What Do You Think of Google's Helpful Content Update?

byEncourager1

5.5K followers

2 years ago

I'm curious to see what you all think of the latest update from Google called the Helpful Content Update.

Google started rolling this update out about a week ago. The update is said to focus on websites that are producing content for search engines and not humans. So any articles or websites that are not structuring their websites in a people-friendly way they are going to start unranking these types of websites.

Google also stated that they will look at your entire site and if the majority of the articles are not people-friendly your whole website could be affected by the update until you prove that you are producing content that is for human consumption first and not just to appease the search engines.

Google's Helpful Content Update

Here are some questions that Google says you should ask yourself when writing content. If you answer yes to most of these questions then Google says you are probably on the right track with your content.

• Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
• Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
• Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
• After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
• Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience?
• Are you keeping in mind our guidance for core updates and for product reviews?

If you answer yes to the following set of questions you should rethink your content creation strategy.

• 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 trending 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? (No, we don't).
• 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?

Will This Update Weed Out The Competition?

I believe this update will weed out a lot of competition in a number of niches which is good news for us. Because we are taught here at WA to produce content that is helpful for people reading our content and not just to satisfy the search engines. This update will penalize any sites doing black hat marketing or trying to game the system so to speak.

I think in the end it will work to benefit everyone who searches the internet for information and will benefit us as affiliate marketers and content creators because it will limit the competition that is out there.

Basically, Google is looking for more genuine content that is helpful for the end user. I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are about the helpful content update and if you have been affected by it in any way?

Here's a link to what Google had to say about this update:

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-co...