DEV Community

Cover image for The 9 Key Questions for Google's Helpful Content Update
Colin McDermott for Search Candy

Posted on

The 9 Key Questions for Google's Helpful Content Update

Google's new AI powered Helpful Content Update is rolling out right now.

SEO experts are predicting it could be quite a big update.

Planning a quick content audit is something you might want to consider.

Here are the 9 questions Google recommend you ask in relation to your content.

  1. Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
  2. Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
  3. Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
  4. Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
  5. Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you'd write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
  6. Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
  7. 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).
  8. Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you'd get search traffic?
  9. 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?

If you run an ecommerce site we have put together a guide to the Helpful Content Update that you can read here.

Top comments (0)