It’s now been three months since Google’s Helpful Content Update finished rolling out, the latest major change made by the search engine to solidify its position as the number one choice for internet users.

Google says the update rewards helpful, people-focused content in its rankings, but some businesses have found it anything but helpful for their organic traffic. Other organisations that have pivoted their SEO strategy toward helpful content are already starting to see results.

We’ve taken stock of the Helpful Content Update and summarised what digital marketing agencies can do to create content that ranks competitively in Google’s new and improved search algorithm.

What is Google’s Helpful Content Update?

Google’s Helpful Content update is an algorithm update that was rolled out in late 2022. As the name suggests, the update aims to reward helpful content that meets users’ needs while demoting content that fails to provide a satisfying experience.

The Helpful Content Update is part of Google’s push to serve users with the best possible content search experience, so that they go on using the search engine and clicking on ads that generate revenue for the company.

Google also has its concerns about SEO agencies abusing its search engines by publishing content that’s made for algorithms rather than people. It’s a move that makes sense in the context of keyword stuffing and AI-generated content, but how does the update actually work?

How does the Helpful Content Update work?

The Helpful Content Update uses machine learning to determine how helpful a piece of content is. While Google has been tight-lipped about what actually constitutes ‘helpful’ content, there are a number of factors that we can assume have a significant influence on search rankings.

Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness

Google has long emphasised the importance of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) when it comes to ranking content. While this terminology is not used explicitly in the new guidelines, it is likely to be an important part of the Helpful Content Update.

On any given topic, Google will likely reward the guest article written by an expert in the field or the report that contains masses of peer-reviewed research over the blog post that’s stuffed with keywords and only offers surface-level insight.

Presentation and ease of understanding

Despite the renewed emphasis on authoritative content, digital marketing agencies must not forget the basics of presenting complex topics in a simple and easily digestible way. Authoritative content is not helpful unless it can be easily understood.

After clicking through to a webpage, users should be able to find what they’re looking for with minimal effort. The content they encounter should be well-written, informative and accessible to a wide audience.

User engagement

Google collects huge amounts of data about webpages across the internet, and it can use these insights to make judgements about content quality. Metrics like bounce rate, average time on page and pages per session all indicate how engaging and, to some extent, helpful a website is.

For example, if users bounce from the page shortly after opening it, Google can infer that the page isn’t addressing their search query. Likewise, if users click through to and engage with other pages, this may suggest that the website helpful.

What does Google say about its Helpful Content Update?

Google has a wealth of information about its search algorithms on the Google Search Central blog. Specifically, on the Helpful Content Update, Google says:

“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.

The system generates a site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for use in Google Search (which includes Discover). The system automatically identifies content that seem to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to people.

Any content—not just unhelpful content—on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.”

Many SEO agencies have noticed that the update, which finished rolling out in December, has already started to have an impact on search engine rankings and organic traffic.

What impact has the Helpful Content Update had on SEO?

While it’s still too early to make a definitive assessment on the impact of the Helpful Content Update, we can make a few deductions from the instances where agencies and businesses have seen significant changes in search rankings.

Crucially, the update seems to affect overall site performance, rather than the rankings of specific pages. The suggestion here is that Google is taking a holistic view of each website, assessing all of a site’s content before making a judgement on its overall ‘helpfulness’.

Less surprisingly, Google seems to be demoting content that is stuffed with keywords or written purely to secure backlinks. Pages that are clearly AI-generated have also taken a hit. These trends will become clearer in the coming months as Google continues to crawl the web.

Ok, but how about a few examples?

Who are the winners from the Helpful Content Update?

Big Think is a multimedia platform that publishes educational articles, interviews and presentations with subject matter experts from a wide range of fields – basically the kind of content that Google is seeking to promote with this new update.

Over the last six months, Semrush data shows that Big Think has increased its overall keyword rankings by more than 15%, with the total number of keywords ranking in the top three positions of Google up a huge 27%.

