How Google Determines If Your Website Has Helpful Content
In the world of digital marketing, understanding how Google evaluates your website’s content is crucial for maintaining and improving your search engine rankings. Recently, Google has integrated the helpful content system into its core ranking algorithm, a move that underscores the importance of quality content.
What Is Google’s Helpful Content
Google’s helpful content system employs machine learning to classify “unhelpful content” using criteria that overlap with the content it uses as its training set. While the exact details of these criteria are proprietary, we can infer some key factors by examining the impact of the September 2023 helpful content update.
Signs of Unhelpful Content
Several common traits were identified among websites that experienced significant ranking drops after the update:
1. Ad and Affiliate Link Overload
Sites packed with excessive ads and affiliate links tend to be flagged as unhelpful. These elements can detract from the user experience and make the content appear less trustworthy.
2. Over-Optimization
Content that is overly optimized can come across as artificial and not genuinely informative.
3. Lack of Expertise
Sites covering a wide range of topics without demonstrating true expertise in any of them often struggle. Google favors content that showcases depth of knowledge and authority on specific subjects.
Steps to Recover or Improve Your Content
If your site has been affected by the helpful content update or if you have concerns about the quality of your content, here’s what you should do:
1. Conduct a Thorough Content Inventory
Review your site’s content and identify pages that have experienced significant traffic drops.
2. Remove or No-Index Unhelpful Content
Eliminate or set to no-index any content that could be considered low quality or unhelpful.
3. Improve or Delete Low-Value Content
Focus on enhancing or deleting content that does not provide value to users. Aim for high-quality, informative, and engaging content.
4. Align with Google’s Quality Guidelines
Ensure that all remaining content adheres to Google’s quality guidelines, emphasizing user experience and valuable information.
It’s important to manage expectations when implementing these changes. Recovery from a drop due to the helpful content update can be a slow process, often taking six months to a year to see significant improvements.
Conclusion
Staying ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of SEO requires a commitment to quality content. By understanding Google’s helpful content system and taking proactive steps to align your website with its guidelines, you can improve your chances of maintaining and boosting your rankings. Remember, the journey to recovery and improvement is gradual, but with persistent efforts, you can achieve long-term success.
