Google Helpful Content Update: Things to Know & Actions
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 6:47 am
While we were saying create important, quality and useful pages for users, Google announced that it made an update on this very subject. In this article, I will try to tell you the details about the update, which is still very new. I will try to update it whenever I have the opportunity throughout the process.
Google announced last week that its algorithm update, called the “helpful content update,” will be rolled out globally to the English-language SERP this week:
What is Helpful Content Update?
Helpful content update is an update that reduces Google's performance by removing content that is not helpful to people or does not provide accurate information and is written for ranking purposes.
If your site is classified as “useless” because it has low value added content after the algorithm change, Google may see your site as useless and lower your rankings. To explain with a simple example, if 20% of your site consists of high quality content and 80% consists of low quality content, your entire site may be classified as useless.
Distorted media has been previously addressed in Google News & Discovery policies . These kinds of details are now becoming more important:
Helpful Content Update Suggestions
In order not to be negatively affected by the update, there are some questions that you should ask yourself, as suggested by Google. I wanted to explain them with examples:
Does your site have a main purpose or focus?
It’s helpful to clearly state your expertise and main service. For example, if your site’s main focus and target audience is “bicycle selection,” you need to show that. Here’s an example of a site that explains how they test the best bikes:
You can easily see that the main topic of the site is reviews of certain categories:
Is it clear what the purpose or focus of each page is? Is it to help people?
You can think of it as a continuation of the above article. You overseas chinese in worldwide data can specify the user's main request in detail without overwhelming them with unnecessary content:
For another example, let’s look at the query “mortgage calculator”. If you write 2000 words of content for this query and don’t provide a calculation tool at the end, you may not be able to fully capture the focus. Therefore, helping people should be your main goal beyond SEO:
Does your content clearly demonstrate your expertise and depth of knowledge in a professional manner?
You can see this in the example below. The user can see all the details before starting to read the article: ( You can read the EAT article.)
Information and expertise should not be limited to health & beauty related sites. For example, if you have a travel blog, using photos of people traveling to relevant places instead of using stock images may be seen as more valuable by Google:
-Do you have a target audience that would find your content useful?
Many people interested in SEO find the content produced by companies like Ahrefs useful and apply it to their sites. You can create content plans that will not miss the target audience and will make them find your site or a product you produce useful:
Will someone reading your content feel like they had a satisfying experience?
If you have a page that reviews products, you can create your content with the idea of “what details would I like to read about this product?” It is important not to think of the content structure as just plain text, for example, you can also clearly show its advantages or disadvantages:
Do you leave your visitors feeling like they learned enough from your site to help them get what they want after reading the content?
You can ensure that the content you produce for your target audience is the best and most comprehensive in its field. They should get the most detail and expert information from your site. In this way, they should be able to find the information they are looking for from your site without going to other sites. In this way, their trust in your brand will also increase.
The table above shows me, as a visitor, the club coefficients of the teams in Turkey. I can also learn the details of this scoring system without going to another site:
Does your content answer a question that doesn't actually have an answer, like suggesting a release date for a product, movie, or TV show that doesn't yet have a clear release date?
For example, when the new version of the “iPhone” will be released is a question asked every season. In a search like “iPhone 15”, stating when the product will be released in the page title but not providing clear information about this issue or giving the wrong date can harm your SEO efforts:
Do you produce content without focusing on word count?
If you’re writing with a specific word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count, you should stop doing that immediately. Just write enough content to meet the queries users are looking for.
Google announced last week that its algorithm update, called the “helpful content update,” will be rolled out globally to the English-language SERP this week:
What is Helpful Content Update?
Helpful content update is an update that reduces Google's performance by removing content that is not helpful to people or does not provide accurate information and is written for ranking purposes.
If your site is classified as “useless” because it has low value added content after the algorithm change, Google may see your site as useless and lower your rankings. To explain with a simple example, if 20% of your site consists of high quality content and 80% consists of low quality content, your entire site may be classified as useless.
Distorted media has been previously addressed in Google News & Discovery policies . These kinds of details are now becoming more important:
Helpful Content Update Suggestions
In order not to be negatively affected by the update, there are some questions that you should ask yourself, as suggested by Google. I wanted to explain them with examples:
Does your site have a main purpose or focus?
It’s helpful to clearly state your expertise and main service. For example, if your site’s main focus and target audience is “bicycle selection,” you need to show that. Here’s an example of a site that explains how they test the best bikes:
You can easily see that the main topic of the site is reviews of certain categories:
Is it clear what the purpose or focus of each page is? Is it to help people?
You can think of it as a continuation of the above article. You overseas chinese in worldwide data can specify the user's main request in detail without overwhelming them with unnecessary content:
For another example, let’s look at the query “mortgage calculator”. If you write 2000 words of content for this query and don’t provide a calculation tool at the end, you may not be able to fully capture the focus. Therefore, helping people should be your main goal beyond SEO:
Does your content clearly demonstrate your expertise and depth of knowledge in a professional manner?
You can see this in the example below. The user can see all the details before starting to read the article: ( You can read the EAT article.)
Information and expertise should not be limited to health & beauty related sites. For example, if you have a travel blog, using photos of people traveling to relevant places instead of using stock images may be seen as more valuable by Google:
-Do you have a target audience that would find your content useful?
Many people interested in SEO find the content produced by companies like Ahrefs useful and apply it to their sites. You can create content plans that will not miss the target audience and will make them find your site or a product you produce useful:
Will someone reading your content feel like they had a satisfying experience?
If you have a page that reviews products, you can create your content with the idea of “what details would I like to read about this product?” It is important not to think of the content structure as just plain text, for example, you can also clearly show its advantages or disadvantages:
Do you leave your visitors feeling like they learned enough from your site to help them get what they want after reading the content?
You can ensure that the content you produce for your target audience is the best and most comprehensive in its field. They should get the most detail and expert information from your site. In this way, they should be able to find the information they are looking for from your site without going to other sites. In this way, their trust in your brand will also increase.
The table above shows me, as a visitor, the club coefficients of the teams in Turkey. I can also learn the details of this scoring system without going to another site:
Does your content answer a question that doesn't actually have an answer, like suggesting a release date for a product, movie, or TV show that doesn't yet have a clear release date?
For example, when the new version of the “iPhone” will be released is a question asked every season. In a search like “iPhone 15”, stating when the product will be released in the page title but not providing clear information about this issue or giving the wrong date can harm your SEO efforts:
Do you produce content without focusing on word count?
If you’re writing with a specific word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count, you should stop doing that immediately. Just write enough content to meet the queries users are looking for.