How Helpful is the Helpful Content Update?
Hey there!
Google has begun to attempt to answer the question “what makes content helpful?”. Google’s latest algorithm update Helpful Content will now begin weeding out content written only for bots and not for humans, coining the expression “content written by people for people.”
The new Helpful Content Algorithm sorts through “unhelpful” content, with a goal to ultimately cater to a better user experience, and provide better search results.?
The Helpful Content update officially started rolling out on August 25th but the impacts have been slow. A majority of users have not noticed any significant impact to their rank score in the first few weeks. However, John Mueller noted that the rollout needs more time and even a few weeks after the initial rollout, users won’t start seeing any effects until the rollout is complete.
Danny Sulivan also added "updates don't necessarily mean a big giant shift. If you have good content, you're generally fine." "Those who have content with issues, there can be reasons why they might not want to be particularly vocal about a change.”
What does this mean??
According to John Mueller, this is a long term strategy for Google to begin to sort through all the junk online.?
The Helpful Content algorithm constantly runs in the background, so it will visit and be re-visiting sites to ensure that their content stays in good standings. After crawling your website, Google assigns scores to your content for helpfulness and is using a validation period to attempt to verify its intention and integrity. This means over the course of months, Google will return to re-evaluate your content, ensuring you are staying consistent in creating content that is of quality.?
For content writers this means planning content and weighing it first for helpfulness and authenticity. Asking yourself some of Google’s questions will have to become a new part of your writing strategy.?
What is Google’s goal with the Helpful Content update?
Goal: To clean sites of un-helpful content and eliminate content that was only created to rank well in the search engine. Google aims to deliver a better user experience by delivering more helpful content to the end user.?
Target: English content globally?
Impact: Google says the number of sites that will be impacted by this update are “meaningful” but will mainly target online-educational materials, entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content (as they anticipate that most unhelpful content online fall into these categories)
Penalty: Google has not mentioned any penalties just yet?
Weighted Measure: This is a sitewide algorithm and weighs your site as a whole, not by individual pages, and is constantly running in the background?
If your site is hit by this algorithm update, you may want to have a look at how you can refresh your content from your unique perspective and add more value to the end user. Google wants people to consider their new algorithm when creating content. Ask yourself, are people walking away from your site with the answers? Is your content unique or just a regurgitation of someone else's content??
This new update ensures that Google stays at the forefront of search and has SEO’s and writers updating their own strategies.?
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Take care,
Jesse Ringer
Founder
Community Reactions to the Helpful Content Update
Googles ‘Helpful Content Update’ - SEO-pocalypse or business as usual? (via performanceie)
Danny Sullivan: Google Helpful Content Update Is Big But Not A Huge Shake-Up (via SEOroundtable)
Google Helpful Content Update Review (via SEObook)
Google Helpful Content Update Advice ?(via SEOroundtable)
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