Google's helpful content update

Google Search is always working to better connect people to helpful information. To this end, we're launching what we're calling the “helpful content update” that's part of a broader?effort?to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results. Below is more about the update and things creators should

This update will focus on 'Search intent' and make sure that unoriginal, low-quality and mirage content isn't able to rank higher.

The industries that will see the most results from this? online education, arts and entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content.

If your brands are a part of these industries, here is how you can leverage this update for better content results.

? Original content plays a big part here. Now "50 helpful statistics in E-commerce" headings won't be given much attention. If you're aggregating stats from different sources, you need to bring some context with it. Like" Explain how the reader can use the stat to tackle a problem.

? Have a new product? Brief your content writer on every aspect of it, and guide them in creating content pillars, and blog posts around it. Don't focus on SERPS, but on ICP s' questions.

? Focus more on brevity and cut down on fluff in articles. More info = more value for readers.

? Remember, quality content is the king. Don't just publish articles to fill the space, create content that has actionable tips, and quotes from experts.

? Do internal and external linking consciously, and create meta description, and metadata that shows the importance of your topic in very few words, but just enough to reel your reader in.

These are the few ways in which I intend to help my B2B SaaS clients!

If you're also a brand in marketing, e-commerce, SEO, and productivity DM or e-mail me with your requirements ??consider.

Focus on people-first content

The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they've had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn't meet a visitor's expectations won't perform as well.

How can you ensure you're creating content that will be successful with our new update? By following our?long-standing advice?and?guidelines?to create content for people, not for search engines. People-first content creators focus first on creating satisfying content, while also utilizing SEO best practices to bring searchers additional value. Answering yes to the questions below means you're probably on the right track with a people-first approach:

• Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if it 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?

Avoid creating content for search engines first

Our advice about having a people-first approach does not invalidate following SEO best practices, such as those covered in?Google's own SEO guide. SEO is a helpful activity when it's applied to people-first content. However, content created primarily for search engine traffic is strongly correlated with content that searchers find unsatisfying.

How do you avoid taking a search engine-first approach? Answering yes to some or all of the questions is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you're creating content across your site:

• 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 to trend 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?

How the update works

The update will start rolling out next week. We will post on our?Google ranking updates page?when it begins and when it is fully rolled out, which could take up to two weeks. This update introduces a new site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for ranking web pages. Our systems automatically identify content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches.

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 on the web that's better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.

A natural question some will have is how long will it take for a site to do better if it removes unhelpful content? Sites identified by this update may find the signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier for this update runs continuously, allowing it to monitor newly-launched sites and existing ones. As it determines that the unhelpful content has not returned in the long term, the classification will no longer apply.

This classifier process is entirely automated, using a machine-learning model. It is not a?manual action?nor a spam action. Instead, it's just a new signal and one of?many signals Google evaluates?to rank content.

This means that some people-first content on sites classified as having unhelpful content could still rank well if there are other signals identifying that people-first content as helpful and relevant to a query. The signal is also weighted; sites with lots of unhelpful content may notice a stronger effect. In any case, for the best success, be sure you've removed unhelpful content and are following all our?guidelines.

This update impacts English searches globally to begin with and we plan to expand to other languages in the future. Over the coming months, we will also continue refining how the classifier detects unhelpful content and launch further efforts to better reward people-first content.