What should I do if my website is affected by the Google helpful content update?

If you detect a site-wide drop in rankings! it’s certainly possible that you’ve been affected by the helpful content update. If this is the case! refer to both lists of questions above and perform an honest analysis of your content to determine how much risk this update poses to your website.

If you’re already worried about the potential impact of the helpful content update

perform this analysis as quickly dataset (but comprehensively) as possible.

The trouble with site-wide updates is that your whole search ranking can suffer but the good news is you can take action to recover. Better yet! if your content performs well with this update! your whole site could benefit over the coming weeks or in the near future if you take steps to improve the quality of your content.

If your rankings drop as a result of this update! the first step is to run a content audit and remove or update problematic content. This is in line with Google’s advice on dealing with the helpful content update.

“Any content — not just unhelpful content —

On sites determined to have Why is this update being compared to Panda? relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search! assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason! removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.”

Removing problematic content may be the fastest way to recover your search ranking but you have to determine why you produced this content in the first place. For many website owners! this update will require an overhaul of publishing processes to ensure all future content meets Google’s requirements.

Here are the key steps you’ll need to take:

1. Define your audience: Specify your target audience and publish content specifically for them.
2. Audience research: Put resources into understanding your target audience and what they need from you.
3. Content relevance: With your audience defined! ensure every piece of content is relevant to them and avoid publishing content simply for views from wider! irrelevant users.
4. Topical focus: Keep your content topics tightly focused to your brand and target audience – resist the urge to venture outside of this for low-relevance keyword opportunities.
5. Content depth: Provide in-depth information but don’t add fluff or artificially inflate word counts – deliver as much value in as few words as possible.
6. Expertise: Make sure you have the expertise to publish content on the topics you cover – follow the guidelines for E-A-T and YMYL.
7. Use humans: Avoid using any AI technology to produce auto-generated content.
8. Helpful content: Make sure every piece of content delivers value to its target audience.
9. People-first content: Avoid creating content simply to drive traffic from keyword opportunities.
10. Offer something new: Don’t simply regurgitate or summarise what everyone else is saying – offer something new of value.
11. Deliver on promises: If you promise something in your titles! search listings! intros! etc. make sure you deliver within the same piece of content.
12. Positive experiences: Do everything you can to deliver a positive experience while users engage with your site and content.
13. Run regular audits: Constantly analyse your content to ensure it delivers value and remove or update problematic pages.

The steps we’ve outlined above are based on everything

Google has told us about the helpful zn business directory content update. Let’s be honest! though! publishers should already be doing all of the above as part of their content marketing and SEO strategies.

We may add further steps to the list above as we learn more about the new update! especially if we find Google is changing the weighting to certain signals or it’s using new technology to judge “helpful” content with greater accuracy.

For now! though! the steps for producing quality content are the same.