google update content

The ‘Google Helpful Content Update’ (HCU) was initially launched in August 2022. The update was completely rolled out in December 2022.

In any case, if you are thinking that your website has been affected by the HCU, then you must have noticed a sudden downfall in organic search traffic.

HCU is simply keen on low quality content or thin content. The website that tends to publish content that is not ‘Helpful’ for the end user is most likely to get affected with this update.

Poor quality content is an invitation to google to visit your website to give you some reward. It is highly advisable to remove bad pages from your website or update them with good quality content before google punishes you.

The content based & business websites such as Blogging, ERP Management Websites are most likely to be hit by this update.

HCU carefully examines the content to analyse if it has been optimized for the users or to cater for SEO purposes.

Google certainly believes that content should be well-written, informative and gratify the coming visitors. It should not be written with the sole motive of ranking higher in the natural search results.

What is Google Helpful Content Update?

As I mentioned earlier, The objective of HCU is to nurture the coming visitors with relevant, compelling, and high-quality content that caters to their needs. 

Google states that, Content should be ‘For the People, By the People’.

Content written just for the sake of SEO tends to add actual value for the visitors. Therefore, It is suggested to follow the Basic White Hat Guidelines to assist the humans with the results they need.

HCU sends a site-wide signal. Let’s understand this with an example.

Suppose, Google inspects that 80% of the pages have been affected with HCU, then the rest of the 20% will automatically come under the influence of HCU. The update affects the whole website.

The primary focus should be on providing valuable & engaging content to the users.

What Should I Do to Recover From Google’s Helpful Content Update?

If you have noticed that your website might have been affected with HCU.

It is advisable to conduct a comprehensive audit of your website. This will give you a clear picture about the mishap. Though it could be tricky for websites that have hundreds of blog posts.

Here are the Top 5 Ways to Recover from Helpful Content Update:

  • Focus on People First:

There is no point writing content that is not fruitful for your audience.

Put your target audience in your top priority bucket.

Always practice to write content by which your audience can relate to or interact with.

Try to nurture the coming visitors with what they want. This way you can offer a pleasant and satisfying experience to your users.

  • Remove AI-Generated Content:

Content Generated with AI tools like spinners tends to add no real value in the user’s life.

Moreover, Google is very strict on the utilization of such tools.

Google has put a ban on these AI Generated Tools in the past as well.

In case you have been using such tactics, It is advisable to remove falsely generated content from the website, and hire an SEO Content Writer that can update the affected pages with new pieces of content.

  • Remove Excessive Ads:

Obstructive ads hinders the user experience greatly.

It is certainly the main cause of delivering a bad user-experience.

The user coming to your website is looking for information that can suit his purpose. It is your responsibility to serve his purpose.

Having multiple ads running on the website will definitely bring a terrible experience for your user.

  • Put Focus on the User Search Intent:

It is important to pay attention to the search query intent. It will give you some sort of idea about what your user is looking for? And why is he looking for it?

You need to find the ‘What’ and ‘Why’ to provide a better user-experience.

This way you can satisfy the needs of your visitors.

  • Remove Bad Pages:

Get rid of all such pages that you think might send an invite for HCU.

Pages with bad-quality content or thin content cannot help the user in any way.

There is no point in hiding such pages from Google’s crawler because they can only hurt you.

It is better to remove all the spun & low-quality pages.

Takeaway:

These are the Top 5 Ways that can help you to come out from the influence of Helpful Content Update. Remember, Recovery of a Website is not as simple as a cup of tea. It can take several months to reduce the effect of the update. Get to work now!

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.