What is Google’s “Helpful Content” Update?
If you follow any marketer on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc - you’ll have heard panicked screams about Google’s new “helpful content” update. With the announcement August 18th and roll out starting the 22nd, SEO managers are in a frenzy to implement realistic significant changes to their websites in a short period of time.
Granted, the short time to audit, archive, update, or remove pages on their websites is a huge pain in the neck - but the notes in this announcement aren’t that far away from the advice Google has been giving us for years.
Let’s be honest, as content writers we’re all going to think that our content is helpful. We wrote it, so of course we think it’s insightful, well referenced, and utterly unique. But that simply is not always the case,
So if you haven’t had chance to read the update, or you’re pulling your hair out at the idea of chopping and changing a large amount of your website… don’t worry, you’re not alone in this. Here’s everything you need to know to make sure you’re content is well and truly “helpful”.
The big questions
To help cut past the bias in your SEO audit, Google provided several key questions to help work out if you need to address the content creation process. It’s worth noting that a lot of the key factors of Googles update are similar to their historic advice, so much so that it can be found in their own SEO guide.
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?
Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there's a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn't confirmed?
What if my content is unhelpful?
In the original announcement, Google is very cautious in terms of how they phrase this.
It’s not a manual action, you won’t be able to see any penalties listing in Google Search Console as it’s not a considered spam actions.
The new label is a “signal”, whilst the term implies delicacy the confirmed definition can be outlined in their how search works document. But to summarise, if the signal is applied to your site you will feel the impact of this penalty.
The good news is that you can get this classification removed from your site if you show a long term ability to improve your content.
This aspect of Google’s algorithm will scan continuously across all sites and if your content has shifted to be helpful to searchers, the strength of the signal may be reduced, or even lifted completely.
Search Engine Land had this to say about the algorithm:
This announcement reminds me of the early days of Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithms.
Today these algorithms are baked into the core algorithm, but initially, they were filters that were applied to affected sites.
Sites with unnatural links (Penguin) or low-quality content (Panda) would have a filter applied that suppressed ranking.
If those sites cleaned up their link profile or improved the quality of their content then they had a chance at seeing recovery the next time Google ran a Penguin or Panda update.
Graphic showing stats from Googles Penguin algorithm
From the few days I’ve spent looking into this, the helpful content classifier will have a similar effect in sites and will suffer site wide ranking suppression.
The helpful content classifier runs in real-time, continually. This means that new sites created just for SEO should have the signal applied right from the start. Also, existing sites can be affected when the amount of content created for SEO purposes exceeds a threshold.
Sites will be impacted over the course of a few months and to different degrees depending on the amount of unhelpful content found. Google won’t run specific updates during which sites recover. Rather, if the classifier determines that content has changed to now be deemed helpful to searchers and has remained that way for a few months, the weight of the deranking signal will be reduced or even lifted.
So what is people first content?
Now you understand how to spot the red flags in your content, let’s take a minute to highlight how to create people first content that is truly helpful.
Remember, the whole idea of Google helpful content update is to reward content written for humans.
In short, the definition is:
Created for a specific audience
Features expertise
Is trustworthy and credible
Meets the wants and needs of the searcher
For an in-depth drill down of helpful content for HCUs, PRU, CU, and PU click here.