Many are aware of how sophisticated Google’s search algorithm is and how important it is for it to continue to improve to provide users with the best results for their searches. Keeping up with Google’s ever-changing search algorithm is an extremely important part of SEO. With thousands of algorithm updates occurring each year, ensuring that your website complies with Google’s current guidelines isn’t always easy. Many updates go unnoticed and don’t majorly affect your rankings, but this isn’t always the case.
Various algorithm updates over the years have significantly affected websites, such as the Panda update, which targeted low-quality sites, and the Medic update, which targeted Your Money or Your Life websites. Google has made it clear over the years that its number one priority is to give users the best quality results in the SERPs. Google recently announced one of its latest algorithm updates, the Helpful Content update, which aims to help push content that’s actually beneficial for users.
What Will the Helpful Content Update Do?
Millions of blog posts are posted every day. With so much content being created, you might wonder how much of it is actually necessary. Many have searched for something online, only to get results that don’t actually provide any important information. In other cases, you might get multiple results that all repeat the same information with nothing unique to offer.
A lot of the content out there doesn’t provide much value to people. Rather, it’s written to appeal to search engines. While Google’s algorithm is tailored to help provide the most relevant, high-quality results to users, content that isn’t written with people in mind still gets through. The Helpful Content update is exactly as it sounds, an update that seeks to reward helpful content written for people.
However, this doesn’t mean using SEO best practices will hurt you. You can still optimize your content without it losing its value to people. Those publishing content that is only intended to rank well without giving users anything beneficial are the websites likely to feel the effects of this update. This update won’t only affect individual pieces of unhelpful content, but websites with large amounts of unhelpful content.
When Will the Helpful Content Update Go Into Effect?
Google announced that the Helpful Content update will be rolled out sometime this week, which can then take two weeks. This will be one of many signals used for ranking websites. Sites that are found to have unhelpful content do have the chance to remove this content to help improve their rankings, which can take several months.
How to Create People-First Content
Quality content means much more than ensuring proper grammar, although that is important. The people-first content Google is looking for should check many different boxes. In most cases, it shouldn’t be too difficult to determine if your content will perform well under the Helpful Content update. You should be able to read your own content and decide for yourself if there’s any reason someone would want to read it and if they would get anything out of doing so.
First, consider who you’re actually producing content for. If you’re not creating it to give value to individuals but to have it perform well in the SERPs, there’s not much reason for you to have it on your website. You should also consider the content creator and how much valuable information they can provide. If the content is produced by someone only just learning about a topic and can’t explain much, instead only repeating what others have already said, it likely won’t be seen as being very helpful. Additionally, if your content leaves most people turning to other sources to answer their original query, you should consider what your content is really trying to achieve.
If you review the content you’ve already published and find that some of it can be seen as low-value and unhelpful in Google’s eyes, it would be best for your other content to remove it.
Ensure Quality Content with ENX2 Marketing
Many think that navigating Google’s search algorithm and its many updates is impossible. However, creating high-quality doesn’t have to be as difficult as it may seem. At ENX2 Marketing, we know what people want to get out of the content they consume and that their experience is the most important thing.
Contact us to learn more about our digital marketing services.