Features

Google completed the Helpful Content Update rollout on September 9, 15 days after its release began on August 25. Google had announced that it would take two weeks, which turned out to be exact.

And as for its effects? Has it had the desired results described in the Google statement?

Types of content and the sites affected

Based on what has been seen so far, a week after completion, it seems the update has mainly affected obvious and extreme cases of websites with one or more of these characteristics:

Automated, scraped content.

Content taken almost literally from other sources, without adding anything new or of value.

Content created with the excuse of taking advantage of SEO keywords to achieve traffic and monetisation, with nothing new or valuable provided on the topic the user has searched for.

The above practices are equivalent to answering with a clear “yes” to at least three of the nine questions posed by Google in the official announcement of the Helpful Content Update, under the section “Avoid search engine-centric content “.

The examples we will see below usually write to reach a certain number of words, write on topics without having an apparent authority in them, and skim around queries without providing a factual answer.

The most affected niches and topics are entertainment (celebrities, movies, TV), song lyrics, dictionaries or definitions of concepts, technology (software bug fixes and tutorials), and product reviews.

Examples of Impacted Sites

Below we offer examples of sites that seem impacted by the update, given the moment in which they have lost organic visibility, the content they provide, and the indications presented by Google in their guidelines. We have analysed several more sites but, in other cases, do not see patterns as clear as in these.

As the update is very recent, clearer cases have likely escaped our research. The list is incomplete, just a sample of the diverse types of websites affected, and we do not claim to have absolute validity about why they have been affected or even if they deserved it, according to Google’s guidelines. It is purely our opinion.

Nor do we intend to judge the quality of work on those websites. We limit ourselves to showing correlations between their reduced visibility. what we see as professionals, and what Google has communicated it wants to fix with the update. We try to be objective, but we can be wrong. That out of the way; let’s proceed.

Conch-house.com

Conch House is a typical review-type website with scraped content from Amazon, targeting low-difficulty keywords, and built on an expired domain (it was previously the website of a hotel restaurant and received links from TripAdvisor and similar domains). The latter would explain how quickly it grew in organic visibility, just weeks before going down with the Helpful Content Update.

Our data comes from Sistrix. The Sistrix Visibility Index gives a value for a domain’s visibility in Google’s search results. Using the Visibility Index, we can measure success in Google SERPs reliably and transparently.

Conch-house.com once had 27 points of visibility in the Sistrix US index, and now it is down to 0.0157 (virtually zero).

The pattern the content follows is easy to see (the intros promise a “comprehensive guide” to the current product category, and the posts are anything but). The content consists of a spun or patterned introduction, tables created by connecting to the Amazon Affiliate API, and a summary or scrape of reviews for each product.

Wealthycelebrity.com

Wealthy celebrity is a site with information about famous celebrities and not-so-famous celebrities, which tries to answer all possible related keywords (age, wealth, height, spouse/boyfriend, children) around each person. These posts abound in fluff, keyword stuffing, and repetition.

Alphanewscall.com

This site discusses celebrities, movies, TV series, economics, and software. This is a clear violation of the HU without a specific focus and oriented to keywords that may get traffic.

They focused primarily on keywords of the type “celebrity name + net worth”, or “when does the next season of XYZ premiere?” The content implies there is a specific date for a premiere when often, there is not. The resulting article is padded with fluff to keep the user on the page.

After a rapid rise, the site fell first with the May core update and dropped further with the HCU.

En-academic.com

Under the guise of a “legitimate” definition site, en-academic.com contains many pages copied directly from Wikipedia, with the rest, we suspect, coming from other sources, such as scanned books.

Manualzz.com

Manualzz is an aggregator of PDFs of manuals and instructions for products, software, etc. Obviously, none of this is original to the site. They always come from other sources, usually the product’s official website. This site does nothing more than republishing something that already exists without providing any additional value to the user.

Geniuslyrics.net

Here we come across a more complex case to explain, according to the directions from Google. Yes, a lyric site, by definition, doesn’t offer original content, but why has Google dropped some lyric sites and not others?

