Google’s Helpful Content Update - What Publishers Need to Know & How to Recover
Google’s latest Helpful Content Update has been causing a ripple effect in the publishing world as many sites have been hit with a decline in their search traffic. Chances are you've seen an impact on your website's traffic too.
What is the Helpful Content Update?
To understand this update, first, you have to understand what Google classifies as helpful and unhelpful content.
The Helpful Content Update (HCU) is meant to prioritize content that provides value to humans. This is a site-wide ranking signal generated by Google’s new ‘helpful content system’. Google analyzes a site and identifies content that has no or low value to humans and the more of this ‘low value’ content it finds, the lower it will rank the site overall. The threshold Google uses to measure this is not public information. As Google put it “any content—not just unhelpful content—on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search”.
Google has shared that any negatively affected sites should review their content following their guidelines on how to assess your site’s content. See Google’s Guide on Creating Helpful Content
Who Does The Helpful Content Update Affect?
Publishing websites and Independent bloggers seem to be feeling the impact the most while forum sites like Reddit and Quora seem to be benefiting as they now rank number 1 for a lot more searches and have seen a spike in their traffic.
Certain niches were more impacted by this update than others. Blogs in the lifestyle, food, and travel niches saw the most hits to their traffic.
If you have seen a drop in your Google traffic recently, it is likely due to this update. However, there is no need for you to panic. As these changes continue to roll out we will continue to give you the tools, information, and resources to stay on top of things and bring your traffic back up. This is a reminder to explore alternative traffic sources. As we have warned in the past, relying on a single source of traffic (e.g. Search or Facebook) leaves you vulnerable to algorithm changes like this.
For SHE Media Publishers: Helpful Content Update and Ad Layout
One of the newest metrics discussed in the Helpful Content Update is ad density (the % of your viewport or screen that ads take up). SHE Media’s standard ad layout best practices comply with the helpful content updates and allow for better UX than competitors. Our focus on thoughtful ad placements leads to an average density of 20-25% for a full layout, which is below the 28-30% threshold.
It is also important to be cognizant of pop-ups such as newsletter signups. Ensure there is a sufficient delay to your newsletter signups and other pop-ups so it does not interfere with the users' experiences as they attempt to browse through your site.
What To Do If Your Site Has Been Impacted by Google’s Helpful Content Update
Take Stock of Your Site Content — Analyze your traffic data to spot which of your content verticals has been most impacted by this update and has significantly lost (or gained) traffic. This will help you identify a possible pattern. Many sites with multiple niches or sub-niches got hit and further analysis could show that one particular niche got hit more than the rest. This means Google identified that content niche as weak and so because it is a site-wide update, your entire site was negatively affected.
For example, say your site is a food site focusing on healthy recipes but you have a sub-niche that focuses on gluten-free recipes specifically. If your gluten-free recipes have been espousing health claims that have not been properly backed by an expert, or it could be that you don’t have enough articles or recipes that provide comprehensive gluten-free recipes, chances are that content will be hit by the helpful content update. Analyzing your traffic data will help you identify where the problem lies.
Update Your About Page and Author Bios — This is the time to show your authority in your space and gather more. Update your About page to clearly state your qualifications. Elevate and show your expertise in your About Page and make sure all guest authors have a well-written bio that appears beneath every article. If you have press mentions, qualifications, guest appearances on podcasts, etc, clearly state those on your About Page. If you don’t have any, now is the time to get some.
Focus on Your Niche — A lot of sites that were affected were sites covering topics un several niches - even when they all fall under one general niche like travel or food. Now is the time to go back to the basics of your blog. Make sure that your content extensively covers topics in your primary niche and area of expertise. While you can always expand your focus areas and take the conversation to new levels, make sure that you establish subject matter expertise in your primary niche.
Publish Quality Content - Check for accuracy and grammar in your articles, do not make unsubstantiated claims like promising health benefits that are not medically backed “this diet will reduce inflammation” etc. Travel blogs do not write about places you haven’t been to. Lifestyle blogs, do not give mental health advice if you are not a licensed professional. Quote proper sources and credible research in your articles and provide external backlinks to legitimate sites. Include external links to quality websites like .org. gov etc. Also, do not publish AI-generated content. Read Google EEAT .
Write for Humans not for a Search Engine — Maintain your authenticity as you create content. Do not create content you think the search engine would like or content you think will rank. This update by Google is done specifically to do away with such practices that attempt to game the system. When you create articles, provide unique and valuable insights and show your expertise. Be authentic and make sure your point of view translates clearly to your audience. Remember your uniqueness is what makes you valuable and is what will keep your readers coming back.
Clean Up Your Site Pages — Remove dormant links, duplicate pages, auto-generated content, dead pages, and redirects that are no longer working. Make sure your site is optimized for search and that all your best content is properly indexed. If your site is on WordPress, there are plugins that can help with this. We recommend either Yoaat SEO or AIO SEO plugins.
Make Your Existing Content More Helpful — Go through all your top content and most important articles and make sure they meet the HCU guidelines. Follow these tips to update your content to be more competitive:
Look at the top-ranking content in your niche or for specific keywords.
Make sure your quality content is indexed by Google.
Include FAQs in your content - check the ‘people also ask’ section on Google SERP for your chosen keyword and answer those questions in your article.
Add a ‘Table for Contents’ to the top of your articles and for food sites, add a ‘Jump to Recipe’ button.
Remove filler content or content on topics that are not in your main niche
Diversify Your Traffic Sources — Reduce your reliance on Google or Facebook for all your traffic so that updates like this do not have a huge impact on your site performance and earrings. We have several resources on traffic diversification and a partnership with Simplefeed to help you get on Syndication platforms.
Last but not least, as stated above, follow Google’s step-by-step guide and Google’s page experience recommendations.