The second part of Google’s helpful content update is currently rolling out. And if your website was hit by its first update in August, there’s a chance you can see an improvement in your ranking after this December update. However, if not, you must revisit your SEO and content strategy to adapt to this new update.
What is the Helpful Content Update?
Before anything else, you need to understand what Google Helpful Content Update is about. According to Google, it is designed to better provide helpful information for search users. It is part of Google’s broad effort to deliver content results that are more original, relevant, and helpful content to users.
Google Helpful Content rewards content that is published and written by people for people by ranking them higher in search results.
So what changes will it bring to the search algorithm:
- The update brings a new site-wide signal to determine whether websites use helpful content.
- Google now considers AI-generated content spam and will use its machine learning algorithm to detect such content.
- Content that is made for ad monetization or clickbait won’t work anymore.
While Google didn’t confirm any manual penalties that websites may suffer if they are not using helpful content. These websites may start losing their organic visibility and drop in Google’s SERP.
How to Adapt to Google’s Helpful Content Update
If you’ve experienced a significant loss in organic traffic, you may be affected by the helpful content update. But you don’t need to panic right away because there are several things you can do to recover and adapt to this new update. To help you with it, here are three tips on how to help you recover from Google’s helpful content update:
Tip 1 – Stick to your niche and expertise.
While it may be tempting to write content for almost any topic to create more opportunities and capitalize on high-volume keywords. This isn’t exactly what you should do if you want your website to meet the requirements of the new update.
Remember that if you create content outside your niche, you won’t have enough knowledge to provide value to search users. On top of that, website visitors may become confused if they have any content on your website that isn’t related to your products, services, or industry.
Google recommends that publishers stick to their niche and main topic. As an expert, you can provide genuine, relevant, and valuable information to your website visitors.
Tip 2 – Write content to give sufficient answers to your audience’s questions.
Part of the helpful content update is to show websites that teach people something they want to know. So when you write your content for your target audience, you should give them sufficient answers for what they’re searching for.
Your content should be able to help users find the solution to the problem that led them to look for Google in search of answers.
To start, understand your audience. What are the usual problems they encounter that are related to your industry? What are the solutions they need to fix these problems? What information or solutions are they searching for when they go to Google?
Once you know exactly what information your audience is looking for, you can create content that gives them all the information they need.
Tip 3 – Don’t write content for search engines.
Stop writing content for the sake of ranking on top of Google’s search results. This is perhaps the most important thing you need to consider if you want to adapt to Google’s helpful content update.
While it is still important to follow the best practices for search engine optimization when creating content. You need to shift your focus to writing content specifically designed for humans instead of search engines.
That means that you need to put your audience in mind when writing content. What information do they want to see from your website? What’s the best way to deliver this information that they will find helpful and engaging at the same time?
You also need to stop over-stuffing your content with keywords or synonymous paraphrases. On top of that, if you’re using AI (artificial intelligence) technology to completely write your content, then you need to stop at once. The new helpful content update brings a shift in the search engine algorithm to mark AI-generated content as spam.
Keep in mind that people don’t want to read content that doesn’t make sense or provide them with the information they need. Thus, Google will not want to provide users with unhelpful websites in their search results.
As stated above, it is crucial that you consider your target audience when creating your content. Create content that covers topics they care about and provide them with relevant and valuable information they are looking for.
At the same time, make sure your content is still SEO-friendly, but don’t go overboard with it. Stick to adding keywords to your content naturally. Also, make sure to optimize your headings, title tags, and meta description.
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If you need help in optimizing your website for Google Helpful Content Update, Cybertegic is a digital marketing company in Los Angeles. We offer SEO Marketing Services to online businesses who wish to grow their online presence and gain more leads.
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