One possible theory is that sites must have a license from record labels to post the lyrics. Prominent players in the sector, such as genius.com, which the update has not impacted, display license information. Genius Lyrics and the other affected sites of this type would not meet this requirement; they do not display license information on any of their pages.

There are multiple examples of lyrics sites with sudden drops in visibility:

Similar examples with an almost identical loss of visibility pattern include lyricsjonk.com, lyricsroll.com, lyricsfa.com, and lyricsgoo.com.

What to expect for the future

As is often the case when Google announces a new algorithm, part of the industry had taken Google’s words in a big way and braced for a catastrophic impact.

Given these expectations, the observed effect has seemed punctual and not too intense, limited to specific types of sites, in contrast to the more generalised and powerful impact of core updates such as the August 2018 Medic Update.

However, according to Danny Sullivan, representative of Google, the effect has been exactly what was intended and announced. It should not surprise us that it has affected only a tiny percentage of sites since most sites have helpful content according to the criteria.

As Danny Sullivan states, this does not mean that more effects will not be expected in the future. First, the HCU algorithm will still be active, which could affect sites that launch later or add a significant amount of non-useful content down the line.

In addition, Google can refine the classifier, so in the coming months, we will notice more powerful effects on other types of websites (but if Google makes significant changes, they will apparently announce them). The update will be an ongoing effort on Google’s part.

And one more warning from Google. Even if further Helpful Content updates are not released, other updates, such as a core update or a Product Reviews Update, may shift the balance in cases where the HCU has “flagged” a website but not strongly enough to have a visible impact on rankings.

It is also worth remembering that the Helpful Content Update is currently only active for English searches.

On August 25, 2020, Google’s “Helpful Content” update began rolling out. The process will take up to two weeks.

For years, Google employees have stated the search engine rewards websites that provide useful content that answers a searcher’s query with higher rankings. Yet, the Helpful Content update is a significant algorithm change that, like the Panda and Penguin updates, is expected to affect many websites for better or worse.

On the Search Central Blog, Chris Nelson from the Search Quality Team says the update is “part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

The update aims to reward content which delivers a satisfying user experience. Content that doesn’t meet expectations will drop in the SERPs. So, content that puts the reader first will show high up in the rankings, while low-quality articles created with search engines in mind will disappear from the top results.

Here are our top ten tips based on Google’s guidelines on creating content that will likely rank higher after the latest update.

1.   Put People First

Your website could drop if you’ve been posting content to please algorithms instead of people. But, if the main goal of your articles is to help your audience, you could get a pleasant surprise and see your content rise to the top of the results.

While Google is a business existing to make money, when it comes to organic search results, the company’s primary goal is to show users a page that is most relevant to their search query.

If you search for “bathroom curtains”, you don’t want results about living room curtains.

Although the update aims to reward content designed for humans to read and not bots or algorithms, this does not mean that SEO is a thing of the past. You will still need to optimise your pages using the best SEO practices. However, you should do this after creating helpful content.

In 2011, many online businesses saw their income disappear overnight when Google rolled out “Panda”. Like this latest update, Panda aimed to decrease rankings for sites using black-hat SEO methods. This included keyword stuffing, creating many pages with thin, similar content, and sites of general low quality. Content farms like eHow and EzineArticles were hit particularly hard, as these sites contained vast quantities of low-quality content. Content farms would aggregate posts from

other sites and exist solely to appear high in the SERPs. They had positive SEO signals but were of little use to a reader.

The people-first helpful content update is another attempt at what Google has tried to do for years – rank content that is helpful depending on the search query.

2.   Show Your Expertise

You don’t need a master’s degree to write helpful content. Still, demonstrating personal experience that comes from actually using a product or service or visiting a place in person will help your case.

You could write an article on “Top Things to Do In Rome”, but if you have never visited Rome, you will have to research and rehash information already out there. Yet, if you have unique photographs or videos you took on a visit to Rome, and your article includes an unusual place you discovered off the beaten track, you are offering your visitors fresh, helpful content.

