How to write helpful content that ranks on Google – lessons from the Helpful Content Update

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Google’s Helpful Content Update did not have the enormous impact SEOs predicted… does that mean we should ignore it? Not at all! There’s a lot we can learn from this update about how to write content that will rank on Google now and in the future.

Google’s Helpful Content Update caused a huge stir in the SEO world when it was first announced, with many SEO professionals predicting it would be the biggest shakeup of search rankings since the Panda Update in February 2012.

However, the Helpful Content Update turned out to have a much smaller impact than predicted.

So, should we all just ignore this update and carry on as before?

I would strongly advise you NOT to ignore the Helpful Content Update (HCU) for 2 key reasons:

Firstly, the HCU tells us an awful a lot about Google’s direction of travel. This update tells us about Google’s priorities… Maybe this update didn’t have a huge impact, but it gives us a big insight about what kind of content Google is going to favour in the future.

Or, to put it another way, Google is directly telling us the type of content it is going to be rewarding in the search results in the months and years to come – anyone who wants their content to rank on Google in the future should pay close attention!

And secondly, Google have since come out and said that essentially the HCU was just the start – and that the helpful content ranking signal may get stronger with future algorithm updates.

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan put it this way:

“If you went through this initial release and had no change then 1) congrats, lots of content is helpful and that’s probably you or 2) if you do have unhelpful content, you shouldn’t think that we won’t figure that out and consider changing what you’re doing.”

Google have also said that this is:

“part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

So, given that understanding and implementing the lessons from the HCU is clearly vital for anyone who wants their content to rank on Google in the future, what can we learn about Google’s direction of travel from this update? What kind of content should we be writing? And what mistakes should we be avoiding?

In Google’s help document on ‘What creators should know about Google’s helpful content update’, they give us a series of 15 questions to ask when assessing the ‘helpfulness’ of a website’s content. This gives us an incredible insight into what Google considers ‘helpful content’.

In this article, I am going to pull out the key lessons you can learn from these questions, so you can understand better how to write helpful content that ranks on Google now and in the future.

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1. Niche down

Perhaps one of the more surprising aspects of Google’s helpful content update was the importance of niching down… Google makes it very clear in their guidelines that they want websites to focus on one topic and do it well, rather than trying to do a bit of everything. Two of the questions focus on this area:

Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?

Google is being very clear here. Your blog should have a well-defined niche. The days of being able to get away with writing about parenting, food, travel, blogging, gardening and home décor all on the same blog are long gone!

If you want to rank on Google in the future, you need to niche down and be a specialist on one subject rather than writing articles on all sorts of different, unrelated subjects.

And there’s a really good reason for this, which we see in lesson #2…

2. Be an expert

It’s quite clear from Google’s Helpful Content Update Guidelines that Google wants you to write about things you are an ‘expert’ in – things you have first-hand experience of, real knowledge and authority. They say…

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)?
Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?

This all makes complete sense – Google wants to promote content that is written by people who know what they are talking about!

And it goes a huge way to explaining why niching down is important too: unless you have a large staff writing team, it’s impossible to be an expert on multiple unrelated subjects.

This focus on ‘expertise’ is not a new thing either, for years Google have been working on different ways to ensure that content written by expert, authoritative, trustworthy sources rises to the top of its search results.

3. Write for a specific audience

Very closely related to the first 2 lessons is that you should be writing with a specific audience in mind. Google says:

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?
Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?

Arguably this is an extension of the first lesson to ‘niche down’ but I think I goes further – Google is saying you should be writing with a specific audience in mind. Your content should speak directly to that audience rather than hedging your bets and writing on all sorts of topics loosely related to your niche, because some keyword research tool told you it would rank well! And you should very much keep this specific audience in mind when writing new content on your website.

This is exactly what I’ve been teaching for years! For example, in my Beginner’s guide to keyword research (written back in 2018, and largely unchanged – even though I review it regularly), I talk about the importance understanding who your audience is and what they want from you. And I cover this idea in even more depth in my Keyword Research Masterclass.

Why? Because writing content for a specific audience is not just good for ranking on Google. Writing content for a specific audience is good for your whole business! When you write content for a specific group of people, that content will really resonate with them. They will feel like you ‘get’ them… You understand where they are coming from… You understand what their pain points are… And they will feel like you can really help them.

Because they feel you ‘get’ them, these people will not only read your content, they’ll also share it, they’ll join your email list, they’ll buy your stuff… In short, they’ll become your superfans!

4. Write for humans

It really shouldn’t need spelling out, but you should also write for real human beings! Google says:

Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?

It’s laughable that Google even has to say this, but unfortunately far too much content on the web that is not written for real humans, but purely with the aim of ranking on Google.

Whenever you write a blog post, always imagine yourself in the shoes of your target audience – ideally one representative individual or ‘avatar’. (Something else I cover in my Keyword Research Masterclass.) Why did they type the keyword you are targeting into Google? What do they need to read? What will help them the most? Then write that.

5. Answer the question fully

Google makes it very clear that the kind of content they intend to promote in their algorithm is content which actually answers the search query (in other words the question or problem your reader typed into Google which led them to your blog post) AND which answers the question fully…

After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?

Google is making it quite clear that it wants to promote complete / comprehensive / full answers to search queries in its search results. (This is very similar to what Google says in its advice on how to create high-quality content.)

