ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GOOGLE’S HELPFUL CONTENT UPDATE

Google Helpful Content Update to Focus on People-first Content

The new Google helpful content update aims to provide inquirers with content that satisfies their needs. The content which doesn’t stand per the reader’s expectation will fail to reach out to more readers. This initiative by Google will value the content written for people and not just for SEO rankings. A pre-week announcement might not feel like enough time to incorporate the helpful content update by Google, but we all can agree on how content should have been written for people in the first place. 

But the question is how to ensure that your content incorporates the new helpful content update. The answer is simple: create content for People, not Search Engines. You can refer to the following guidelines and advice to kickstart writing people-specific content. However, this doesn’t mean that you should avoid SEO practices. On the contrary, the people-first content creators focus on creating helpful content while using SEO practices to add value to the search results. 

If you are wondering if your content will rank high on the Google helpful content update, you can answer the following questions:

• Do you have a target market for your company or website that would be interested in your content if they visited you directly?

• Does your content show first-hand expertise and authenticity? 

• Does your site revolve around a primary objective or focus?

• Does your reader get the sense of knowledge and satisfaction that they learned something after reading your content?

• Are you keeping up with google’s guidance for product reviews and core updates?

If your answer to the majority of the questions above is “Yes,” you can consider going right with the “people-first approach.” 

Give Search Engines a Back Seat as a Second Priority. 

The Google helpful content update doesn’t disapprove following SEO best practices, like the ones you follow as per Google’s SEO Guidelines. However, it has been seen that the content created only to impress Search Engines are not much help and doesn’t satisfy the readers. If SEO is applied appropriately to content, you’ll see how it can turn the search result game upside down. 

But the real question is, how do you let SEO take the back seat as a secondary approach? We have a small quiz that will help you analyze your strategy for people-first content.

• Is the content on websites mainly to attract Search Engines and not for humans to read?

• Are you adding content on different topics in bulk, hoping some of it might yield good search results?

• Are you using content automation software to produce content on various topics?

• Are you only summarizing others’ content without adding much original value?

• Are you writing your content based on the recent ongoing trends?

• Does your content let readers access other sources for more information and clarity?

• Are you writing your content to a particular word count because you might have heard that google accepts a specific word count?

• Have you decided to take a specific niche because it would attract traffic and not because you have real expertise in the field?

• Does your content make unrealistic promises to answer a question that has no answer in reality? (For example, the launch date of a product, movie, tv show, etc., when the primary sources do not even confirm it).

If your answer to these questions above is “YES,” you must accept that as a warning sign and reevaluate your strategy immediately.

How does the Google New Content Update Work?

Google announced the new content update on the 18th of August. However, the rollout begins on the 22nd of August 2022 onwards. Google has updated about the same in its ranking update page, and it could take up to two weeks to adapt. However, the helpful content update establishes a new site-wide signal that will be considered like all other signals for ranking webpages. Google’s system automatically recognizes low-value content on various parameters, such as helpfulness, reliability, and search engine capability. 

Any content that is not helpful and is published on a site for gaining SEO ranking while still being unhelpful will not perform well in Search Engines. The new update assumes better content exists and should be on top display for users. Hence, taking down the unhelpful content would help the other content rank better. 

A common question that would strike in everybody’s mind is how long will it take for the right content to rank if they remove the unhelpful one? Well, the content identified by this update may take over a month to signal. Google’s classifier for this update will run in and out to detect the existing or newly-launched sites. Once it indicates that the unhelpful content is not there in the long run, the classification shall no longer be used. 

The classification process is entirely automated, using machine learning as a prime model. So don’t confuse this process as a manual or spam action. Instead, consider this a new signal among many rank evaluation signals of Google. It also highlights the prevailing fact that content with a people-first approach on sites may rank well even after being classified as unhelpful and vice-versa. 

What should be done not to let the Helpful Content Update affect you?

The best way to incorporate Google helpful content update is by ensuring you have taken down the unhelpful content while following all the guidelines by Google. Initially, the new update may impact English searches across the globe, but Google is planning to expand its reach to other languages soon. 

In addition, Google will continue to shape the classification and detection of unhelpful content and provide the right content to its reader. To adhere to the new update, you must strategize posting people-first content and let the algorithm do all the magical ranking to your content. Bulk posting content with little value should be avoided to stay in the search engine game. 

Conclusion

Google helpful content update has shaken things over the internet and poses a concern for many content creators. The new update establishes a new signal that points out the sites that post bulk content with little or no value and is unhelpful to the searchers. 

Classifying helpful or unhelpful content automatically works on a machine learning model. So even if your people-first content is posted on a site with several unhelpful contents, the new algorithm will work wonders for that content. The whole process detects the helpful content even though there are stuffed with many unhelpful ones. 

The new helpful content update is just beginning to attract more reader-friendly content across Search Engines. However, the time to catch up with the new guideline is not long enough, but it does promise to impact the Search Engines significantly. Such an initiative will benefit all content creators and readers and convey the correct value with content.