Writing about something you haven’t personally experienced is unlikely to be helpful.

Google recommends asking yourself the following question: Are you mostly summarising what others have said without adding much value?

3.   Don’t Combine Many Topics On One Site

Keep your existing or intended audience in mind when deciding what to write. If your website is aimed at dog lovers, and you see an amazing toy for cats selling incredibly well on Amazon, you might be tempted to write about it to generate affiliate income.

However, a large section of your audience may not have a cat, as the site primarily targets dog lovers.

So, stick to your main topic, and don’t get side tracked with trending products.

4.   Offer the Same Advice As You Would In Person

When writing a post, think if the person were standing in front of you, and considering you an expert in your niche, asked you the same query they would type into a search engine.

Would you try to answer them as concisely and with the most relevant information possible, or would you go off on a wordy tangent and recommend they buy several items they don’t need to achieve their query?

When creating helpful content, consider what you would say in person.

5.   Fully Answer a Query

Your page or post should fully answer a query. If the visitor reads your article but then must return to Google to repeat the search, your content has not been useful.

Ensure your piece answers any queries a user may have related to the topic.

6.   Stick to Google’s Product Review Guideline

Stick to Google’s official guidelines as much as possible when writing product reviews.

The most recent product review update to the algorithm rolled out in July 2022, following previous rollouts in March 2022, April, and December 2021. These updates only affected product or service reviews, not other forms of content.

Google wants to show in-depth, informative product reviews rather than thin content. As such, the product review update is not a penalty but a benchmark where reviews showing expertise and experience with the product supersede lower-quality content.

You can find Google’s best practice product review guidelines here. In short, the guidelines tell you to “focus on the quality and originality of your reviews, not the length”.

7.   Don’t Add Fluff To Meet a Word Count

Longer form content seems to rank better in Google than short articles, but the company insists they do not care about word count., and a searcher won’t care about it either, or your SEO. She just wants her question answered.

Most of us don’t have time to waste reading a lengthy article when a few short paragraphs could answer a query, so as long as the visitor enjoys the article and learns what he wants to know, there is no reason to stress too much if your article is not two thousand words.

8.   Don’t Mislead

This will be a welcome algorithm change for many users. We have all been victims of clickbait headlines, but you should avoid creating clickbait content at all costs after this update. Deceptive content written to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link is misleading and wastes the visitor’s time.

If your headline tells your reader they can solve an acne problem in seven days, and the article does not live up to its promise, that’s clickbait. The user will leave unsatisfied, which Google wants to avoid.

9.   Understand Your Audience

Good writers know what understanding an audience means, which is a fundamental aspect of copywriting. Still, even if you are not an expert writer, you can produce great content if you understand where your reader is on his journey. For example, if you are trying to sell a course on decoupage, and a user types in “What is Decoupage”, they are probably not at the point of buying a course. They just want a clear description of what the craft involves.

So, know the intent behind a search and offer the solution.

10. Check for Errors

This might sound like elementary advice, but users are less likely to find the content helpful if it contains grammatical errors and typos. Before you post an article or page, check it is error-free. You can do this in Word, Google Docs, or subscribe to Grammarly.

It’s not just types and punctuation you need to check – if you are writing an article with dates, for example, check you haven’t made a mistake and entered the wrong number. If your readers notice errors, they will most likely click away, sending a signal to Google that the page is not helpful.

What to Do if Your Site Is Affected

If Google decides your site exists primarily for search engines, you will not see a manual action listed in the Google Search Console. There will be Google will not notify you that your content is low-quality. However, you can expect to see a significant decline in your rankings and search traffic over the next few months.

Google says affected sites that improve the usefulness of their content can recover their rankings, as the part of the algorithm that categorises sites for this update will run continuously.

Use the Feedback Form

If you feel Google’s recent helpful content update unfairly impacted your site, try using this form to send them feedback. While we doubt you will get a reaction, there is little harm in trying.

