What is the Helpful Content Update?
This week, Google began rolling out an update to its algorithm that is one of the largest in 10 years.
A newly released update called ‘Helpful Content Update’ filters out websites with a high amount of unsatisfactory, irrelevant, or unhelpful content. Starting on August 25th, the new algorithm should be rolled out over the next two weeks.
According to Google, this is part of an ongoing effort to eliminate low-quality content and increase the quality of search results.
This will allow searchers to locate “high-quality” pages more easily and reduce the presence of unhelpful pages on the web. The purpose is to reward those marketers who use white hat SEO tactics (those who build websites and produce content that is geared towards gaining organic traffic) and punish marketers who use black hat SEO (using trickery or violating terms of service to increase a page’s rank).
Creating branded, consumer-friendly content that is SEO-friendly has been Coalition’s copy optimization philosophy for a long time.
The algorithms like this have provided great benefits for our SEO clients over the past 10+ years! Our expertise as a result allows us to provide commentary on what we expect to happen as a result of this update, and how we can improve your site in case of a negative outcome.
Why has Google updated its Helpful Content feature?
A helpful content update from Google will be applied sitewide, unlike most algorithms that are applied page-by-page. Google will affect the whole site, not just specific pages (URLs) if it determines that your site has a substantial amount of unhelpful content.
Is there a specific industry targeted by the algorithm update?
There is no specific niche targeted by this update, but Google says the following content may be most affected:
- A variety of online educational resources
- Entertainment and arts
- Making purchases
- Related to technology
The reason why? Visitors and viewers are generally more influential than actual engaged consumers for these types of sites. They are less reliant on actual consumers for meaningful content and site experiences, since they generate most of their revenue from affiliate revenue and advertising.
The following are some unethical practices that are often repeated on these websites:
- Copying from other sites on a large scale,
- Editorial practices are not meaningful.
- Writing SEO copy that is overly keyword-optimized
- The proportion of original content to duplicate content is unbalanced.
Do you know how to avoid penalties on your website?
Google’s new update clearly penalizes websites that do not protect themselves. The following points should be considered while writing the content:
- The first thing to remember is to write for the users, not for the search engines.
- Content should not be written with the intention of ranking in search results.
- Automating content generation on different topics isn’t necessary with plugins.
- Not adding your personal touch to the same content.
- The word count of Google’s preferred content shouldn’t be the focus of your writing.
If the helpful content update algorithm penalizes some sections of the website, it will impact the entire website. As your website does not provide useful information, it will also lower its ranking in the search engine results. Although your content is an important component, the main objective is to increase rankings. Your content will determine all of this, so you have to make sure it’s good. Additionally, your article should provide visitors with answers to their questions.
Final thoughts
Google Helpful Content Update 2022 was described in this article. You should never use duplicate content as it will not work for your business due to this update. A key feature of Google AI is its ability to recognize spamming activities quickly. Additionally, it’s main purpose is to provide helpful information to all its users, not to please search engines. Hence, by knowing this update, you should strive to provide all users with authentic information that will enhance their knowledge.
