15/02/2023 • Alex Gower
Google Helpful Content Update
SEO Article
Big changes are coming to the world of SEO.
Google has created a list of questions to consider for all website owners. They will determine whether sites have been designed to help people, or created to rank well on search engines.
If your efforts have been put into ranking over creating content for people to benefit from, then you could be hit with a sitewide signal that makes it very difficult to rank. It is still yet to be seen how powerful this will be.
When it comes to the content you have created and will be creating, there are a few things that will help you out.
- Creating people first content.
- Content that is useful to the user, relevant and serves a purpose.
- Show a depth of knowledge.
- The reader has felt like they have learnt something.
A nice easy list right?
There is then also the things not to do-
- Not have content that is written just for high volume keywords.
- If you are promising an answer but it's not there.
- Just trying to rank well.
One thing to think of is, this update is sitewide. So if google finds a couple of pieces of low value content, they could go after the whole site.
What are our SEO team’s thoughts?
Google is continuing to focus on providing high quality content for the users and a better user experience overall. Most of the algorithm updates over the past couple of years have been moving towards improving UX and making sure that they can provide the best result for the user through the use of improved language processing (E.G. BERT & LaMDA2). This update is another iteration of this and looks to seek out any sites taking shortcuts by marginally reworking content from websites ranking well to piggy-back off their success.
The story is the same as it has been for a while now, focusing on providing quality content for users which accurately answers their query. We can take guidance from content which already ranks well but this by no way means we should be copying or imitating it, we should instead try to provide the best answer and experience.
This will also mean being more selective over our keyword targeting and ensuring we capture the users intent perfectly, rather than targeting related keywords because they have the largest search volume and are loosely related. This approach will essentially mean a ‘consumer first’ approach which Google is pushing for.
Google's AI is becoming more and more advanced, it can understand large passages of text and context between the words, meaning they are getting better at spotting duplication and plagiarisation. This means when creating or refreshing content, you have to have a clear target audience and provide an authentic point of view that adds value to the users intent to ensure you provide the best result.
What are your thoughts? Are you starting to make changes now?
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