Google's helpful content update: What should we expect? - Search Engine Land

SEOs may be in for another shakeup similar to Penguin's launch 10 years ago. Here's what you need to know about Google's new update.

The new helpful content update sounds like a big deal.

Google has given us a list of questions to consider to determine whether our sites are designed to help people, or rather, created to do well on search engines.

If the latter is the case, you may find yourself hit with a sitewide signal that makes it difficult to rank.

If this update has a strong impact, which I believe it will, we may be in for another shakeup in the world of SEO like we had following the launch of Penguin 10 years ago.

If you have focused more on SEO efforts than creating content for humans to benefit from, this could strongly affect your site. It still remains to be seen how powerful this ranking signal is.

Does it affect all sites that use SEO?

Google was careful to note in their blog post that this update does not invalidate following SEO best practices.

They say, “SEO is a helpful activity when it’s applied to people-first content” and link to their SEO starter guide. Google is not against search engine optimization.

This update is geared toward sites that have gamed the system, creating content that isn’t super helpful to people but still ranking well because of SEO rather than on the merit of the content on the site.

Is it a penalty?

Google is careful in its wording regarding whether this is a penalty.

It’s not a manual action. You won’t see it listed in Google...

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