Google’s Helpful Content Update: Guide for Creators in 2023

About Google’s Helpful Content Update

Google released its new update, a helpful content update on August 25, 2022, for English-language content. The rollout was complete as of September 9, 2022.

The new Google Helpful Content Update has started rolling out and will be completed in the next few weeks. Now Helpful Content Update will consider as a new ranking factor among many other signals for ranking web pages. 

With machine learning tools, Google will automatically identify and start taking down all non-helpful pages, low-quality content, thin web pages, or any other malicious content that is not helpful for the searchers. 

Google’s new helpful content update specifically targets all the content that has been created for search engines rather than help or educate people. 

The sole purpose of Google’s new algorithm update is to provide searchers best quality content and reward those web pages that primarily try to educate or help the audience first rather than just writing to impress search engine bots. 

How Google Helpful Content Update Works

Unlike the recent product review update, which targets specific kinds of pages, the helpful content update is sitewide. That means it has the potential to impact all pages.

Hence unhelpful content will perform very less or these worthless pages may not perform at all on SERPs. In such cases, Google machines will find better helpful content pages to display to their users. 

Removing all unhelpful content pages from the Search is the primary task of Google’s new algorithm update. 

Other Notes About Google’s Helpful Content Update

Lastly, here are some final notes about the helpful content update:

• This update will not be done manually. The whole process is automated using a machine-learning model. The algorithm’s quality should enhance with the advancement in automation and Google engineers tweaking and improving, the overall algorithms on a regular basis. 
• Even if your website has much unhelpful content but still People-first content can rank on Search.
• Since the impact is sitewide therefore some sites may get hit harder than others.
• Initially, only English searches will be impacted. Google has plans to expand to other languages in the future. 
• Google’s helpful content update will target Search-only right now Google told us this update targets only Google search right now. However, Google may look to cover additional products such as Google Discover in the coming months. 
• Google said that new results will be validated with its Quality raters so that Google’s search quality can be improved. These quality raters do not directly influence the rankings but it will help Google search engineers to see whether the algorithms are making improvements to the overall search quality or not.

What types of content will the helpful content update impact?

Though it does specify any niche as per Google, online educational blogs, reports, tech-related content, shopping, art, and entertainment will be impacted by the helpful content updates. 

How to Deal with Helpful Content Update

You have to understand that helpful content update is here to reward the informational content and penalize the unuseful pages. 

So if your website has helpful content then you will see traffic growth and if your website has much unhelpful content then you will see huge traffic loss. 

So the basic question some will have is how can we deal with Google’s new helpful content update? 

First of all, this update will take a few weeks to apply to your sites. So if you have unhelpful content on your site, start removing all unhelpful web pages now otherwise you may notice a stronger effect. 

Like many other Google updates, with the helpful content update, websites are seeing spikes in their traffic and ranking. So, for some sites, it is the most exciting update and for some it is disastrous.  

In this guide, we have explained what creators should know about Google’s helpful content update and how it will change the approach of bloggers and content creators. You will also learn how Google’s new helpful content update will transform the website’s SEO, ranking, and traffic on SERPs. 

Focus on People-First Content

As the name suggests, your content should focus on humans first because helpful content updates primarily reward those content creators whose blogs/articles are meeting the visitors’ expectations. And if any piece of information is not useful to the respective readers, it won’t perform on SERP. 

So, the new Google algorithm update will change the approach of all content creators. Now, you can not rank on Search just by writing SEO-friendly content. Now, if you are writing only to impress search engine bots by tricking them, you are just wasting your time. 

If you really want to beat this update, start creating super information and comprehensive content so that it can satisfy searchers’ needs. 

Google Helpful Content Update Advice regarding People First Content

The best way to beat this update is to strictly follow the guidelines of Google. If you are creating in-depth and satisfying content while utilizing best SEO practices then you need not worry about this update. 

Google has released some set of questions that you asked yourself and if your answer to these questions is YES, then you are in the right direction with the people-first approach to creating content. 

Q.1: 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?

Q.2: 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)?

Q.3: Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?

Q.4: After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?

Q.5: Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

Q.6: Are you keeping in mind our guidance for core updates and for product reviews?

Do not Ignore Content Creation for Search Engines

As a content creator, you must be aware that creating content is not just enough. There are billions of pages on the web and you need to give equal importance to the complete SEO checklist as well. 

Like the people-first content approach, Google released some sets of questions for search engines as well. And again if your answer to those below-mentioned questions is YES, then you need not worry. And if the answer is no, then you should start reevaluating your content across the website. 

Google Helpful Content Update Advice Regarding Search Engines

Here is the set of questions that Google has released for you;

Q.1: Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?

Q.2: Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?

Q.3: Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?

Q.4: Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?

Q.5: Are you writing about things simply because they seem to trend and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?

Q.6: Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?

Q.7: 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). 

Q.8: Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic? 

Q.9: 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?

As of now, you must have understood that you need to create content the way you want to see it on SERPs.

Conclusion on Helpful Content Update 

To beat helpful content update by Google, do provide sufficient answers to searchers’ questions. After reading your content, searchers should feel they have learned enough about that topic.

Also you should keep in mind the overall user experience. After landing your informational web page, they should satisfy.

While creating the content, always keep Google’s content guidelines in your mind including product review updates.

As I always say, Google will keep updating its algorithm to make searchers’ life better. So, this update will not be the only helpful content update Google releases. Google explicitly states, “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.”

FAQs on Google’s Helpful Content Update 2023