Google’s helpful content update will take months to go into effect, but website publishers can’t sit idly by. Google’s algorithms have been modified numerous times over the past few years to rank better quality main content.
With this update, Google is looking to favor websites where the majority of content is useful and not just content created primarily for search engines.
Websites that mostly consist of spam web pages that are solely created for SEO purposes will likely be hit that hardest. Additionally, websites that have some useful content and are still primarily SEO-driven will likely be hit hard, but not as much.
In reality, this is a major opportunity for companies that have struggled to rank higher on SERPs.
Google’s update will soon rank content based on how well the content meets the searcher’s needs. These rankings will go from Fully Meets, Highly Meets, Moderately Meets, Slightly Meets, and Fails to Meet. Google will not only apply these rankings to specific landing pages but to your entire website.
Thus, companies should prioritize creating SEO content that answers people’s questions and is not just created for SEO purposes.
Digital marketers can achieve this by focusing on search intent and trending topics. While keywords will still be vital to ranking higher on SERPs, it’s equally important that the content answers the user’s questions.
Further, content writers should refrain from using AI copywriters and simply recycling other websites’ content. While these strategies have worked in the past, Google’s people-first content approach aims to limit these types of content from appearing in search engine results.