Google has recently announced a new algorithm update; the Google Helpful content Update which is designed to help users find the most helpful content on the web. This change will affect how websites are ranked in search results, so it’s important to understand what this update means for your business. In this post, we will discuss what to expect from the Google Helpful Content Update and how you can optimize your website to rank higher in search results.
What Is Google’s Helpful Content Update?
Google’s helpful content update begins rolling out this week. Google will announce on their ranking updates page when the update begins and when it will be fully rolled out. The rollout will begin with English-language material and eventually include other languages.
The Google Helpful Content Update is a change to the way that Google ranks websites in search results. This update is designed to promote content that is helpful and useful to users while demoting content that is not as helpful. This means that if your website provides helpful and informative content, you can expect to see a boost in your search engine rankings. On the other hand, if your website’s content is not as helpful or informative, you may see a decrease in your rankings.
What separates valuable content from worthless? Simply put, it is anything that answers a question somebody might have. This can be something as small as teaching someone how to do a particular task or informing them about an interesting topic. It can also be something more in-depth like an investigative piece or a comprehensive guide. As long as your content is helpful and informative, it will be valued by Google’s new update.
What are the most important things to execute when it comes to improving your website during Google’s Helpful Content Update?
Written for people, by people
It’s important to remember that the goal of the Googles helpful content update is to improve the user experience by providing more helpful and informative content. This means that you should focus on writing content that is actually useful to your readers, instead of trying to game the system by creating completely pointless, unoriginal content. Google will only rank original news stories.
Google will soon demote articles that are nothing more than a regurgitation of points already made by other sources. This is a useless and unoriginal form of content writing that is unfortunately all too common. Not only is this type of content a waste of time for everyone involved, but it also does not provide any value to the reader.
If you want your content to be successful, it needs to be written for people, not for search engines. This means that your content should be interesting, informative, and well-written. It should offer something new and unique that can’t be found anywhere else.
There are a few pointers that will help you produce an informative piece of writing.
- Gather your own data and information to share your findings with others.
- Create expertise-led, well-original content by engaging subject matter experts.
- Come up with new perspectives and angles to explore topics, rather than sticking to the same old ideas.
Avoid writing for search engines
Ask yourself: Is this content solely for search engine ranking, or will my readers actually find it useful? If it’s the former, you need to shift your focus and produce content for actual people instead of machines. If your content is devoid of any value to your readers, whether it’s trending or not, you’re doing something wrong too.
The need for SEO has not entirely been eliminated with this new update. It still has an impact, albeit to a lesser extent. Although keywords are important, using too many of them, or using them too often, can actually hurt your website. A good rule of thumb is to use one or two keywords per piece of content. And don’t worry about making the keywords fit perfectly into your sentences — just focus on answering a question or solving a problem.
Here are some tips for creating content that is both SEO-friendly and helpful:
- Do your research. Find out what questions people are actually searching for, and then create content that answers those questions.
- Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions to help your content show up in search results.
- Intuitive website navigation so that visitors can easily find the information they need.
- Offer something unique rather than summarizing what others have said
- Keep up with what’s popular, but only if it matters to your target market.
- Avoid filler material by writing as much or as little content as needed to cover the topic, since Google doesn’t suggest a specific word count.
- Write about topics where you have the expertise or at least an interest
- Make promises in your titles that you can keep, or else you risk coming across as clickbait-y.
Audit your website
If you want your website to be successful, it’s crucial to audit your content. This means taking a close look at all of the content on your website and making sure that it meets the needs of your target audience. It also means ensuring that your content is up-to-date and relevant.
As stated before, sites with extensive content will no longer be able to rank as high. To improve your website’s ranking, you should audit every page and piece of content for its value. Anything that will hold you back should be rewritten or removed entirely.
A few questions you should ask yourself during your content audit:
- Is this page relevant to my target audience?
- Does this page answer a question or solve a problem?
- Is the information on this page accurate and up-to-date?
- Is this page well-written and free of grammar errors?
- Does this page have a unique perspective?
- Is this page better than the competition?
If you can’t answer “No” to most of these questions, then it’s time to make some changes.
Here’s is a Guide to Content Marketing. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Google also offered suggestions for questions to ask yourself in order to determine if your content will perform well during the helpful content update.
- 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 to trend 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?
- 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?
If you answer yes to any of the following questions, it may be time for a content makeover on your website.
What’s next?
If you want your website to succeed, it’s important to create content that is both SEO-friendly and helpful. By following the tips in this article, you can make sure that your website is ready for the Google Helpful Content Update. You should also audit your existing content and make sure that it meets the needs of your target audience. Lastly, keep an eye on your competition and see what they’re doing to stay ahead of the curve.
By following these tips, you can ensure that your website is ready for the Google Helpful Content Update and ranking well. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help.