Conclusion

Now is the time to review your website and assess if your content is people-first. Aim for quality over quantity. It is essential to realise that if Google sees enough thin content written primarily for search engines on your site, the update will impact any useful content as well, as the punishment is sitewide. Go back through your old content, and if you find posts or pages that are not helpful, rewrite or delete them, or you could see every page on your site disappearing from the search results.

Contact us if you need help with your marketing and developing a people-first content strategy. We are here to help.

A website can be a large investment for any business but it’s important to get the website design right. It needs to be practical to use, have a quick loading speed and look aesthetically pleasing too. Having a website that is hard to navigate around will actually put customers off, which is why you should have specific pages for certain information. Here are five pages every business must have to retain existing customers and keep bringing in new ones too.

Homepage

This is the first page the majority of your customers will see, whether you’re a product or service business. It will make the first impression so you need to keep it as simple as possible. That’s why the design of your website is so important. It needs to be unique to your business, amplify what you do and be functional at the same time. It should tell them how you can help them with your service or make their life easier using your product.

What to include: Keep it short and simple. You need to include some brief text to show customers what it is that your business does so try to include any mission statements, logos or slogans. They should be instantly able to recognise what industry you’re in and what you’re selling. Whilst pictures should be included, they should be smaller in file size. The slower a website loads, the more likely a customer will click elsewhere.

About Page

Here’s where you can start adding more text. However, too much text in one block will put people off. Make sure to break up any text using various heading sizes and bullet points. Including a back story of the business (especially for small businesses) can help to attract new customers too. You can also do a profile on the owner and any team members to show the people behind the business. When it comes to small and medium-sized businesses, people buy from other people!

What to include: Firstly, include a short summary of what the business does. A great way to tell people the background of the business is to use a timeline feature. You can incorporate photos and text in a widget to make it more interactive, rather than on a static page. Next, include a biography of the owner/s and any employees. You can always expand on this and link to a separate page for each staff member.

Products or Services Pages

This will be one of the bulkier sections as it’s what people are coming to your website for. However, it will vary depending on your business type. Product businesses should set up an online shop here with lots of internal linking to product listings. You could categorise your products to make it easier to navigate around.

Service-based businesses will have less but possibly more detailed pages here. You can have a landing page that talks about what you do in general and then internal links to more detailed information on each service you provide.

What to include: Keep the main page brief and add in pages to each product or service offered. You want to keep the information brief on the landing page so customers can pick and choose the products or services most appropriate to them. Include photos of products here too so people have a general idea of what to look out for. Service businesses can include testimonials from previous clients and examples of their work too.

Blog/latest News Page

To be seen online more and to rank higher in Google, you need to implement a solid SEO strategy for your business. Whilst SEO can be a minefield and is best left to the experts, an easy way to start is by providing informative articles on your industry and adding lots of internal links into them. Articles can be anything from company news and product launches to top tips and product guides. It can also help to determine the tone of voice for your business, whether that’s chatty or informative (most fall somewhere in between).

What to include: Product businesses should base their content around what they sell. You will need to brainstorm some ideas for this before implementing it though. Think about what frequent questions you get asked about your products, any topical news in your industry or uses for your products. All of these ideas can be written about in long-form content on a blog or news section.

Service businesses can show their expertise in their blog section. Write about any relevant industry topics, expertise on the services you provide and business news, such as milestones and behind the scenes.

Contact Page

What good is a website if you have no idea how to contact them? At the least, you should include an email address and links to social media. Larger businesses will have an address book of contact details, including phone numbers and addresses of other offices and stores. If you get a large amount of queries on similar topics, you could add in a frequently asked questions section here to avoid having tons of emails on the same topic.

What to include: A contact form is a simple way to have all queries sent to one inbox. Most of them are pretty standard with name, contact details and query details taken at once. If you have a physical store or head office, include address details and a map. Also, include any contact numbers, including any specific departments, so customers can send questions to the correct person.

Here, you can also include any links to your social media accounts. You should have links to them in your header and footer of all pages too but you can’t have those links in too many places if you want to build your business!

These five pages are the bare minimum every business website should have. The larger your business becomes, the more pages you will add. To begin with, keep it simple and easy to navigate. For more information on having a website designed for you, head straight to our services page.