Another informational website that seems to have benefited from Google’s Helpful Content Update is Wikipedia. The online encyclopaedia’s visibility in the top three positions of Google is up by about 3% in the past six months – a significant gain given that it already ranks for around 3 million keywords.

Elsewhere, government websites, academic journals and think tanks like Pew Research have fared well following the update. The common link here is a focus on factual, authoritative content that often links through to academic research.

When we broaden the conversation to look at news platforms, the picture is less clearcut. There doesn’t yet seem to be a link between, for example, tabloid newspapers and reduced search visibility.

Who are the losers from the Helpful Content Update?

As is often the case around the time of Google’s core updates, dictionary websites have seen big shifts in their organic rankings – and mostly for the worse. Merriam-Webster, YourDictionary and The Free Dictionary have all lost a lot of ground on Google in the past six months.

It’s possible that Google has downgraded the helpfulness of these websites as part of the update. And there could be some sense to this: unless users are explicitly searching for definitions, dictionary websites are unlikely to be the most helpful destination.

One area where clearer assessments can be made is arts and entertainment. A range of pop culture platforms like Fandom, Vanity Fair, British Vogue and The Trend Spotter have been hit with a significant reduction in keywords and organic traffic since the update.




Could this be because the subject matter of these websites is based in opinion rather than fact? Maybe, but it could simply be that their competitors are doing better SEO work. It will be easier for digital marketing agencies to make a clearer assessment on the update in another six months’ time.

What can you do to optimise your content for the Helpful Content Update?

So, how best to respond to the Helpful Content Update? Below is a list of five actionable tips that every digital marketing agency should consider in order to make the most of the opportunities presented by the update.

Engage your audience

This may sound obvious, but the reality is that a lot of content on the internet is written without an audience in mind. Your blogs and landing pages should focus on a specific audience and seek to address their pain points. This way, your content will always be ‘people-first’.

You’ll also want to keep your audience engaged, so ensure your content is easy on the eye and use multimedia elements to break up long lines of text. If you can keep users engaged, you’ll be sending a signal to Google that your website is helpful.

Consider featured snippets and People Also Asked questions

Featured snippets and People Also Asked (PAA) questions are two tactics utilised by savvy SEO agencies to increase a website’s search visibility. As you can see below, featured snippets appear at the top of the results page while PAA questions sit beneath the first organic ranking.

Some basic keyword research will reveal the top search queries for a given topic, and you can then respond to these in your content by either answering them under several headed sections or by including an FAQ section at the bottom of the page.

Bring in the experts

Content that shares insight and expertise is now more highly regarded than ever, so if you have subject matter specialists in your organisation, be sure to involve them in the writing and editing phases of your workflow.

Where expert support isn’t immediately available, copywriters should take the time to properly acquaint themselves with the topic. Make sure you’re also using credible sources that can be easily verified with appropriate citations.

Improve website UX

Good user experience typically translates to good user engagement, so you’ll need to serve your visitors with a satisfying and frictionless experience if you want Google to recognise your website as helpful.

Along with technical improvements to page speed and mobile compatibility, your content should also be presented in a user-friendly way. Lists, headers and whitespace can all be used to clearly signpost the key bits of information to users before they lose patience and bounce from the page.

Analyse historical content

Google says that removing unhelpful content from a website can positively impact its SEO performance. It’s therefore in every digital marketing agency’s best interest to audit historical content and consider removing that which may be deemed unhelpful.

Unhelpful content in this context is likely to be anything that has become outdated or irrelevant with time. While there’s certainly still a place for seasonal content, evergreen content that won’t become redundant at some point in the future should be prioritised.

Achieving search success

Search is an ever-changing beast, and the Helpful Content Update is just the latest example of why it pays to get ahead of the curve. While it has caused confusion for many businesses and digital marketing agencies, ultimately the update will change the world of SEO for the better.

Do you need to replace your old, unhelpful webpages with fresh, authoritative content? As an experienced Birmingham digital marketing agency, we have the SEO and content marketing expertise to help your rank highly for the keywords most relevant to your business.