How Google’s New Helpful Content Update Affects Your SEO Game

Table of contents

What is Google’s content update? How important is the helpful content update? How to know if we have satisfied with helpful content updates? How to track the helpful content update? How do I create helpful content?

Takeaways

Conclusion

Introduction

It’s that time of the year again when algorithms are released that determine the web page’s rank. You should be paying attention to this update because it can adversely impact your sites and how they function.

You must wonder where your website ranks on the search engine results page and how many potential leads are generated.

On August 18, 2022, Google announced the Helpful Content update via a blog post by Danny Sullivan, a Public Liaison for Google Search. So, what is it all about? What has changed in Google’s evaluation of websites as a result of the Helpful Content update? What impact will it have on your website? And what are some suggestions for improving your website following the Helpful Content update?

Many SEO professionals and content writers are curious to know the impending impact of the helpful content update and want some real-time practices to be implemented.

As an SEO agency in Chennai, echoVme Digital has implemented architectural changes, performed in-depth keyword research, mapped all solutions for decoding the helpful content update, understanding the metrics, and optimized them for effective search results. These things have made us the best agency, stand out among others, and give customers a reason to avail of our digital marketing services.

We’ve got you covered! We will list down several SEO practices and suggestions that will enable you to level up your SEO game. Let’s get started.

What is Google’s helpful content update?

Google’s content update i all about helpful content. According to Google’s announcement, their goal is “to tackle content that appears to have been created primarily for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.”

In short, by keeping it simple, several search engines require articles with helpful content that serves the user-intent queries rather than implementing keyword-stuffed reports, which would serve no purpose to anyone. The content needing more expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness would be encouraged or ranked by the updated rollout.

An article may rank higher on the search engines and get search traffic. However, if the article doesn’t satisfy the user queries, it forces them to keep clicking on other sites, thus creating high bounce rate issues. In a nutshell, websites with original quality content will not be affected by the update and will improve their site visibility.

How important is the helpful content update?

Helpful content helps to satisfy users’ queries and provide value to them. Google announced the correct content update in August 2022 and gave the last news of its rollout before its commencement.

According to the update, websites with helpful content that resonates with the audience and offers a high user-satisfying experience will rank higher on the search engines. In a nutshell, the algorithm update would reward content satisfying user intent rather than content written for search engines.

If you have unhelpful content on your website, the only choice is to improve it, to reduce the chances of ranking lower.

Answer the following questions to determine if your content is helpful:

1. Is your content offering first-hand expertise?

2. Does your content address the primary purpose of the user’s reading or intent?

3. Does your content possess in-depth knowledge and satisfy the user’s query?

4. Will your content provide the satisfaction of learning enough from the user’s side?

5. Is your content written and adhered to as per the recent core updates and algorithms?

6. Does your content attract human queries, or is it just meant for search engine rankings?

7. Is your content all about trending topics and resonating with your audience’s insights?

8. Does your content promise to deliver prompt answers to questions?

How do we know if we have satisfied the helpful content update? / What to do with unhelpful content?

To decide whether your content is helpful, this update will help you unravel all your questions on improvising your strategy.

About ten years ago, website rankings were doomed drastically because of their widespread use of duplicate content over multiple websites. They might have been in the top search rankings; however, they’ve come down as new websites with fresh organic content have surpassed them with helpful, original content. Companies might need to improve rankings, which can hamper their organic traffic.

These drastic changes could occur due to the work of search engines performing passage indexing post the update is rolled out. The central question arises: what can be done with the unhelpful content update? Let’s dive deeper into the topic, to unravel specific smart techniques:

1. Demonstrate first-hand experience and in-depth knowledge of your content, which stands out among others.

2. Providing content that revolves and serves the primary focus of the user

Writing content that fills informational gaps and makes sense to the users, offering them value.

3. Use product pictures, infographics, and personal experiences to make your content stand out.

4. Please stay in your lane: Staying on the topic and promptly answering the customer’s queries is necessary.

How to track the helpful content update?

If you want to track several updates that keep rolling out, monitoring Google search ranking updates and getting notified is vital. Suppose you are creating content based on users. In that case, it is crucial to keep in mind the audience, take the help of SEO professionals, and implement the best content strategies, never to become a victim of the rolled updates affecting search rankings. You can perform the following strategy to stand out among others:

Remove outdated or unhelpful content that adversely impacts your user engagement, rankings and visibility.

Update the existing content with other websites, and maintain the user-friendly content to stand out among others.

Optimise your website home pages, and implement the best SEO practices, to enhance the digital presence and rankings.

Get good quality backlinks, and improve the internal links, which is a clear SEO signal to boost the SEO- content efforts.

How do I create helpful content?

1. Aim for quality and stick to the main topic:

Think of original content that will serve the user intent and satisfy the significant purpose of the query. If you create content outside your niche, you will need more knowledge or expertise to provide real value to your readers. Furthermore, your website visitors may need clarification if they see content on your site that is unrelated to your industry, products, or services.

2. Give sufficient answers to all your audience questions:

Google rewards websites that answer questions to the audience queries. It can be a top-notch or niche brand that sticks to teh user’s preferences. It is vital to fill the informational gaps and ensure a satisfactory user experience.

3. Enhance user experience:

This is one of the foremost steps to ensure and curate helpful content. Google would want content that would leave the user with a satisfactory experience. Search engines are required to offer a top-notch user experience to their users. That can be performed with e-books, case studies, statistics, and guides present in the information. Incorporate visual elements and infographics instead of beating around the bush. Ensure to delivery of an enhanced navigational experience to the users.

4. Avoid writing for search engines:

It is not right to offer keywords or stuffed articles that don’t serve the purpose of user intent. People would only want to read content that would provide a solution to their queries. Instead, include case studies regarding brand campaigns, equipment industry trainers or professionals on how they leveled up their business game.

Takeaways

1. Find a helpful SEO-content marketing agency that caters to all your requirements and enhances your SEO game.

2. Provide sufficient answers to the user’s questions, and pay attention to the reader’s queries.

3. Follow Google’s guidelines that adhere to powerful algorithms and updates. 

Wrapping Up

We hope the above-listed pointers gave significant insights into how Google’s new content update can affect the SEO game. You can achieve a digital presence among others if you have answers to the relevant search queries. Don’t worry about your SEO future. You can amp up your SEO game by paying close attention to the experts regarding various algorithms and updates, like Google’s helpful content, and gaining valuable insights.