Written by: Ryan Walsh

Date: 18/12/2023

 

It might be the case that your business’s rankings have taken a nosedive. This could be due to many reasons. However, many websites were impacted by the helpful content update Google rolled out.

Google rolled out many updates every year, yet the Google helpful update impacted many businesses.
Other updtaes, such as the Google Hummingbird, they are much more well known about. So this update, we would say is equally important, yet many businesses don’t know what it is. Yet, if your company website has a lot of pages and blog posts, well its especially important to see if the written work on every page is good quality, and follows Google’s EEAT advice.

 

Google’s Helpful Content Update

The initial rollout of the update was back in September 2022, and many SEO consultants believe there have been many updates since. Therefore your organic traffic may not have decreased straightaway, as Google indexed, and revaluated old pages, its possible, yoru rankings may have decreased some time after.

 

Crawl Budget

It does boil down to how much of crawl budget Google has placed on your company website. A website such as BBC, a well known brand, its likely to get crawled and indexed by Googlebot everyday. A small business, that hasn’t invest much in search engine optimisation, well, that business may get indexed once a month, and not all pages may get indexed, so its possible that the business only feels the effect of Google Helpful Content update many months later, and that’s after each roll out of the Google update.

 

Can we recover from the Google Helpful update?

Well, often, a business can recover; however, it’s essential to take the advice of an expert on this. It could be the case that many factors are holding your website back, such as spammy links, thin content pages, and just a website with a high bounce rate. So, it’s essential to consult with an expert.

What we mean by this is, sometimes a business may think it’s the Google Helpful Content Update that placed the business lower in the SERP’s. However, it could be many different updates, for example a link update, or lets say Google’s RankBrain spotting that the website has a very high bounce rate.

 

So, what was the primary purpose of Google’s Helpful Content System?

The main purpose, we believe, is to reward pages and blog posts which are helpful to the business’s customers. Now, you might be thinking, surely that would be every page? Not really, as here’s the thing: so many companies, and we are talking about millions of separate businesses here, will have blog posts and main pages just written to improve the company’s SEO.

So, many businesses wrote complete waffle, in a weak attempt to get the business to rank higher on Google. However as Google got better and better at detecting spam, and low quality SEO, these businesses are getting deindexed, and removed off Google altogether.

So, a word to the wise, only implement quality SEO.

 

What are content thin pages?

So, these could be “content-thin” pages that do not offer much helpful information.
For example, you may want to read more about a product or service, and you’re presented with just one paragraph, which is not helpful to the reader.

So, for example, you want to learn about lets say a product, yet, the page doesn’t answer your question. Rather than having useful advice, such as a detailed product description, you just have one line of text, which doesn’t answer the question you have.

 

Keyword stuffing / over-optimised.

Too many businesses get lazy regarding their SEO; they know keywords they want to rank higher on Google. But sometimes, the business obtains poor advice; what happens is that the text, say a blog post, just gets over-optimised by repeatedly mentioning keywords the company wants to rank for. This can result in the business incurring a Google Panda penalty.

 

Google Panda

Since 2011, Google has been trying to eliminate low-quality SEO pages, such as thin content pages, from its index.
Therefore, the Google Helpful update continues this effort to reward businesses that write beneficial content marketing for their customers.

It takes a lot of time to write a detailed, helpful article. Yet, these businesses will end up ranking higher in Google’s results, as Google’s algorithm rewards businesses with higher rankings if they write top-quality content marketing.

 

Google’s EEAT update

So, if you’re doing SEO in-house, do take some time to understand Google’s EEAT guidelines. Basically, in a nutshell, the written work needs to be written by an expert who has real-world experience of what they are writing about so they can reliably offer advice.

So, for example, let’s say that you sell high-performance engine oil for high-performance cars for track days. The work needs to be written by someone who, say, a mechanic, can explain the compounds within the oil that make that product of such high quality.
Google’s algorithm is just so clever.

Many years ago, Google’s algorithm started understanding semantic SEO and the links between entities.

So, for example, if you’re writing a detailed blog post following the advice of Google EEAT, then what will happen is you are more than likely to mention many entities.

Google understands these entities and how everything is interlinked, and therefore, will know if the article offers super reliable advice or just a marketing waffle.

 

Google’s RankBrain

Google’s Rankbrain is used to decipher how real shoppers are using your company website if, for example, they are spending a long time on the website or just leaving after a few seconds. Bounce rates, time on site and dwell time are therefore all considered.

 

Don’t make sudden changes, and don’t expect results overnight.

So, if your organic rankings have decreased, don’t make significant sweeping changes to your website. Make slow, carefully thought improvements, so if you notice a content-thin page with only 100 words of text, do take the time to expand and add much more detail.

And don’t expect results overnight; you might work late into the night, making changes, hoping Google will reward your efforts the next day and place your business back on the first page. But SEO doesn’t work like this; seeing any noticeable improvements could take many months.

 

Carry out a content audit.

So, we SEOs are a bit like hamsters on a wheel sometimes, writing and writing more blog posts. However, there’s a time to stop, to take stock, and think, well, is the work reported, say, seven years back, still relevant? Is it good quality? Does it follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines? Does it meet the standard of SEO that Google EEAT now expects?

Then, ask the following:

  • Is the work good quality?
  • Does the work offer helpful advice?

Does the work meet the standard that Google’s EEAT expects?

What to do if you don’t think the content marketing is excellent:

 

Add more detail

Add new paragraphs and more up-to-date statistics, and generally improve the work.

 

Make the work more valuable.

So, when you started your business, you may not have been able to pay a digital marketing agency for advice. But now you can; they might want to revisit the work implemented years ago to see if it can be improved.
So, why not rewrite some paragraphs and offer more helpful advice?