whether mixed media (a healthy balance between keyword dense copy and imagery/video that helps users further understand the content/topic) will help them fit the bill.
Should You Be Worried?
Unless your site contains vast amounts of keyword-stuffed, AI written content, you probably don’t have much to worry about. You’ll just want to be mindful as you create new content so the update works in your favor.
5 Ways to Create Helpful Content Moving Forward
#1: Be Clear and Stay Organized
If your content is clear and well organized, this gives people a higher chance of understanding it and finding value in it. If your blog post is supposed to be about summer skincare tips, but you go off on a tangent talking about hair care, this may leave your readers feeling like they need to search somewhere else to find better, more in-depth information. Stay organized, stay on topic, and give yourself time to write rich, descriptive, and informative content.
#2: Provide Expert Level Value
The new content update will be assessing how well a piece of content fulfills a reader’s query. If you give the most useful answer to your reader, Google will rank your content higher on their search results pages.
Creating valuable content is key—explain how something works, consider mixed media (descriptive copy paired with excellent infographics, a video, etc), leverage your wisdom, and highlight your industry expertise. Write about what you know and are good at, don’t just summarize what others have to say. If your company is an expert in therapeutic plant medicine, get detailed and write blog posts which contain information people can’t find anywhere else. Consumers crave authentic content that will better their lives, so consider how you are uniquely positioned to give that to them!
#3: Add Transcripts to Videos
This simple gesture will help improve the accessibility of your content. In addition to making it easier for ALL audiences to digest your content, transcription also helps tell Google what your content piece is about and how it can answer queries.
#4: Write from Experience
Research on consumer behavior suggests that user-generated content is 8.7 times more impactful than influencer content. And 56 percent of consumers are influenced by posts shared by friends and family more than branded content and ads. This means consumers want authentic, real-life recommendations and reviews from regular people just like them who use the product they’re interested in buying. In other words, consumers want firsthand, human stories and won’t settle for anything less.
To avoid being affected by the new update, only write about what your brand and customers have personally experienced. Use your expertise to answer readers’ questions, showing them they don’t need to search elsewhere for advice. Including original photos, reviews, testimonials, and videos inside blog posts will help validate that your company cares about promoting human-first content and that you know what you’re talking about!
#5: Focus on One Subject Area
One of the quickest ways to lower your search rankings is by throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping for the best. By that, we mean DON’T crank out content just for the sake of getting something out there. If you’re only trying to hit a particular word count for SEO purposes, rapidly producing content, and focusing solely on your rankings, chances are your readers aren’t benefiting much from what you're producing.
Try focusing on one subject area and really diving deep into it. If you sell wine, your content should be about wine. If you sell self-help courses, get really clear about what kind of self-help you offer and tailor your content to that. The more detailed you’re able to get, and the harder the questions you’re able to answer, the more valuable your content becomes—which is exactly what the new helpful content update will reward.