Social media has grown into something akin to a monster over the past 20 years, becoming a platform for politics, hatred, and anger, a place to vent frustration, spread lies, and misinformation. Social media is powerful, a money-making machine for shareholders, vloggers, influencers, and brands.

However, social media is also a tool to sell products, spread good news, and celebrate life in general.

By producing eye-catching content and using such tools as Instagram Stories and the Facebook Market Place, anyone from the humble start-up to well-known brands can compete against one another on an even playing field.

Previously, small companies would struggle online with a low advertising budget. Still, today they are more likely to survive than they would on the high street, as social media platforms have helped them spread the word about their offerings.

People tend to be more influenced by what they read on social media than through casual conversations or what they watch on TV. It has become a monster, but what kind of monster is it? Good or bad?

Let us look at social media and its uses, whether good, bad, or ugly.

Sharing Information

Gossip has been with us since the days when we first learned to talk. People have shared information, valuable or invaluable, for fun or to be serious, good or bad, to help define who they are and to keep in touch with their audience.

As human beings, we crave attention and what better way to get that attention than on social media. It works for people, and it works for brands. It’s easy to access and post a comment to a worldwide audience at the stroke of a keyboard.

All of this has allowed social networks to grow and evolve. To feed their users appetites and to leave them demanding more. Social media has helped to shape our politics, our social issues, and views, reach out to family and friends far and wide and even make new friendships and relationships. It has introduced us to new products, new brands, new music, films and the famous and all of this has played a part in its ever-growing power.

Social Media Is Impactive

Did you know that nearly a quarter of the population is on social media? That is one hell of an audience for the brand, small business, politicians, the media, and attention seekers. The impact of a post can reach far and wide as it can build up a person or company or tear them apart. Any misdemeanour by a celebrity can reach millions of people through a single post or the simple use of a hashtag and can destroy their career in a matter of hours. Twitter spreads a news story faster than the established media.

Which Leads Us Onto News

Social media seems to be winning the war against traditional media. More and more people are turning to social media to find out what is happening in the world. Since the start of the internet, it has become easier for people to access news stories, unlike years before when you had to buy a newspaper to find out what was happening in the world or wait until the news came on the TV. With the advent of social media, anyone can be a journalist, break a news story with a simple tweet or post, or make or break a person or brand. Social media has helped make people more aware of what is happening in the world.

Marketing and Social Media

Social media has also become the go-to tool for marketers. The rise of digital marketing has been unstoppable, and brands or businesses without a social media presence are being left further behind. As we stated earlier, small businesses can compete with the big boys as they can more or less reach the same audience through digital marketing. With more digital companies springing up, pricing has become very competitive. At Smoking Chilli, we have marketing packages to suit all budgets.

There is an endless world of possibilities when it comes to reaching your target market on social media. It is very uncommon for people not to check their social media pages at least once a day. It is used for education, communication, and decision-making.

Social media is impactive, helpful, informative but can also be destructive and affect mental health.

We have seen celebrities such as Jesy Nelson of Little Mix who succumbed to the daily pressure of being in the public eye and open to abuse on social media affected by mental health issues. We have seen our footballers suffer racist abuse because of a penalty miss. Yes, social media is powerful for various reasons, for good, but there are issues.

So don’t be put off by social media. If it is treated well and with respect, it will return the favour. For small businesses, social media can be very impactful and helpful and put you in touch with your audience. It is an excellent marketing tool for targeting audiences related to your business.

If you need help with your business, social media, or digital marketing, drop us a line, and we will discuss how we can help your business grow.

Pay Per Click or PPC as it is more commonly known is an online advertising model in which advertisers pay for each time a user clicks on one of their online ads. Essentially, it is a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to drive them to your site organically (non-paid).

There are various, different types of Pay Per Click advertising models with the most common type being the paid search ad as an example Google Adwords. These are ads that appear when people search for things online using a search engine like Google – especially when they are performing commercial searches, meaning that they are looking for something to buy. This could be anything from a search on a mobile for a place to eat, to a local service, to a gift for someone or a higher end item like a car. All of these types of searches will trigger a pay-per-click ad.

