New at Google: the company releases this week the Helpful Content Update, which aims to penalize in search results all content considered useless and of little value to users. Here's everything you need to know about it.
It has probably happened to you, too, to visit a web page hoping to find all the answers to what you were looking for and instead be disappointed...
Often the search results do not live up to your expectations: the content either lacks the information you need or is difficult to approach because of the myriad pop up ads and ads that appear between paragraphs.
In fact, many topics are targeted by creator and agencies to write super-optimized SEO content at the expense of readability and user experience.
This is the case when the page in question was created more to attract clicks than to inform readers.
Then again, the challenge to greater visibility (which leads to greater earnings) is one that all digital marketers face on a daily basis-but the use of certain shortcuts makes certain products really low value.
Now, don't get me wrong: optimizing content is not the worst evil in the world!
In fact, not doing so is a real shame when you have valuable information to share with the Web community.
Only there is a difference between doing it with the intent of being able to be more easily reached by your target audience and instead disseminating mediocre content on a large scale just to "game" the system and have it won.
Do you agree?
Google's move: here comes the Helpful Content Update
So here is where Google itself decided to take action to improve the user experience in this regard and make sure that the pages shown are as useful and relevant as possible.
How?
With a new algorithm update, which is intended to limit the appearance of low-quality and low authoritative content in organic search. Content that, so to speak, does not "help" people solve their problems or answer their questions.
It is called Helpful Content Update and, after being announced last week, is about to be implemented these very days.
The goal is to ensure the best possible blend of text, images, and video as part of a broader effort to always offer original and truly useful content written by people e for people.
At the moment it will affect only English-language SERPs, but soon it will be extended to all languages-so yes, it will be our turn.
Quite a change even 'round with no small impact: so here are all the most important things you need to know about it.
What is Google's Helpful Content Update?
Those who deal every day with web marketing knows, Google periodically implements updates that go on to impact page rankings in search results.
It had already happened in 2012 with Panda Update, an algorithm intended to exclude from searches all those sites with low quality content aimed at making money through clicks on ads.
So here it is that on August 18, the Mountain View company's engineers announced another significant update, named Helpful Content Update.
As I told you, it essentially aims to reward those who publish original content for readers: in practice, it will allow Google to distinguish content written primarily to index itself in search engines from content that is actually useful and authentic.
The update will begin rolling out this very week, for English searches first and then globally, but will take up to two weeks to be fully implemented.
So what does it involve?
Reading between the lines, with the Helpful Content Update Google aims to penalize those Web sites that host relatively large amounts of unsatisfactory or useless content created primarily for search engine rankings: in a nutshell, all those pages that are over-optimized from an SEO perspective, but poor in value, they will be overshadowed in results and lose positions.
The update "will help ensure that unoriginal, low-quality content does not rank high in search," Google said. For example, pages that simply channel content from other sources without providing any value or unique insights.
The purpose, accordingly, is to help users find answers to their questions that are of quality and value, written with the sincere intent to Inform and support them.
How does the Helpful Content Update work?
As I mentioned, the update will begin to be rolled out this week.
And what will happen?
That any content on sites that contain a certain amount of non-useful content will be less likely to index well in search.
I'll elaborate right away.
The main feature of the Helpful Content Update is that, unlike other page-by-page applications, this will be extended to all the website.
This means that if Google decides that your site is producing a relatively large amount of useless content, written primarily for search ranking, the entire site will be negatively affected (so not just individual pages or sections of it).
And so no, you can't even move content to a subfolder or subdomain-the only thing you can do is delete or enhance what appears to be poor quality.
Google does not say exactly what percentage of pages must be useful and not useful to trigger this classification; it certainly does lead you to do some sort of "soul-searching" about it.
At the same time, it is obvious that if you have valuable content, removing mediocre content will leave them more room in the results.
But how does Google act?
Basically, it is an automated process that regularly evaluates content, scoring it.
But that doesn't mean that if you fix them today, your site will bounce back tomorrow: there is a validation period, a waiting period, that allows Google to trust that you will constantly work on improving them. Google needs you to demonstrate over several months -- yes, several months -- that they are actually useful in the long run.
This algorithm will run automatically; scores will continue to update continuously.
Regarding the impact it will have on the dynamics of the web, the Helpful Content Update will certainly be "significant": although it does not target any specific niche, there are some categories that may be most affected by the new ways of evaluation for ranking purposes.
Indeed, there are certain types of content that seem to be affected more than others based on their testing (at least for now), namely online educational materials (such as guides and tutorials), arts and entertainment, shopping, and technology.
The idea is that there may be more low-quality "useless content" being hit in these niche areas than in others.
Conclusion
Why is Google releasing the Helpful Content Update?
Well, because he did some research and based on user feedback, it seems that many of them are not too happy with what they find through the search engine.
This then is the answer to improving service quality problems.
It's clear that the Helpful Content Update could shake up the SEO world dramatically: it has the potential to be devastating for sites that create content primarily for organic traffic, while also rewarding those geared toward truly helping people.
The goal of any creator should indeed be one and only one: to focus on satisfactory topics, using the best SEO activities to bring added value to users. They should clearly demonstrate in-depth, first-hand expertise as an authoritative expert on the topic being addressed.
As you know, I have always been a proponent of theauthority And this is a demonstration of its importance!
And, not surprisingly, it has already been a few years since I advocated in my bestseller That SEO was dead...
However, if you are now wondering how to take concrete action to cope with this change, don't miss the next article, where you will find some super interesting information.
In the meantime, I hope this has shed some light on the matter and if you have any doubts write them in the comments - I'll be ready to answer them!