In August 2022, Google released a helpful content update to ensure all sites ranking on its results pages provide its users with the content they want and need. In September 2023, this was further updated and rolled out in; according to Google, ‘these launches are part of a broader, ongoing effort to reduce low-quality content and make it easier to find content that feels authentic and useful in Search’.
With this in mind, it’s time to change our thinking slightly around how we create content, why we’re creating it and the impact it’s going to have on our businesses.
In this blog, we’ll have a look at what exactly you need to do to create helpful content for your potential customers (and to help make sure your site ranks well in the search engines 🤫).
We’ve already covered this in our recent blog covering the September 2023 helpful content update, but let’s do a quick recap…
In their update, Google states: ‘the helpful content system aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well’.
In short, the content you provide needs to answer the user’s needs and provide them with a solution or guide them towards the next steps in their journey. Unhelpful content is classed as content that’s created purely to rank in the search engines rather than provide users with a solution.
Google has its own ideas on the questions you need to be able to answer to make sure you’re on the right lines when it comes to creating content that’s going to be beneficial to your SEO efforts.
But here are our recommendations on what we think you need to look out for and consider when creating content for your business - something helpful for you to take action in your own strategy 🥳
We all know that when we’re creating content for our websites, we’re going to want it to rank for the keywords your customers are using but creating content purely to ensure that it ranks highly in the search engines without offering real value is no longer going to be an effective strategy.
You need to think carefully about your audience and what they need from your website and the content you provide. If you read a piece of content back and you don’t think it offers any answers or solutions, you’ll need to go back and see how you can change it up to offer something of value to your potential customers.
Here’s what Google thinks makes a piece of content helpful to users: “The most basic signal that information is relevant is when content contains the same keywords as your search query. For example, with webpages, if those keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or body of the text, the information might be more relevant.”
“Beyond looking at keywords, our systems also analyse if content is relevant to a query in other ways. We also use aggregated and anonymised interaction data to assess whether search results are relevant to queries. We transform that data into signals that help our machine-learned systems better estimate relevance. Just think: when you search for ‘dogs’, you likely don’t want a page with the word ‘dogs’ on it hundreds of times. With that in mind, algorithms assess if a page contains other relevant content beyond the keyword ‘dogs’ - such as pictures of dogs, videos or even a list of breeds.”
If you’re running a business in a particular field, you are an expert in that field. If you have a team, they’re experts in what they do too. Any content you create for your website and your target audience should always demonstrate your expertise and provide value to your intended audience.
Make sure you’re not just rehashing information that your competitors provide or that other businesses provide. Always share your own insights and experiences - make sure you’re adding something a little extra to everyone else. Whether it’s actionable steps or something you know that your competitors don’t, share it with your customers so that they can take action or solve a problem after reading your content.
Your readers will know if you’re not an expert, so always be honest and stay in your lane. Even if you’re not an expert on a particular topic, you can still do your own research and provide something helpful by sharing your learnings or findings.
Just try to avoid claiming that you’re an expert when you’re not!
Users like to know that the sources they’re reading when researching are trustworthy and credible. When you provide information, think about whether you would trust the information you’re providing if you were a customer.
Always source your facts and statistics, provide evidence of your expertise and make sure you minimise errors and typos.
Building relationships with your potential customers requires trust. They need to know that they can trust you to provide the products and services that solve their problems and make their lives easier.
If someone reads your content will they leave your site feeling as though they have enough information to help them achieve their goal? Or do they need to go back to the search engine to find better information from your competitors?
This is key when it comes to creating any piece of content for your business. Content tht doesn’t tell users what they want to know or tells them something they already know won’t be classified as helpful. Your website visitors aren’t going to feel satisfied and Google’s not going to rank your site well.
ALWAYS keep search intent in mind. There are different types of search intent and the intent of the keyword you’re optimising for should influence the type of content you create.
The main types of search intent are:
Once you know the intent behind the query you’re optimising for, you can create content that meets that searcher’s needs. For example, someone performing an informational query is in the early stages of the customer journey and probably wants a blog that will provide them with information and lead them to the next step of their journey. On the other hand, someone performing a transactional query is ready to buy so a blog isn’t going to meet their needs. They want a product or service page that allows them to make their purchase as easily and with as little friction as possible.
You can read more about search intent in our blog: A guide to search intent for SEO.
If you’ve been creating content for a while, you might have blogs that are a few years old. If you produced a piece of content a couple of years ago that was useful then, it might not still hold the same value today.
Google’s Helpful Content Update might look at these older pieces of content and decide they’re unhelpful. This can work against your site over the long term so we always recommend revising older pieces of content and looking at how you can make them more relevant or helpful again.
Whether you add new statistics, link to new sources or add new insights, updating old content is a highly valuable exercise.
Whilst the changes you make today towards your SEO efforts won’t have an instant impact, the small changes you make will have an impact over the next few months. You don’t want your rankings to drop, so here are the actions you can take today to ensure your site is not impacted by the changes and even to improve the performance of your site in the future
These three actions should help you start to understand exactly who you’re creating content for and why. Which is one of the biggest steps you can take towards ensuring you’re creating helpful content and keeping your website visitors (and Google 🤫) happy!
If you’d like more help with creating content for your business or understanding where you are at the moment and how you can improve, request a free audit from our team.
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At Logica Digital, we take the time to understand your business and customers to create a bespoke marketing plan that will deliver the best return on investment for your business. We always get results.
Call: 0114 551 1534
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