As the largest and most popular search engine on the web, knowing how your site ranks on Google is crucial to understanding how you can get more visitors to your website and, hopefully, more traffic conversions. Google regularly updates their search engine algorithm to ensure users can easily find the most helpful content.But, what does this update mean for site owners?
Google’s Helpful Content Update is a sitewide algorithm update intended to give websites that offer helpful, people-focused content higher rankings than those that do not. To ensure you keep your high rankings, you must focus on content written for people, not search engine algorithms.
Below, we will discuss all the most pertinent information in the new Helpful Content Update. Keep reading to learn what actions to take in light of these changes!
What Is Google’s Helpful Content Update?
Google’s search engine algorithm dictates which websites appear on the first page of search results and which sites appear further down. As a website owner, having your pages rank on this first page is crucial in driving the most traffic possible to your site.
A high-ranking page often sees more conversions, leading to a better bottom line. So, knowing what changes Google is making to their algorithm and when they’re making them is essential in ensuring your site remains profitable.
Overall, this update is intended to ensure websites that write their content with people in mind rank over those that focus solely on their search engine rankings. It’s intended to help Google users find the information they need quickly without going through many pages.
While Google often updates their algorithm to focus on individual pages of a website, the Helpful Content Update is sitewide. Even if you have a lot of helpful information, anything the algorithm deems unsatisfactory could hurt your entire website’s rankings.
Will My Website Be Affected by the Google Content Update?
Google’s new Helpful Content Update is not intended to target any specific niche.
However, there are a few industries that are more likely to see an impact on their site’s ranking. These include:
- Shopping
- Technology
- Educational
- Arts and entertainment
The reason that these industries are more likely to be impacted is that, in general, they are the biggest culprits when it comes to prioritizing rankings over people.
Checking Your Website’s Content
If you fall into one of these four categories, Google has outlined a list of questions you can ask yourself regarding your content to learn if and how you will be impacted.
These include:
- Does your website have a primary focus?
- Do you demonstrate clear expertise and first-hand knowledge?
- Will someone have learned enough to feel confident after reading your content?
As long as you’ve answered “yes” to these three questions, it’s likely that the Helpful Content Update will likely not impact your site.
However, if you’re writing content with the intention of ranking high in search engine results rather than genuinely helping your users, you may see a significant drop in how your website is positioned on the page.
What to Do If Your Website Is Impacted by the Google Update
Unfortunately, some websites will see a decrease in their rankings due to Google’s Helpful Content Update. This algorithm may be to blame if you’ve noticed a recent drop in your website’s position on the search results page.
Luckily, there are some things that can help you raise your rankings to where they once were. It may take a while to recover, but implementing changes as soon as possible can expedite the process.
Create Better Content
The number one thing that will help your website recover is focusing on creating better content. Although some well-placed keywords are fine, you shouldn’t stuff your pages with keywords with the intent of ranking higher. Focus first on providing your users with helpful information, and then go back and add relevant keywords.
Remove Outdated Pages
Since this is a sitewide update, removing unhelpful pages can help your helpful pages recover faster. Any outdated or poor-quality pages should be removed immediately to increase the percentage of pages that Google does consider high-quality.
Overall, you must remember that this update intends to help users find the high-quality information they’re looking for quicker and more easily. As long as you update your pages to reflect this, your rankings should eventually return to where they were before the update.
Final Thoughts
Google’s latest algorithm update, the Helpful Content Update, aims to help users find the best information possible as quickly as possible. For this reason, they’re beginning to rank websites that feature information written for people, rather than information written for search engines, higher in their search results.
The best way to avoid rankings-related issues is to focus on high-quality, people-focused content. The Helpful Content Update is sitewide, meaning it’s important to focus on your website as a whole rather than individual pages while checking your compliance.