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It has been reported in recent weeks that Google have been planning to roll out their latest algorithm update, referred to now as the Helpful Content update. What are the aims of this new update from Google’s perspective, what can we expect regarding the SEO performance of our websites, and can we expect any significant repercussions from this latest change?
Google’s past content updates
Algorithm updates are not a new thing for Google, and there have been many past changes put in place by Google with a wide variety of different objectives behind them. Some have provided small alterations to take note of, but many of these algorithm updates have been responsible for some seismic changes in the SEO landscape. Some of the most notorious updates released by Google in the past include:
The Florida Update (2003): The first major algorithm update released by Google, aiming to stamp out spammy SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and invisible text.
The Big Daddy Update (2006): Released by Google to penalise cheap backlink tactics, such as reciprocal links and link buying.
The Panda Update (2011): Aimed to punish websites with repetitive content and poor user metrics.
The Hummingbird Update (2013): Changed how Google understood search intent, and offered users more relevant results for their searches.
The Core Updates (2020-2021): A series of unnamed algorithm updates from 2020 to 2021, with the general purpose of rewarding more in-depth, valuable, and expert content in the rankings.
All of the updates mentioned above, and many more that I won’t, have had a big impact on how marketers write, optimise, and present their content to Google. A brand-new, codenamed algorithm update from Google is usually a sign that some big changes are on the way.
What is Google’s Helpful Content Update aiming to do?
The Helpful Content update appears to be one of the more significant updates that have been released in quite some time. Carrying on Google’s recent theme of promoting user-centric, valuable content first, the Helpful Content update has been understood to be targeting websites that provide poor-quality content that’s been written to rank first, and provide value second. What does this mean, exactly? Basically, Google is concerned at the volume of high-ranking sites and pages that don’t actually answer the user’s searches with relevant info. They want the user to be seeing helpful content, and not the spammy SEO content that has come to dominate the SERPs. Google commented on the update that this is part of an
“ongoing effort to reduce low-quality content and make it easier to find content that feels authentic and useful”.
What will the impact be?
This update is, on paper, looking to be one of the more impactful ones that Google have released in recent years. For one, the helpful content update has been confirmed to be a sitewide algorithm. Many updates in the past have been implemented on a page-by-page basis, but with the Helpful Content update, your entire site will be affected by any changes. Google has added that removing pages of deemed “unhelpful content” could actually help the rankings of your site overall.
Some of the areas that Google have highlighted as being potentially impacted the most by the update include how-to guides and other educational content, content related to technology, arts and entertainment content, and shopping. These content areas and topics have previously been written around in an overtly SEO-y way, and so are at the most risk of being impacted on average (according to Google). It must be noted that Google’s algorithm updates do not specifically target any one niche, however.
What is Unhelpful Content?
To answer the question of what unhelpful content actually is as a concept, Google actually released a series of questions for webmasters to answer, which should help identify when your content crosses the line into being unhelpful. These questions are as follows:
Is your content written exclusively to attract people from search engines?
Are you mass-producing content covering different topics in the hope that some of it might perform well in SERPs?
Are you using automation to produce content?
Are you summarising what others have already said, without adding value yourself?
Are you writing about trends that don’t fit your existing audience?
Does your content fail to provide readers with all the answers they were looking for?
Are you writing to a specific word count because you've heard that Google has a preferred one?
Are you writing about niches without any real expertise, to try and bring in traffic?
Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer?
In short, unhelpful content is exactly what it sounds like on the tin. If your pages don’t provide any real answers, information, or really anything of value for users, then it will most likely be defined as unhelpful. It appears to be something of a continuation of the ideas of EAT content; content that is expert, authoritative, and trustworthy. EAT content has been at the heart of a lotGoogle’s recent updates, such as the coree updates of 2021; they want all the search results to be as helpful as possible, and so the Helpful Content update would appear to be continuation of these ideas.
How to write Helpful Content?
How Google actually defines helpful content is a bit tricky, as they are notoriously vague when it comes to what we SEOs should actually, specifically, do in order to rank well. The information we’ve received so far is that we should be looking to make content that is people-focused. Your content should be direct, well-written, and thoughtful; undoubtedly written by a human, for humans. It should provide succinct answers to questions that real users have, and should provide actual solutions to real problems that users have.
Helpful content should also have clarity. When writing pages, you should be clarifying what the focus of each page is; don’t stray into tangential areas that aren’t relevant to the topic at hand. Don’t waffle on for ages to pursue a “preferred word count” (which doesn’t exist and never has done). Helpful content should be clear, focused, and relevant to the user’s search.
Finally, you should broadly speaking be making your content as high-quality as possible. Try to include valuable, user-generated content on your pages that will help the reader, such as images and videos. Structure your content so that it is both informative, but easily digestible. Google hates auto generated content, so don’t write like a computer, write like a human being!
Is SEO changing forever?!
There are many SEOs out there who seem to think that this update will be a pivotal one, that we will look back on in the same way we do to the Panda update. That the Helpful Content update will signal an irrevocable change in the way we approach content and SEO. They could well be right. We could perhaps be seeing the first, big step towards making content writing purely about the content; instead of about how content ranks. Successful SEO in the coming years might be writing the richest, most engaging content possible, with the quality of the prose and the information itself being the absolute most valuable metrics.
For me personally, I see this update as a continuation of the last few years of updates provided by Google. If you’ve been following the updates at all, you will be well aware that Google hates how spammy and unhelpful a lot of the ranking content has become, providing no real value to the actual users. You should already be trying to write unique, engaging, and informative content for your site, as this is very clearly what Google has been wanting for years now. The sites most likely to be caught out by these changes, will in my opinion, be the ones using severely outdated tactics and pumping out awful content on a daily basis. This could well be the update that pushes this preferred approach into the mainstream, however, so it is an exciting time to be in SEO!
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