In the past few months, many websites have gone through hell with Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU). Some came back. Some, partially. Some, sadly, went out of business.
Even now, despite all the Google documentation, HCU seems quite subjective, even mysterious at certain points. Yes, Google caught spammy websites. But it looks to us like the net has been cast too far, and other good, normal sites got dragged down, too.
Is there anything you can do? Keep producing good content, yes. And back that up with good backlinks. The game is not fair. It’s never been fair, especially with people gleefully using AI to produce hundreds, if not thousands of pages. And Google is scraping your content and that of your competitors, making it its own (AI Overview).
But people will continue to search for and research services and products. With a good SEO strategy, whether you hire a local SEO company or go the DIY route, they will discover your website.
You use the Internet, and you know what it’s like to use Google.
Information and content that read on a minute-by-minute basis is not just the norm, it’s a necessity in the world of SEO.
Google’s a tool in a unique position, because it doesn’t just act as a way to find results based on queries: it also gets to dictate what kinds of websites and content get to find a platform on their engine.
25 years of inflowing websites helped Google to refine not just their algorithms, but their goals and missions when developing their search engine.
Ok, and how does this affect my search?
Search engines don’t exist in a void: they constantly change and interact with the content that flows through them.
In Google’s case, they talk about what their search engine prioritizes in their SEO fundamentals documentation.
With so much content to go, it eventually became useful to come up with a set of guidelines of what is not just allowed, but emphasized by Google’s search engine and their algorithm:
- Helpfulness: The best way to make content engaging is to be novel and more substantial than previous sources. Relying heavily on shock value or automation to add to websites wastes not just user’s time, but Google’s as well.
- Reliability: It doesn’t matter if a website tells the greatest story heard by man, if it’s not true or verifiable. Reliability comes from backlinks, especially being quoted yourself or referencing plenty of sources.
- “People-firstness”: Google’s job as a search engine is to judge websites. But it’s easy for users to tell if a website is made just to rank highly (and we all love spam, right?). As such, the main focus of Google’s guidelines is to focus on making your content a useful tool or product.
I have the content, but what makes it substantial?
Much of that content on the Internet relies on self-assessment to determine if the quality is good enough to be published, and that comes with some obvious principles.
While plagiarism is a whole other topic, the best kinds of content are always ones with original ideas.
Originality functions much like competition: if you are offering the same content as others, users are going to flock to the earlier, more precedented sources over your domain.
Even in edge cases like news reports and sports coverage, people don’t watch these programs because of just presentable echoing: it’s the commentary bringing the obscure into visibility that makes their content substantial.
That being said, especially in the last half decade, ideas concerning originality have been uprooted with the release of language models such as ChatGPT.
It’s not an “end all be all” that you can never use AI, or AI means you’re cheaping out on content meant for writers, but if users are expecting a human experience, then it is a tool better for review and structure over baseline creation.
Language models also shine where factual precision is not as necessary, but that comes down to individual needs and discretion when creating content with AI.
Google focuses on “people-first”: Does that mean to ignore SEO?
No, obviously not. Online content focuses on user experience above all else, and the search engine is just as much a user as any other person. But it has its own needs.
The goal of a good search engine is to find content that meets the needs of searchers, not just try to get to the top of Google rankings.
So making quality content with a clear purpose and focus will almost always be more successful than the old-ways of spamdexing.
Be useful, be cohesive, and be mindful of how graphic structure affects the presentation of your reliability.
That being said, this article doesn’t exist in a void. As previously mentioned, it’s a part of Google’s SEO fundamentals series. And that begs the question: What’s the role of SEO in a “people-first” perspective?
It doesn’t have to be paradoxical or convoluted: SEO in this context shouldn’t be thought of as a way to optimize search engines first.
The point Google tries to establish with this article is SEO exists to optimize the average user experience, to make your content comprehensible and more substantial.
That is what gets websites and domains higher rankings and more traffic by extension: Helpful content is boosted by good SEO to, by extension, increase traffic and rankings, not the other way around.
About the author: Santiago Sagastegui
Santiago is a dynamic individual balancing his passions for content writing and software development.
As a Creative Writer for SEOA, Santi applies his expertise to drive engagement and visibility in the scope of online topics. Additionally, he serves as the Program Director for the coding club at Chatfield High School and contributes to their competitive programming teams, where he is a two-time competitive programming winner with the Loopy Groupies team.
Outside of work, Santi enjoys a variety of mentally and physically stimulating hobbies, including practicing Taekwondo, playing the piano, competing in eSports, and enjoying walks with family and friends.