Google’s Helpful Content Update For Content Creators

On 18th August 2022, Google Search Central announced that it will soon launch its newest search engine update, “helpful content update”. This update was necessary to ensure that content creators focus more on building content relevant and useful to users instead of search engines.

Tweet Link: Google Helpful Content Update

Google Search Central blog also offers some insights into the ‘Helpful Content Update’ for the Google search engine. Instead of simply elaborating on the decision, Google has offered guidelines that you can use to create content that your website visitors will find useful.

• Will your target audience find the content useful?
• Would it answer their question in the same way if they were to come directly to you?
• Does the content published on your website demonstrate expertise and in-depth knowledge of the subject?

For example, Niche Site Lady, a Twitter user, commented on Google’s helpful content update tweet announcement.

Consider Travel Bloggers that write content about places they have never been, when they should be actually travelling to those places and then sharing their personal experiences.

Because that is what the readers or viewers expect. They aren’t interested in the information already on the internet. The users are looking for the traveller’s experience in a foreign place. It helps some of them prepare for their trips.

As an SEO agency in Mumbai, we always ponder upon whether or not after reading the content on a website, the user has learned something new to achieve its objective. If not, then the content isn’t relevant to the person’s search intent, or maybe it is shorter than the reader expected and not a comprehensive solution the reader is looking for.

To achieve this goal with your content, the question you have to ask is: Will the reader leave your site with a satisfying experience after reading the content?

Since we have already discussed a few guidelines that can prove helpful in creating people-focused content, let’s talk about steps you can take to avoid creating content purely for ranking on search engines:

• Avoid creating content that’s not relevant to your niche. When people don’t see instant results, they often try to produce content on different topics in the hopes that their content might perform well on the search engine. When Google’s helpful content update is rolled out, this has little chance of working.
• Cutback on or completely avoid content automation.
• Write about content that your audience will find helpful instead of focusing on content that’s trending right now.
• Avoid getting into a niche where you have zero expertise. Your content will underperform if it doesn’t add any value.

Aleyda Solis, an expert SEO consultant, has shared a checklist that you could use to determine the usefulness of content both existing and new.

In addition, Google recommends that the content adheres to its webmaster guidelines as well, which has always been focused on delivering useful results.

Google’s helpful content update was supposed to have come out by the 21st of August. But as you can see from Barry Schwartz’s tweet, so far, no announcement has been made.

We’ll wait and see how severely the latest update impacts the search results.