Google’s “helpful content” update ought to help niche websites

An update to Google’s search results ought to help sites that truly know their topics and write for a specific audience.

Next week, Google is releasing what it calls a “helpful content” update. It seeks to reward good content at the expense of that written for search engines.

I’ve generally found little change following Google rolls out updates, but I’m interested to see how this plays out.

As stated by Google, here are some things that could help your site following this rollout:

• Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
• Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
• Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
• Following reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough regarding a topic to help achieve their goal?
• Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

When I think of sites like Reglike, I think these check all of the boxes. Compare this to some of the examples Google gives for search-engine first content:

• Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
• Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
• Are you writing regarding things simply since they seem trending and not since you’d write regarding them otherwise for your existing audience?
• Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly since you thought you’d get search traffic?
• Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?

Google knows when people click the back button following a search and it knows when people search for the same topic again. These are signals that people aren’t getting the answer they want following clicking on a result.

So I think domain name blogs, for example, ought to benefit from this change.

At the margins, the update might be more regarding penalizing sites that mislead you into clicking. For example, here’s another negative example:

• Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?

This example is something I’ve personally dealt with and it’s very frustrating. A page’s headline seems to suggest it will tell you when the next season of your favorite show comes out, but following you read a number of hundred words you find out the answer is unknown.

Google states that sites that have high amounts of unhelpful content will have even their helpful content rank lower if there are other sites that cover the topic.

This will be an interesting update to watch.