Google recently released what they called “helpful content update” which pushes original and high quality content further up in search results.
In short, if alternatives to your content can be easily found elsewhere or if your content isn’t helpful to your audience, chances are that you might not rank high in Search.
This is part of a larger effort from Google to decrease low-quality content appearing in Search Results Page (‘SERP’) while making it easier to find authentic and useful content.
For now only English users will be affected by the new ranking update.
Moreover, according to Google, the new update will most likely favour online education, arts, shopping, and tech-related content as these fields are the ones creating authentic content.
So what defines a helpful content?
In 2018, everyone in the SEO community was talking about Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness (‘E-A-T’) framework which is broadly used to qualify good content.
Based on this framework, here are key questions that you should be asking yourself about the content you produced.
- Is your content answering key concerns of your target audience? (Usefulness)
- Can alternatives to your content easily found elsewhere? (Originality)
- Are you creating content for people or primarily for search engines?
- Is your content backed by real facts, experiment data, and research? (Trustworthiness)
- Are you writing as you speak or trying to meet a content length?
Answering these questions (and more) can really help you find out if you are on the right track.
If you want to read more about Google’s new ranking update, here are a few links:
