Google’s new helpful content update targets sites creating content for search engines first.

 

Google has recently launched a new and large search algorithm update, called the helpful content update.

 

If you rely on your website content marketing (either via a blog or the core web page content) to help you rank on Google, you need to take notice of this major change in Google’s algorithm. The helpful content update will target websites that have a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content, where the content has been written for search engines rather than humans. This could mean those sites will rank lower in the Google search results that are served up to consumers using the Google search engine (which is most people on the planet!)

 

Google’s new helpful content update specifically targets “content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.” 

The purpose of this algorithm update is to help searchers find “high-quality content,” Google said. Google wants to reward better and more useful content that was written for humans and to help users.

Content written for the purpose of ranking in search engines – what you might call “search engine-first content” or “SEO content,” has been frequently written about lately and discussed across social media.

In short, searchers are getting frustrated when they land on unhelpful webpages that rank well in search because they were designed to rank well.

Google’s new algorithm aims to downgrade those types of websites while promoting more helpful websites, designed for humans, above search engines.

Google said this is an “ongoing effort to reduce low-quality content and make it easier to find content that feels authentic and useful in search.”

 

How to build human-first content – Google’s advice

Google, like with previous updates, has provided a list of questions you can ask yourself about your content, in order to build content that is rewarded by the helpful content update.

Google provided these questions around building human-first content:

• 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 (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
• 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?

And when it comes to avoiding search-engine first content, Google laid out these questions:

• Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
• Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
• Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
• Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
• Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
• Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
• Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t).
• Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?

Good, useful content that is well targeted to your prospective customers as they search for information has always been a good strategy to follow. If a prospective customer comes to your website, finds useful information and has a good experience on your site, you are more likely to have that prospect reach out and make contact with you.

Hopefully with this Google update you will be rewarded with more website visitors and more genuine inquiries.

(Some of the material for this article was sourced from the SEO publication Search Engine Land in the US)

 

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