If you have been reading many SEO articles online, you might have heard about Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU). Are you experiencing traffic loss and rank drops for your old and new content after this update? In this article, we will discuss what HCU is and 8 strategies to write content that ranks high in Google. Content writers and website owners must understand this knowledge and strategies to survive and thrive their site or blog from this update.
What is Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU)?
Launched in 2022, it is Google’s algorithmic update prioritizing helpful content created for humans, not for search engines. This update is significantly important for content writers as they have to understand how Google evaluates and ranks content. After this update, content writers now have to focus on:
- The human readers to provide value and engagement.
- Research on their needs to provide helpful answers.
- Original and high-quality user-centric content without plagiarism.
- User experience optimization.
In short, let’s see a comparison of helpful and unhelpful content to help you understand better about the update:
Helpful Content vs. Unhelpful Content
| Helpful Content | Unhelpful Content | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | To provide valuable information, solve problems, and engage the audience | To manipulate Google rankings without real value |
| Focus | Audience needs and interests | Google algorithms and keywords |
| Content Quality | Original, well-researched, informative, and engaging | Thin, repetitive, plagiarized, or keyword-stuffed |
| Expertise | Demonstrates authoritativeness and expertise in the topic | Lacks depth, originality, or credibility |
| User Experience | User-friendly, easy to navigate, and mobile-responsive | Difficult to read, slow loading times, and poor mobile experience |
| Examples | In-depth articles, how-to guides, tutorials, reviews, and original research | Keyword-stuffed articles, thin and scraped content |
As you know most website owners want to rank high in Google and drive more traffic to their sites. But, they don’t properly research and create content on the needs and interests of their target audience. The result is thin, low-quality content that doesn’t meet Google quality standards. Due to this update, many websites have been affected in the SERPs (search engine results pages). If you don’t want your website caught up with HCU, this article is for you.
Which content does Google prefer to rank?
No one can say the ranking factors exactly as the Google search algorithm changes constantly. However, based on their research results, most SEO professionals believe that Google prefers to rank content:
- High-quality, relevant, and fresh
- SEO optimized
- User-friendly
- Strong backlinks
- Updated regularly
- Strong user engagement.
Backlinks have to be created or earned after the content is on the site. However, a website or content writer must keep in mind all other things (except it) in content strategies. Many articles have already been discussed online about HCU – ins and outs of it, how to recover from its penalty, and many other related things. Whether you have read them or not, we discuss here the strategies to write content that actually ranks, which are immune to Google’s Helpful Content Update.
Strategies to Write Content That Ranks in Google
When you apply these content-writing strategies, you may need to find topic ideas to write about on your target niche. For finding unlimited content ideas for your site or blog, read this article: How to Use ChatGPT for Finding Blog Content Ideas
Strategy 1:
Niche-Specific Problem-Solving
You might have seen many websites write on broad topics. Are you doing like them? No, you can’t rank in search results if you are a low-authority site. Instead, identify specific problems your target audience faces within your niche. Write content providing your unique solutions they might not find elsewhere.
It means that, instead of writing for everyone, you should focus on your target people and write your solutions deeply tailored to their unique pain points.
For example, you have a website for mountain bikers. Instead of writing generic articles like “Best mountain bikes”, write “Upgrading Your Mountain Bike on a Budget: A Step-by-Step Guide for Trail Riders”.
Doing so will provide a solution specifically to trail riders who are looking for bikes at an affordable price.
This strategy means two things for you – to find your niche-specific problems and write about your solutions on a topic that you are well familiar with. Well-written content in this way will rank in Google.
Tips:
To find niche-specific problems
- Use a keyword research tool like SEMRush or AnswerThePublic and search for a broad topic keyword. See the results for long-tail keywords.
- You can even use ChatGPT for this purpose. Open it and ask like this “What are common problems new [website audience] face and how can they solve them?”
Strategy 2:
Curated Content with a Curator’s Touch
Don’t commit the mistakes of regurgitated content. Google won’t rank it. Regurgitated content is content that is copied or reused without any significant changes or improvements. Google may crawl but may not index it. It’s like someone swallowing something and spitting it back without digesting it. Such content is treated as low quality and unhelpful. The internet is full of such articles.
It means that you have nothing wrong with curating content. But you should make it stand out by adding your valuable insights.
How to do it:
Suppose, you curate recipes. Instead of most written “healthy recipes”, choose a niche like busy weeknights. Then, collect the best recipes for busy weeknights from reliable sources. Add more value like time-saving tips or expert advice on healthy meal planning. This will make your article helpful to readers.
This strategy teaches that you can create articles by curating content. However, write them for your specific audience by adding valuable insights from your experience to make them unique and helpful.