With pay-per-click advertising, the business running the ad is only charged when the user actually does click on the ad, hence the term ‘pay per click’ or ‘PPC’. You set up your campaigns by writing ad copy and selecting relevant keywords and choosing a suitable landing page on your site

Various other forms of Pay Per Click advertising can include display advertising and remarketing.

There are 8 different types of pay per click ads

• Search ads
• Display ads
• Social ads
• Remarketing ads
• Google shopping
• Local service ads
• Gmail sponsored promotions
• Instream ads – Youtube

So How Does Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work?

In order, for the pay per click ads to appear alongside the search results as example on Google, advertisers cannot just simply pay more than their competitors to ensure that their ads appear more prominently and frequently than their competitor’s ads. Instead, ads are subject to what is known as an Ad Auction. This is an entirely automated process that Google and other search engines use to determine the relevance and validity of advertisements that appear on their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

How Keywords Work in Pay-Per-Click Advertising

As the name implies, the Ad Auction is used to select the ads that will appear on your pages and determine how much you will earn from those ads. In a traditional auction, interested bidders will state the maximum price they are willing to pay to buy a specific item. This means that advertisers must bid on the terms they want to activate or to display their ads. These terms are known as keywords. Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is all about. In terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), they are the words and the phrases that people type into their search engines when looking for content. This is also known as also ‘search queries’.

Need help with your PPC campaign?

A well-managed PPC campaign can immediately generate traffic, which leads to extra conversions. The traffic will be of high quality because the user has entered a term very closely related to what you offer. We aim to attract visitors who have a problem or need, that your company can solve.

Contact our team and see how we can help you.

These days social media has become an important inbound marketing strategy for any small business and an integral part for any marketing campaign. Creating high end content and invaluable content and ranking well for it on the SERP (search engine results page) is all well and good, but being able to share that content to the right customers straight away and getting those customers that are interested in your brand, product, or service back to your site is a whole different ball game.

Interacting with consumers on social media is becoming an important marketing strategy for small businesses and by using social media it can help you in a variety of different ways such as:

• Building brand awareness
• Increasing your customer base
• Connecting with current customers

So let’s take a look at some of the important reasons as to why social media for small business is a good thing and should be an integral part of your marketing strategy.

Communication

Communication with your customers is important to your small business or any business for that matter but it is always great to have all communication bases covered and this includes social media. Mailing addresses, a phone call, an email, and a contact form on your websites are all well and good, but if the customer has a quickfire question to ask or wants to share the good news about their order arriving or how great it is and even recommend you to other people they tend to go straight to a social media platform be it Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. The real-time advantages of social platforms is that they allow your business to engage with your customers in a quick and timely manner. You don’t have to be on every platform as there will be some platforms that are advantageous to your business, but it is very helpful to have a few active accounts where you know your customers are and can be found.

Understanding

Do you know who your customers and potential customers are? If you don’t know, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can be a great way in helping you collate date and find your target market. With analytical tools found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as examples, can help you find out more about your audience, what posts they react to, what times they are active and how many times they click through to your website. Understanding their ‘habits’ can define your online marketing strategy and ultimately increase traffic to your website.

Keeping A Step Ahead

Whilst any small business shouldn’t mimic every move that any of their competition may make, you should keep in mind and be fully aware of where they are at and what they are doing that maybe you are not or maybe you could improve on. If your competition as an example is more actively engaging through social media with their customers, they may have built a distinct advantage over you as having a good communication as we know is key to boosting a good reputation and business profile.

By simply having an active social media presence and profile, you are actually doing your business a massive favour and increasing your businesses visibility through search result pages. As we said earlier in this piece, you don’t need to plaster or bang on about your business on every single social platform, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube etc to show that you’re visibly active. Go to the sites where your brand’s voice will be amplified and at its strongest and be able to engage with your customers whilst still getting your brands message across

Need help with your business social media accounts? Contact us and let us help increase your digital presence