Take note! Google’s Helpful Content Update is here, so you should learn about this new algorithm. After all, it will play an essential role in the visibility of your website.

The Google Helpful Content Update has been with us since August 25, 2022. Its goal is to ensure that content is created with users in mind and not search engines. It took two weeks to implement it fully.

Google Helpful Content Update: why you shouldn’t be afraid of it

Will SEO as we know it cease to exist? Will your business website lose the positioning that it cost you so much effort to achieve? The truth is that Google updates often give website owners unpleasant surprises.

The new Google update confirms what we already knew: quality should be your top priority when creating content. Thus, as experts on the subject, we suggest you remain calm since the lion is not as fierce as it initially appears.

Within the Google updates, Helpful Content does not bring anything new or truly revolutionary. However, it is a major update, but it will only harm websites that do not provide useful or human-written content.

What you should consider about this update

Many sites have used SEO methods to boost search rankings without providing helpful content to support that position. Others have already started flirting with AIs that create content automatically. Not to mention other types of content that contribute little or very little to the user.

Google’s Helpful Content Update aims to bring these types of content “creators” into line.

How does Google Helpful Content Update work?

One of the most relevant aspects of this new Google update is its site-wide nature. That is, it impacts the entire website. Consequently, if the algorithm considers that some of the content of a domain is not useful, it will affect the ranking of all the pages hosted on it.

As you may have already guessed, the site-wide perspective means that the useless parts of the website can affect the useful ones. Similarly, removing or improving poor-quality content will benefit the entire site (keep in mind that such recovery may take a few months).

What effect will this update have?

It is essential to clarify that Helpful Content can distinguish various degrees of usefulness or uselessness. Thus, the higher the degree of low-value content on your website, the more strongly this update will impact you. The important thing is that neatly meeting SEO criteria will no longer be able to save unhelpful content.

Helpful Content is just one of many indicators used by the search engine to determine the quality of a domain. Moreover, its criteria complement those introduced by other Google updates, without overlapping them in. 

What will be the scope of the Google Helpful Content Update?

At the moment, the update is affecting websites in English, but its progressive (and rapid) extension to other languages ​​is expected.

In principle, and as indicated by Google itself, the sites that will be most affected will be those of the following topics:

• Online training
• Art
• Shopping
• Technology
• Entertainment

What is considered useful content?

By now, you’ve probably got it: the new Google Update rewards content that is highly satisfying to users.

At first glance, the “usefulness” can be a bit subjective. Fortunately, in the Google help centre we can find guidelines to self-assess our website’s usefulness.

For more in-depth information, you can find Google’s article here.