Or, in other words, your blog post should actually be, well, ‘helpful’!

6. Add value

But it’s not enough to simply to simply rewrite / rehash what others have already written on the topic, you need to ADD VALUE:

Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?

If you want to write content that will rank, you need to bring something new to the table: something different or something better than what’s already out there.

This could be your own original research (for example, my post on Blogging Income Statistics.) But this could also mean your own unique spin on something, or content which is more user friendly / more helpful / more informative / better written than the information that is already out there on the same topic.

This is again more-or-less repeating what Google have already said in their guidelines on how to write high-quality content.

And this also circles back neatly to what we’ve already covered on being an expert in your topic:

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)?
Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?

If you are an expert, you will naturally be able to add value / your own unique spin because you know and understand the topic well and you can easily see where the gaps are and/or how to present the information your readers need in a more helpful way.

If, however, you are writing on a topic you know almost nothing about – all you are able to do is rehash / summarize what is already out there – and, given Google’s stated direction of travel, you can be sure that this kind of content is going to really struggle to rank in the future.

Woman sat at a coffee table typing on a silver laptop

7. Use AI with caution

One of the biggest changes to the SEO / content creation world in recent years has been the rise of AI writing assistants like ChatGPT and Bard.

In response to the vast improvement in the quality of the output of generative AI, Google has dramatically changed its stance on AI generated content.

Google used to say:

“Content written by AI falls under the category of auto-generated content, which could lead to a manual penalty.”

However, Google now say:

“Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines.”

However, AI writing tools should still be used with caution.

It’s important to remember that creating a blog post purely with AI, with zero human involvement, is the absolute antithesis of everything Google is saying it wants to promote. An AI is not an ‘expert’ in any subject and the way AI assistants work is basically by ‘summarizing what others have to say without adding much value’. (They are essentially robots – they can’t come up with their own ideas, so they just rehash what is already out there on the web!)

This means, if you are going to use AI to help speed up your content writing process, you need to also include a human somewhere in the process. This could mean including your expertise and experience in the prompt you give the AI and/or reviewing the post that the AI tool has written and adding your own expertise and experience at the editing stage. Ideally both!

What you must not do, if you want your content to rank well, is use AI to produce content at scale, with no human involvement, on topics you have no expertise in or experience of.

To underline this point Google say in their Helpful Content Update Guidelines:

Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?

Google also say:

Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?

8. Write appropriate length content

In the HCU guidelines, Google makes it clear that there is no ‘perfect’ or ‘preferred’ length blog post:

Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t).

So how long should your blog post be? Well, Google has made it clear in some of the other questions:

After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?

Or, in other words, write as many words as you need to in order to fully cover the topic… and no more.

If you write less than is needed to cover the topic fully, your post will leave your reader unsatisfied and feeling like they ‘need to search again to get better information’.

But if you pad and waffle in order to stretch your content to hit a certain word count target, that will be annoying experience, not a satisfying one.

That said, it is true that, in many cases, longer content does rank better. This is not because it hits some arbitrary word length, but because (so long as it is high-quality content and not fluff, padding and waffle) longer content tends to be more complete and comprehensive – and therefore more satisfying and ‘helpful’.

9. Don’t make false promises

And finally, don’t make false promises. Or, as Google puts it:

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?

I think we’ve all had that highly frustrating experience when we’ve tried to Google a release date or a launch date and all the content that promises the answer doesn’t actually have the answer!

But this is also something we, as bloggers, should take care we don’t do – either on purpose or inadvertently. Write a good title, first paragraph and meta description, by all means – but don’t promise or hint at something that isn’t actually covered in the main body of your content.

Woman sat on a bed with a cup of tea in her hand and a laptop on the bed

10. This is a sitewide ranking factor

One final but very important point to mention is that Google has said the Helpful Content Update is a ‘site-wide signal’ meaning:

“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.”

So, in other words, it’s not enough to ensure that NEW content you write from now onwards adheres to these guidelines, you should also go back through your EXISTING content to ensure that it too is truly ‘helpful’.

Google’s Helpful Content Update – Final thoughts

While Google’s helpful content update may not have been the dramatic shakeup to Google’s search results that the SEO community were anticipating, it is still well worth paying attention to the HCU guidelines. These guidelines tell us a lot about the kind of content Google wants to promote in its search results and the kind of content that will rank in the future.

Google are clear that by ‘helpful content’ they mean content written with the involvement of real humans, who are experts in a particular topic, for a specific target audience of real humans, and which answers the target question fully, adds real value and leaves the intended reader satisfied.

On the flipside ‘unhelpful’ content is content which is written with the main aim of ranking, rather than being genuinely helpful to your target audience. Specific practices to avoid include: writing on multiple topics, writing on topics you have no expertise in, writing on topics purely because they are trending or you think they will rank well, merely summarizing what others have already written on the topic, using AI content writing assistants without any real human input, writing to an arbitrary specific content length and making false promises.

So, don’t wait until Google does another Helpful Content Update! If you want to (continue to) rank in Google read Google’s HCU guidelines and ensure all your existing content adheres to these guidelines and every new piece of content you write is truly ‘helpful’ content too – because Google is making it very clear the direction they are heading in!

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