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The Google Helpful Content update focuses on what content that is more relevant and helpful to users rather than content that is designed for search engines, as said by the team at Google they “Want to better reward content that properly satisfied user’s searches”.

In August of 2022, Google announced that they’d be releasing something called the “helpful content update.” This update would significantly change how the search engine’s algorithm functioned, making pretty big waves in the SEO industry. But what exactly is Google Helpful Content? What will it change? In what ways will it affect your website?

What Is Google Helpful Content?

This update would specifically affect Google’s ranking algorithm — an effort to offer people more relevant and helpful content in their search engine results, rather than just the popular or well-known websites. Google executives said they wanted to better reward content that properly satisfied user’s searches while promoting content that failed to do so less than they had previously. Content optimisation should be more focused on the viewers rather than the creators.

Google has claimed that one of the driving factors of this update is that they found a direct correlation between content designed to target search engine traffic and a lack of audience satisfaction. They decided that this called for a change, and instead of promoting this, they would like to prioritise audience happiness over SEO keywords. They decided that the best way to do this would be to completely update their algorithm and better meet this need. So, that being said, what exactly does Google Helpful Content do?

What Does Google Helpful Content Do?

One of the key phrases that Google used when describing Helpful Content was that it would be a people-first update. Essentially, this would mean that the update would include measures to ensure that the content was truly what the searchers were trying to find, beyond just the use of SEO keywords and SEO content that they’d been relying on before.

One of these measures would be a site-wide signalling system that can recognise the amount of helpful content on your website. The ratio of helpful content would then directly correlate to your website’s ranking for a given search. This means that not only can increasing helpful content boost you in Google’s algorithm but removing unhelpful content and making your website more succinct overall can also help.

The aforementioned updated ranking algorithm will run on automated machine-learning systems. There are a number of these systems, including BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), Crisis Information Systems (including personal crises and SOS alerts), Duplication systems, and- most importantly- the Helpful Content system.

These systems include site-wide signalling, among many other signals, that will allow them to automatically identify content with seemingly low or no value to the audience. This is calculated on a percentage basis, factoring in how much of the total website’s content could be useful to the search conductor.

How Does Google Helpful Content Affect Websites And Their Owners?

What do all these systems, updates, and tweaks to the algorithm mean for your website? Primarily, it means that you will now need to prioritise relevant information and helpful content rather than SEO keywords and optimisation.

The results of this update will likely not be instantaneous, but over time you may see your website gradually rise or fall in Google’s search result rankings. The automated systems will constantly evaluate and re-evaluate sites so that new and pre-existing pages will always be getting new chances to place

Why Are These Updates Important?

Google has stated that they will continuously refine what classifies content as helpful or unhelpful, as explained on their “Google search ranking updates” page. This page will list the latest updates to Google’s ranking system that will affect websites and their owners. Google Search undergoes thousands of updates annually to improve the search experience for users.

Billions of searches are made worldwide on this search engine every single day. These updates are essential because they allow Google to accurately index the billions of results that come up for each of these billions of searches so that the most reliable, reputable, and relevant are displayed at the top of the search results page.

The most recent update was released on December 14th, 2022, and dubbed the “link spam update.” However, this update had a minuscule impact compared to the Helpful Content update, officially released on December 5th, 2022.

Website Optimisation With Google Helpful Content

Clearly, this new update is extremely beneficial to those that use the search engine, but how can you optimise your website for this updated ranking algorithm? What content does Google consider valuable, and what content is unhelpful? The key to success within the new algorithm is knowing what exactly Google will be looking for. By knowing what kinds of questions they’ll be asking, you can better evaluate your content to ensure it’s helpful, reliable, and aimed toward benefitting the viewers.

There are many questions that Google Search Central recommends asking yourself regarding your website, which can further allow you to optimise it.

Does The Website Provide Original Content?

First and foremost, Google will now be able to better identify content that is repetitive, too similar to other related content, or even copy-and-paste. Webpages that only provide generic, well-known information on the given subject matter will be low in the ranking system, as Google will now be looking for content with unique details, opinions, and more.

Does The Content Provide Substantial, Complete, And Comprehensive Descriptions?

Often, websites will have an opinion on the given topic, which leads them to provide incomplete information presented as the entire story so that viewers will be more likely to agree with the creator’s point of view. This will negatively impact the website’s ranking on the search results page.

Is The Information Presented In An Insightful Or Interesting Manner?

Most of the time, presenting information in a dry, dull way that only offers viewers surface-level facts causes lowered viewer retention. Therefore, they rarely reach the end of the content, thus making the page unhelpful. Providing information in a way that engages the audience and piques their interest will draw Google’s attention and improve your ranking.

Is it Copying And Rewording Outside Sources?

Citing your sources in an informative article is good, but not if it is just the same information with nothing new added. Google will recognize cited sources and compare them to the content, prioritising web pages that add new, additional value.

Is The Main Heading Or Title Intended As Unnecessary Shock Factor/ Exaggeration?

Primarily seen in news blogs, virtual magazines, and similar content, headings that make the content seem more important, interesting, or concerning than it is will negatively impact those web pages’ ranking on the search results page.

Is The Content Worthy of Bookmarking, Sharing, Or Recommending?

In addition to looking for content that will keep viewers engaged, Google Helpful Content will also be looking for content that is frequently bookmarked, shared, and recommended by viewers. This tells the algorithm that it is helpful to those searching for it and may be useful to a broader audience.

Is The Website’s Content More Valuable Than Competitors?

As previously mentioned, each of the billions of daily searches on Google yields billions of results. If a website has nothing to offer that makes it more valuable than the billions of other potential results, it won’t rank anywhere near the top of the search engine results page (SERP).

Does The Content Seem Trustworthy?

Misinformation is easy to come by on the internet, whether intentional or unintentional. Having cited sources and evidence of the author’s expertise make it easy for Google to identify a website as trustworthy.

Are There Obvious Factual Errors?

Any pages, especially those that present themselves as educational and have incorrect information that could be easily corrected, will find it nearly impossible to obtain a high ranking on the search results page.

Is It Easily Readable?

Another thing Google’s new Helpful Content algorithm will look for is readability. The thing that makes it most difficult for readers to get through content is excessive spelling, grammatical, and stylistic errors.

Having your web page riddled with advertisements also makes it hard to navigate, often frustrating readers into leaving before they’ve finished reading. This can also create a layout that is not user-friendly.

User-Friendliness

The user-friendliness and simplicity of a web page’s layout can impact audience retention. Google Helpful Content will look for sites with a layout optimised for mobile and desktop viewers. This change is because Google estimates that 63% of their searches are conducted from mobile devices.

Is There A Clear Intended Audience?

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, a web page must have a clear intended audience. Since the newly updated algorithm puts such a heavy emphasis on people-first content, then those that have a very obvious intended audience, and content that caters to that audience, will perform significantly better than those without.

Google Helpful Content And The Effect It Has on Your Website