How Helpful Content Update can impact your e-commerce

“When Google sneezes, the whole internet has a runny nose” might be a paraphrase of a popular saying - for good reason. Google has almost a monopoly on the search engine market, with the company's market share reaching 91.9% The site records nearly 90 billion visits each month. The power of the brand is evidenced by the fact that 16.3% of traffic comes from people who search for the name "Google" to hit the home page of a search engine.

Google underwent major changes to its search algorithm several times, and each time it ended as a revolution in the operating models of online companies. The latest update is called "Helpful Content Update"

What is helpful content update

Helpful content update is the latest update that aims to transform organic search results so that the content users receive is as useful and helpful for them as possible. Simply put, this means that the purpose of the search engine is to provide the user with the best possible experience in using the search engine and to provide him with the best answers to his questions.

These “best answers” ​​are to be presented above at the expense of texts that are mass-produced and optimized for search engines. According to Google observations, there is a direct and clear correlation between the content written for SEO and its low substantive value.

Why Google is reaching for helpful content update

With the scale of Google's reach and the money involved, it's no wonder that professionals and agencies are creating increasingly sophisticated techniques for manipulating search results. The most popular ones include mass production of similar content, which differ in keywords, and building your own back office based on old, taken over domains.

By knowing these techniques, it is possible to rank high in search results, which often allows you to drive huge free traffic to your pages.

However, from the perspective of Google, the user receives poor-quality content in the search engine that does not meet his needs. So he has to look further or - in the worst situation from the company's perspective - turn to a different medium, for example another search engine or ask a question on Facebook.

Helpful Content Update is therefore needed by the Alphabet concern, the owner of Google, so that its basic product performs its function effectively and provides a useful and comprehensive answer to the question asked. The assessment will be carried out by an additional algorithm based on artificial intelligence, the purpose of which will be to assess whether the content is of high or low quality.

Who can expect a downfall of traffic?

As with previous updates to the search algorithm, there will be both winners and losers. The latter group includes mainly sites that use not-so-fair SEO techniques and mass production of materials with the needs of search engines in mind.

In this case, sites with:

• repetitive content - if a page uses content that in practice is repeating the same information using different words, the Google algorithm will most likely classify it as of little value.
• content that adds a little - the information contained in the materials should comprehensively answer users' questions and focus on added value. Thus, if the dominant element of the material are different configurations of keywords,
• spam - companies that have saturated their website and their facilities with a huge amount of low-quality content can lose the most - this is the so-called SEO spam. The update indicates that one form of such spam is content produced by AI based on the keywords indicated.

What problems may e-shops have with the update

From the perspective of online stores, updating may carry some risk. Organic search results are one of the most important sources of traffic for the e-commerce industry. At the same time, the preparation of appropriate content for e-commerce is a considerable challenge, both organizational and creative. The most important challenges faced by stores include.

• Repetitive product descriptions - writing a variety of product descriptions that differ only in texture or color is a real challenge for copywriters. However, in order for the store not to suffer after the introduction of helpful content update, it would be ideal to prepare a unique description for each product.
• Low diversity of offer - this is a similar problem as in the case of repeated descriptions of individual products. Many stores build their position on a narrow specialization with a narrow set of keywords. If your business doesn't provide additional content, for example in the form of a blog, it can be difficult to maintain your previous positions. In practice, the new guidelines promote stores that offer many products as part of their own specialization.
• Many stores repeat descriptions from the manufacturer - companies that have decided to use the descriptions provided by the manufacturer are in the most difficult situation. If the same description is repeated in many competing stores, the algorithm will most likely consider the content to be of little value.

How to check if your content is helpful enough

As with previous algorithm updates, Google has provided some general guidelines around the changes. However, in this case, decisions regarding the recognition of specific content as useful or not made by artificial intelligence. The change is so recent that good practices are lacking. For this reason, stores have to act on their own and prepare responses to a new situation on their own.

• Check the impact - the key is to observe the site and test for any unexpected changes in position or movement. If one of the pages is experiencing sudden increases in popularity, you should check what distinguishes it from the rest of the materials on the site. The same should be done if it records declines.
• Make improvements - creating content in an online store should not be viewed as "done" or not. Rather, it is an ongoing process aimed at achieving the best possible result. With a sufficiently persistent session of improving the material, the algorithm will eventually consider it good enough to improve the store's place in search results.
• Turn effective actions into good practices - due to the lack of general good practices related to creating content for helpful content update, every success should be documented. Thanks to this, it will be possible to create your own policies and tips on how to create new materials for the website. Such a document may build a real competitive advantage in the long run.
• Reach for expert knowledge - employees are the strengths of companies. Many stores have real specialists in their niche who have been serving customers for many years, advising them and leading them through the purchasing process. Their comments and observations can be very valuable for customers, and thus contribute to the process of creating helpful content indicated by Google

Tips from Google

The very concept of "helpful content" is vague and very subjective - also for people. In this case, the quality of the content is to be determined by machines, which causes even greater anxiety among website owners.

Google did not remain indifferent to users' doubts. The company has prepared a set of questions that will allow you to assess to what extent the content will fit your expectations. These include:

• Do existing customers find the content interesting or useful?
• Does the site have a topic or thematic scope?
• Is profound knowledge shown in the texts?
• The company also provided questions indicating that the content could be assessed as poor quality:
• Will users have to look for additional information after reading the text?
• Is the content a summary of knowledge collected elsewhere?
• Was the content intentionally written in a specific volume "because this is how it positions itself more effectively"?
• Are the texts on the website prepared by people without knowledge of the topic?

Summary

Helpful content update targets organizations that abuse Google's mechanisms to maximize their traffic with no benefit to the end user. In practice, it is a change for the better, which will allow those who put the user's experience first, and will reduce the visibility of those who have obtained their positions by artificially pumping ranges.