If you’ve noticed any ranking and visibility changes in Google search over the past few months, it is likely attribute it to the latest Google update. The new helpful content update is a new algorithm search update that’s all about content that’s valuable to users.
Are you tired of competing with content that’s strictly created for SEO?
Well, Google’s helpful content update is here to help your organic, user-worthy content rank better than content optimized for crawler bots.
Why latest Google update ?
Due to the insanely growing number of high-ranking pages that offer no valuable input to the searcher, Google is promising us, humans who write content for other humans, better chances for ranking.
People are getting more and more frustrated with content written for the sole purpose of ranking well in search engines. So much so that Google took matters into its own hands and rolled out a large helpful content algorithm that ensures the right content reaches people who search for it.
What is Google’s helpful content update?
The new update targets “Content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people,”. With this step, Google is aiming to help searchers find “high-quality content”. At the same time, it’s rewarding businesses and individuals who are writing that valuable content by helping their pages that truly add value to users rank higher.
The update generates a site-wide signal that automatically identifies content that seems to have little value or is not useful at all to users that are searching.
Assuming that there is more helpful content on the web that’s better to display as a search result, Google’s algorithm works on removing unhelpful content. In turn, this helps the rankings of your content pages that are deemed valuable by your target audience. The site-wide signal identifies pages that include large amounts of weak content and in turn, renders them less likely to perform well in search.
The update that started on August 25th and was completed on September 9th, was reported to be showing shy efforts in the actual ranking changes in September. However, when John Mueller of Google was asked about this, he replied on Twitter saying, “These kinds of rollouts take up to about two weeks. Sometimes they’re a bit slower, sometimes a bit faster.”
How do you know if your content is helpful?
Don’t give up hope on your content ranking better with the help of Google Search’s helpful content update, the algorithm is rolling out and the results take a bit more time to create an impact. In the meantime, you should work on your own content!
While we may not understand the exact ways that Google’s algorithm works, Google supplied us with input on what is considered to be helpful content according to them. So before freaking out, check if your content is considered helpful according to Google.
Content created for a specific audience
Does your website have a main purpose or focus?
Do you have a target audience for your site that would find the content useful if they went directly to your website?
Content that features expertise
Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and in-depth knowledge?
Does your content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is not common knowledge?
Content that is trustworthy & credible
Does the content include clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, and background about the author or the business that publishes it?
Does the content provide a substantial, complete, and comprehensive description of the topic?
Content that meets the wants and needs of searchers
Will people feel that they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal after reading your content?
Is your content mobile-friendly?
To sum it up, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Google will support your content if it provides the best answer to your audience’s questions. Simple! Now, here are the main practices you can start using to prepare your content to avoid being weeded out by Google Search’s helpful content update.
Remove unhelpful content from your website
Focus on creating content that speaks to your target audience
Avoid low-quality AI-generated content
Follow SEO best practices provided by Google
Stay up to date with Google’s ranking updates
Final thoughts
Google Search ranking updates are actively working on supporting businesses and individuals who create content that aims to help people who are actively searching. And that’s such a relief for businesses and individuals who provide expert and valuable content to their audience.
All you need to do is to create content that adds value and that people would actually want to read.
Do you need help with writing blogs that actually rank and NOT get weeded out by the latest Google update? We can help! Reach out to us LetsMarket.it.
