Google Helpful Content Update: What is it all about?
Google recently made more updates to the way they determine where your website will appear in their search rankings. Or, in fact, if you will appear in them at all!
This isn’t something particularly unusual as Google makes regular changes although they don’t usually publicise them. It makes as many as 9 per day on average over the course of a year.
So when they do talk about it, the search community tends to take note. The last time something similar happened was in June 2021.
In this article, we are going to look at how these changes could impact where your website appears in search results and give some advice on what you can do to rank as highly as possible.
What’s new with this latest update?
Google has called this update the Helpful Content Update (HCU).
The name gives a bit of a heads-up as to what it’s all about.
What does that name, Helpful Content Update, mean?
Google has often given their updates names such as Hummingbird, Panda and Penguin. While we know people love cute animals on the internet, these don’t really give much away in terms of what the changes mean to you. But with this update, the name follows a similar style to recent ones like ‘Page Experience’ and ‘Mobile Friendly’. These new names may be designed to make Google appear more helpful. But there may be more to it.
Not only did it give the update an easy-to-understand name, but it also changed its approach to announcing it.
The change was announced well before it was rolled out.
Google published guidance to help the search engine optimisation (SEO) industry.
It made use of influencers who received advance notice of the changes.
This final point can be a useful marketing tool you can use yourself to get the message out if you’ve an important announcement or product launch coming up.
In a change to its usual very secretive way of working, this time around Google seems to have been keen to let everyone know about its new system.
Possibly this was to get the message out beyond the SEO community so that it resonated with website owners who actually produce content. This means you and by reading this they’ve succeeded.
What is the Helpful Content Update all about?
Well, what could be better than Google’s own description?
“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.”
So you might ask, how on earth does Google know if someone has had a satisfying experience?
Well, it bases it on user signals such as
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Bounce Rate
- Dwell Time
- Pogo Sticking
In addition, its Core Web Vitals data helps it make an educated guess.
So it isn’t that much of a change from previous ways Google ranked a site, but maybe it is just better prepared.
What else has Google said about the Helpful Content Update?
Google will now rank content written for humans more highly than content written for search engine bots. This is to encourage website owners to focus on content that will be helpful to real people and not just to written purely for search engines.
In response to the rise in popularity of services such as Jasper and Ryte, it also prioritises content written by human beings rather than AI.
How much impact has the HCU had up to now?
Well, to be fair, it hasn’t had a huge impact. Most feedback would suggest that the changes haven’t been as disruptive as previous ones. But this does depend on your website and the market it serves.
Do I really need to be bothered by this update?
Ignore it at your peril. It’s still early days and the feedback above may change as time goes by.
Google has spoken openly about this update making up part of a much larger ongoing process. So there is definitely more to come. Once Google starts a process like this, it is unlikely to backtrack in any meaningful way. This focus on ‘user experience’ has been a key message for years.
The HEART framework is a methodology to improve the user experience (UX) and Google wants you to adhere to it. We won’t go too deeply into it, but it uses five key metrics.
- Happiness
- Engagement
- Adoption
- Retention
- Task Success
It’s important to remember that Google search users aren’t your customers. They are Google’s customers. And they want to keep their customers happy by returning search results which are relevant and trustworthy.
So aligning your objectives with Google’s is the foundation of success. How can I create more helpful content?
You’ll need to understand the people who visit your site. This will help you understand how they are likely to use search. In short, making sure users can easily do what they came to do.
Once you understand this, you need to analyse your business and its website and those of the competition.
Search for ways to satisfy your users better.
Do your current customers find your content useful?
Does your website have a primary purpose or focus?
Will someone be satisfied when they read your content?
Do your research
You will clearly know your business inside out and know what you offer. But does this align with how potential customers see your business?
Do you know
- How they found your site
- Why they chose to come to you
- What it is they are looking for
If you don’t, then put yourself in their shoes and get searching. In fact, even if you are happy you know this, it’s worth revisiting this process from time to time
Make searches in Google using keywords and phrases that you would like to rank for. What’s the intent here?
You can see this by looking at the results Google shows. Are they transactional or educational?
Do the search results feature mostly comparison and review pages, or are they educational eg with step-by-step guides on how to repair something. Whatever the results, your content should be aligned with this.
Take some time to carefully look at the top-performing websites from a search and see what it is they are addressing.
And don’t forget to check out ‘Related searches’ sections from the results for more ideas.
You should also test some of these keywords using the Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner. This gives in-depth information about the level of monthly searches, competitiveness, and comparative PPC cost for each of your keyword search terms.
From this, you can plan and prioritise where to focus your search effort. Tell your visitors what you’re going to do
As is the case with all marketing activity, you should aim to sell the next step.
What is it that has brought a visitor to a certain page on your website? Now that they are here, you need to reassure them that:
They’ve ended up in the right place, and
It’s worth staying
So use short phrases to explain what you’re going to talk about and why that might be useful. This approach helps to manage expectations which is a vital part of user satisfaction.
Tied in with this is that you should ‘Get to the point!’
Everyone has landed on a website where they have had to scroll forever through line after line of text trying to find what they came for. More often than not, the information you want is hidden within seo-centric garbage. Keep it simple
People read differently online. They quickly scan over text to get a general overview of the topic. The priority here is to make your content easy to read and understand – even if it is technical or complicated.
By using ‘plain English’ people will be better able to understand the information quickly.
Typically, users read less than 30% of a page, and the majority of this is in the top section and headings with their attention declining quickly as they move down the page. So it is a good idea to put the most important information in the top section and get your message across in the headings.
Here are some quick takeaways:
- Use simple language
- Keep sentences short
- Give your text room to breathe
- Use short paragraphs
- Break long passages of text up with images or video
- Avoid wide lines of text filling the width of the screen.
- Make use of lists
- Put the most important stuff first
It’s not just text – make use of media
We mentioned above how important it is to break up text-heavy pages with images or videos.
This is an ideal opportunity to add useful image, video or audio content to your site.
Images don’t just need to be photographs. You can use illustrations, infographics or icons.
And if you are adding photos, make sure the quality is decent. Smartphones may be fine for everyday use, but your products will sell better with images from a professional photographer.
Consider including some of the following :
- Photos
- Galleries
- Illustrations
- Videos
- Downloads
- Size guides
- How-to-guides
- Installation guides
- Testimonials
- Infographics
- Reviews
- Comparisons
- Before/After shots
Avoid artificial intelligence
If there’s one point to be taken from Google’s latest update, it’s ‘avoid using AI software’.
AI is very clever and has become very sophisticated, but if you really want to connect with people as human beings, then you need a human being to create the content. AI still cannot make that real emotional connection with your audience.
And remember Google can tell the difference! They’re using AI to flush out the AI here.
Keep ahead of the game
Whenever Google updates its algorithms, no one knows how search results will be affected. But at Small Business Marketing, we always write our content with a human focus.
Content written for our SEO packages is exactly the same. It’s people-first content, guided by SEO data and search trends. We don’t over-optimise or fill content full of spammy keywords.
The ultimate goal is to satisfy the needs of the person searching, to answer their questions, and give them a suitable answer whatever the subject.
We hope you have found this article helpful. If you need some help with your website or marketing, we are here to support you. And it’s not just with SEO, we offer a full range of design, web, print and signage solutions developed to grow your business whether it’s in Hull and East Yorkshire or further afield.
