What Firms Can Expect From Google’s Helpful Content Update

Firms investing in a website or SEO: this update matters to you! Learn more about the update and how it affects your firm’s digital efforts here. 

Google centers around creating better connections between users and relevant content, and one way they do that is through their updates. Although these often go unseen by the average user, the updates happen regularly, and those investing in websites and legal SEO should keep an eye on those changes to:

• Better understand if any digital effort is lagging, or conversely, moving in the right direction. 
• Make the most of digital advertising investment.
• Ultimately, give their clients what they need and want.
  

Learn more about why your firm should care about Google Updates here!

As Google states, the helpful content update is “part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.” This update impacts anyone that is a creator. This could range from your digital legal agency to your in-house creators and others.

So, what’s the update really about? More importantly, how can firms ensure that their content creation remains compliant? 

How the Helpful Content Update works 

The update will start rolling out sometime at the end of August 2022, and the official launch will be featured here (please keep in mind that this can take up to 2 weeks). This update is primarily geared toward sites that have tried to game the SEO best practices and are publishing content that ranks for SEO rather than for the content itself.

With that said, the way the update works is that Google will continue to crawl websites and automatically identify content that brings little to no value, compared to other content elsewhere that brings better value.

The content identified as flagged is not considered spam. Instead, it becomes a “signal” created by an entirely automated classification that uses machine learning. 

How Consultwebs plans to help their firms with the recent update: 

When speaking about the update with the director of ROI at Consultwebs, Grant Brott, he said,

Ensure Your Firm Adheres to People-First Oriented Content 

Superior content not only ranks with SEO but also reaches the correct user and provides a satisfying user experience on-site, and this will remain true with the new update. For that reason…

Follow Google’s #1 long-standing advice: Create content for people first.

For firms, this means creating more content that your specific target audience(s) wants to see. For example, instead of drowning the blog post with keywords to get it to rank, it’s best to mix and match relevant keywords while keeping the focus on providing content users want to read.

How can your firm find out if the published content is user-oriented? Use Google’s checklist below to find out. 

Please note: If you answer yes to the majority or everything on the list, congratulations, you’ve passed the helpful content test!

Do you have an audience that will find your content useful if they come directly to your site?
Does your content demonstrate first-hand expertise and depth of knowledge?
Do you have a primary focal target audience and content?
After reading your firm’s content, will the user have something they can take away?
Will the user leave your site feeling they’ve had a satisfying experience?
Are you, or your digital agency in charge, keeping Google’s core updates in mind?

Pro tip: Google’s algorithm focuses on the amount of the EAT: expertise, authority, and trust a page has. 

Read more about Google’s EAT Quality Guideline here.

Takeaway

The businesses building search-engine-first content might see a significant decline in their traffic in the coming months. Vice versa, those focusing on user-first content might see an increase in traffic in the coming months.

Whether you’re looking for experts to update your website or want to produce content that goes above and beyond, we can help.

 

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