The recently announced Google ‘Helpful Content’ algorithm update is set to have a big impact on marketing and SEO strategies on a level rarely seen before.
What Is The Helpful Content Update?
This update will see Google prioritising content that is deemed to be helpful, over content that is simply keyword rich. This means that Digital Marketers and SEO specialists will need to focus on creating truly helpful and informative content that helps searchers, rather than simply stuffing their articles full of keywords.
In addition to having a helpfulness ranking, the update will also favour articles that are well researched and well written, over those that are poorly put together. As a result, content creators need to up their game if they want their content to be seen by searchers on Google. Luckily, the same principles of creating quality content also happen to be good SEO practices anyway!
How Can You Avoid Being Penalised?
This update leans heavily into the classic marketing trope that content should meet one of four criteria. It should be entertaining, informative, educational or appeal to a reader’s emotions. Therefore by focusing your content on one of these criteria not only will you be able to create evergreen content that your audience wants to read but you will also be able to stay up-to-date and aligned with the latest updates.
Some examples of high-quality evergreen content that will be relevant for a long time to come are guides, how-tos, and other informative articles that answer specific questions for your audience. It’s also important to make sure that your content is well researched and free from errors. Google will be looking for signs that your content is trustworthy and useful, so it’s essential to get this right.
Another way to optimise your content for the Helpful Content update is to focus on delivering results. Your readers should be able to find the information they need quickly and easily, without having to wade through pages of irrelevant material. If you can deliver this, then you’re well on your way to success under the new Google update.
Should You Delete Historic Content?
In short, if you have a lot of content that has little value, adds little value to existing content or is just down-right unhelpful to searchers then removing this content could help your better content in rankings.
On its blog, Google’s announcement of the update also stated that;
“Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.”
Digital marketing and SEO are always evolving, and Google’s latest update is proof of that. The ‘Helpful Content’ algorithm update is designed to promote websites that provide useful, relevant information to users. As a result, it’s important to ensure that your website contains high-quality, informative content if you want to stay ahead of the competition.
This doesn’t mean that you need to completely overhaul your digital marketing strategy, but it’s worth taking the time to review your content and make sure that it’s up to scratch. If you can provide visitors with the information they’re looking for, you’ll be in a strong position to succeed in the new Google landscape.
