Google Helpful Content Update: Everything You Must Know!

So if you are a blogger or a content creator site, you must have observed a drop in the traffic percentage. Why has that happened? If you’ve still not figured out what’s gone wrong, then you probably are unaware of Google’s helpful content update that has been rolled out.

To cut a long story short, the latest Google update is purely focused on user satisfaction and resolving the user’s queries. So if your content is virtuously helpful and user-centric, your site will get the desired traffic. If your site has unhelpful or automated content which does not satisfy the user, it’s going to see a downfall!

Let’s see what you must do and what you should avoid if you are hit by Google’s helpful content update massively or mildly.

What Does Google’s New Update Want From You?

Google has come up with this new update that will reward the content, which concentrates more on providing helpful and complete information to its viewers. If the user is completely satisfied after viewing your content, it’s going to be on the skies. But if your content fails to meet the user’s expectations, your site won’t perform well. But how will you identify if your content is user-centric and will sail smoothly with Google’s latest update? Here are a set of questions Google lists you must pay attention to as a content creator site:

• You must have a target audience for your site that finds your content useful.
• Make sure you have the expertise and in-depth knowledge about the product or service that you are creating content on.
• Your site must have a primary goal or purpose.
• The content must have enough knowledge about the topic to help the users attain their objectives.
• Ensure that your viewer is completely satisfied after reading your content.
• Create content keeping in mind Google’s core updates and product reviews.

What The Helpful Content Update Will Penalize?

Giving preference to creating a user-centric does not mean you neglect the SEO practices. SEO proves to be helpful only when you create user-centric content. So avoid writing for the search engine.

• Here’s what you should avoid doing if you do not want to be penalized:
• Avoid creating content that’s purely made to please the search engine.
• Do not produce content on various topics hoping that some of it may work.
• If you are using automation to create a chunk of content, you must stop doing it now!
• Stay away from rephrasing or summarizing content. You must add more value to the content that you are creating.
• Do not write things just because they are trending or you wouldn’t cover them for your existing viewers.
• In case your content leaves the user unsatisfied and needs to research again on the topic, it’s going to affect your site.
• Also, if you write to maintain a preferred word count assuming that Google requires you to rank your content, then you should avoid doing so. Google does not have a preferred word count.
• If you’re writing content on a niche you do not have much knowledge on only to get traffic; then you shouldn’t do so.
• If your content claims to answer a user query but isn’t answering it, then this is going to affect your site negatively.

What To Do If Your Site Is Affected By Google’s Helpful Content Update?

With this new update, Google adds a new site-wide signal along with the existing ones for ranking a web page. The google system will automatically identify content that has low added value or isn’t helpful to the searchers. This latest update not only focuses on a particular content thats unhelpful but considers the all content that the website provides. Therefore, updating or replacing unhelpful content with user-centric information will help in improving the rankings of your content.

Now the question arises, how long will it take for your site to get stable and get better? Honestly, Google’s signal will be applied to such sites for a period of months. Google’s classifier for this update will continuously monitor new and existing websites for unhelpful content. If your content quality improves and answers users’ queries, the classification won’t apply to your site.

This also means that if you have unhelpful and helpful content on your site could still rank well because there are signals that will identify your helpful content. But the unhelpful website will also affect the site’s performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is helpful content, according to Google?

Ans. With the new Google update, it has introduced a new site-wide ranking signal that will inspect the low-quality content that does not answer the users’ queries. This update will reward the people-first content.

Q2. Why is updating content important?

Ans. If your site has been hit drastically by the helpful content update, you need to update unhelpful content. Also, the viewers usually rely on the latest content. Therefore, you must update your content.

Q3. What is Google’s new update?

Ans. According to Google’s August 2022 update, it’s now going to focus more on user-centric content. If your site writes more for the search engine, then it’s going to see a downfall. But if you are concentrating on solving the user query, then you don’t need to worry about SEO traffic.

Q4. How long does it take Google to see changes to my website?

Ans. It wholly depends on how frequently Google notices and processes your updates. It may take 30 seconds to a few weeks for your new update to be reflected on your site.

Q5. How long does it take Google to index new content?

Ans. If you have a brand new site, then it may take 4 days to 4 weeks for your content to index.

Conclusion

The entire Google helpful content update, mostly focuses on rewarding content that is user-centric and answers their complete queries. As a content creator, you must concentrate on these points:

• Create user-centric content.
• Have complete knowledge about the content that you’re creating.
• Your user’s query must be satisfied.

Google will not consider unhelpful content and sites. Therefore here are some things that you must avoid:

• Avoid creating content to gain search engine traffic
• Stop posting automated content on your site
• Do not rephrase and summarize content or create content with no value.
• Don’t write only to maintain a particular word count.