Tips:
You can use AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini for brainstorming content curation ideas on your topic. You can even brainstorm insights you can add to the article using AI.
Strategy 3:
Content in Underrepresented Formats
Written content may not be ideal for everyone. So, you can find other content formats your audience would love. Would they enjoy infographics, videos, quizzes, or templates instead of text-only content? If you find they like the format, it would be helpful content.
For example, you have a gardening website. Instead of a text article, if you create a post titled “Visually Stunning Guide to Container Gardening: An Infographic for Beginners” by designing an infographic, your visitors will be happy to see it. Because it is easy to understand and follow.
Free tools you can use:
- Canva for infographics
- Kapwing for videos
- Google Forms for quizzes
Strategy 4:
Future-Proofing Existing Content
The world is changing fast. Revisit old content on your website. Are they still relevant or valuable to readers? You must update them with the latest data, trends, or best practices to ensure accuracy and continued value.
For example, you have a blog post on “Top Social Media Trends in 2023.”
Trends will change over time. Things in 2023 may not be the same in 2024. So, find old content that requires updating and update it to align with the latest trends. This will make sure your post is still relevant to readers, making their trust endure.
Tips:
As you are working on your niche, you can update your old pages to the latest trends easily. Do it one by one and take this advantage to further improve them for readers and search engines. You can also use AI like Google Gemini or Microsoft Copilot to generate the latest trends that help your pages updated. Use this prompt:
“What are the latest trends in [topic]?”
Strategy 5
Addressing Common Misconceptions
There might be common misconceptions in the niche you are working on. Identify those misconceptions and create articles by providing well-sourced references to inform that they are false beliefs. Provide accurate information and helpful solutions. Doing so will build visitors’ trust in your website because you educate them to make the right decisions.
For example, you have a home improvement blog and heard that a cracked foundation needs a full rebuild. Write an article clarifying that it doesn’t always require a full rebuild. Offer your solutions and explain when professional help is needed. If it is a well-written content, people will be happy to read it and search engines will love to rank.
Tips:
Create valuable content addressing such topics of misunderstanding you know. You can also leverage AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude to find common misconceptions. Use a prompt like this:
“What are some common misconceptions about [topic]?”
Strategy 6:
Highly Tailored Content for User Personas
In the above, we have discussed creating content on specific problems (Strategy 1) and preferred content formats (Strategy 3) for your target audience. You can create articles on the two strategies combined. It is beyond demographics. Develop audience personas considering their pain points, goals, and content formats they love. Now, create content to resonate with each persona on your site.
Suppose, you have a website based on fitness. You want to write about daily workout habits. But you see two people to target – one is busy moms and another is busy office goers. And you want to create content in their preferred formats. So, you have to create two different pieces of content specifically for each persona in their preferred format.
Here, this helpful content idea speaks to a specific group of people on their needs and goals. This will increase engagement on your website. Because they feel that you understand what they are looking for, they will likely come back for more.
Tips:
As mentioned above, you can use AI to generate different personas for your site audience and create highly tailored content for any of them. Fill your topic and use this AI prompt:
“Generate different personas for my website audience on [topic].”
Strategy 7:
Local Business SEO with a Personal Touch
This will be a useful content idea for local businesses. Showcasing the human side of your business can help you create unique, quality content. Highlight the expertise of your team, local connections, and unique stories behind the business. Such content builds trust and reliability with potential customers.
For example, a bakery can create content titled “Meet the Bakers! A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Our Newly Opened Bakery”. This gives local customers a chance to see the faces of your team members and their work, making them feel more connected and confident to buy from you.
Strategy 8:
Interactive Content that Educates
Based on your audience’s needs, you can create interactive content that teaches them to solve their problems. An interactive content can be:
- A quiz that asks questions on a problem and answers the solution at the end.
- A calculator that allows users to input their details and generate a personalized plan for their goal.
- A decision-making tool that allows users to input some options and suggests the best alternative.
Interactive content makes visitors learn more enjoyably and effectively.
By focusing on these unique ways of creating content, you can become a thought leader in your niche and improve Google ranking and traffic on your website. The goal is to create highly personalized exceptional content on your audience’s needs that keeps them coming back for more.
So far, you have read strategies to help you create high-quality, HCU-proof content. Now how to create content that deserves to rank in Google for your content marketing game? Read on.
How did I write a copy that made $30,586 for me without effort?
That was a huge amount to me at that time. It was around 17 years ago. I thought about making money online when I was ready to leave mail order business. In the meantime, I heard about affiliate marketing. I was eager to join Amazon Associate Program thinking it could make some money for me.
Then, I signed up for my affiliate account on Amazon and selected some books on a topic. In those days, I did not know about search engine optimization, content writing skills, SEO tools, or any guide to teach me. However, I managed to write a copy about the books to see if I could earn money from Amazon.
I started writing and it took me almost 30 days to finish it to my satisfaction. I thought it should be a good copy that could ensure every reader to buy one of the books without fail, so I took so long time to complete the copy.
I wrote on paper and the first draft took about three days. I spent the remaining days improving and making it effective. Every day I read the draft to fill in any missing points, replace any negatively influenced words, and make adjustments. After doing it for some time, I wrote the draft entirely again with new improvements.
I continued improving and rewriting repeatedly. I imagined readers what they would like and think when reading it. Whenever a good idea or phrase came to my mind, I used it to enhance effectiveness. Then, I typed the draft into a Word document and printed it out. I read it to check for any missing valuable points or over-hyped points. It continued for days. Finally, I was pleased with any angle of potential readers’ views and finalized the copy after around 30 days.
I generated affiliate links for the books from Amazon and inserted them on the page. After some essential design processes, I published the page on my website at last. A month later, one day I remembered the page and searched in Google with some keywords I used to focus on. To my wonder, I found the page within the top three positions in the results for every keyword. After a month, I saw my first earning of $10.25 in my Amazon Associate Dashboard. My earnings were increasing month after month. That single page could earn up to $30,586 without any promotional efforts.
Due to some privacy reasons, I don’t want to tell you the website page URL. But I did it, really.
What is the takeaway from this story?
To create a concrete copy for the target readers with a human touch. That’s it!
At that time, I didn’t know about social media, PPC advertising, SEO, link building, research tools, artificial intelligence, etc. What I did was create the affiliate page and publish it on my website. Nothing else! Today, you have everything. Instead of the 30 days I took to write that copy, now you can write an article in seconds with AI. Today, you have books and courses to learn the skills, software tools for research, and advanced AI to help you in every step of content strategy. I mean you can create high-quality content in a very short time to flood your website with traffic if you have the right skills.
However, be careful if you use AI tools. Google often treats AI-generated content as low-quality due to a lack of depth and other issues. You need to improve before publishing online. Consider these elements for the content quality whether you use AI or not:
- E-A-T: It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s a set of Google guidelines to evaluate the quality of a web page. It assesses if you have the necessary knowledge and experience on the topic (Expertise), are an authority in the field (Authoritativeness), and write the content accurately without bias and misleading (Trustworthiness). For more details, read this SEJ article.
- User Intent: You usually write an article focussing on a topic or keyword. Identify the intent of the keyword to know what the searcher is looking for (information, product, etc). This helps to create content effectively for it.
- Content relevance: It refers to how your content is appropriate and useful for its intended audience and purpose. You should write it addressing the needs and interests of the readers on the topic in accurate and valuable details.
- Content Freshness: It refers to how up-to-date and relevant your content is. Make sure you write it with a fresh perspective.
- Content Depth and Detail: Write thoroughly and informatively exploring the topic comprehensively, covering all relevant aspects and nuances. Use concrete examples to support evidence and specific data that support your points.
- Content Personalization: Write to a specific group of people having similar interests based on the topic instead of focusing on everyone. This creates a unique experience for each person.
- Keyword Research: Research and include related keywords (including entity terms) throughout the article.
- Title and Meta Descriptions: Make them enticing to enhance Click-Through Rate (CTR) in Google SERPs.
- Content Engagement: Make people interact with and respond to your page. Encourage them to read the entire page, leave comments or share thoughts, click on a link, or share it with others.
- On-page SEO: Optimize the content and structure of your page carefully to rank higher in search engine results before you publish it. Use these on-page SEO tools.
- Backlinks: You must build backlinks (links from other sites) if you target highly competitive keywords.
- Mobile Optimization: The number of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) used to browse websites keeps increasing. So, make sure your website pages are prioritized for mobile users. It improves search visibility on Google.
- Voice Search Optimization: People often use voice in Google search as technology advances. Optimize your content for voice search to drive extra organic traffic from Google.
But, what if you don’t have the required skill and experience for these things? You can still learn anything. Below are our recommendations to excel in content writing:
- Before anything else, you need the art of writing to influence readers. Read > The Best Content Writing Books
- You need to learn SEO-friendly content writing. Read > The Best SEO copywriting courses
- Learn to use AI tools. Read > AI content writing tools
- Be excellent in using AI. Read > AI prompt engineering courses
- If you need experienced writers for your site, check out > Affordable content writing services
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Ibochouba Singh is a content writer and reviewer with a passion for writing about digital marketing and tech gadgets, including software tools and new tech gadgets. He has over 15 years of experience writing for several consumers and clients, including tech startups, marketing agencies, and software companies. He is writing many articles and product reviews for many websites, including nigcworld.com, buywin.in, medium.com, and quora.com.
