Googles helpful content update targets sites creating content for search engines

searchengineland.com

9 points·rockdiesel··5 comments

Interesting... if this works the way they designed it to (or, for the more cynical out there, "the way they claim they designed it to"), it'll shift SEO away from Google-bombing / keyword bombing and towards producing quality content. On the other hand, depending on how it quite works, it might end up just replacing the bomb site results with "most engaging" sites, which could be considered a net negative result, since I think we've all learned in recent years that engagement metrics are a poor substitute for quality metrics.

> if a site gets hit by this helpful content update, it can take several months for the site to recover

Ouch, this will be detrimental to sites hit by this

This is not remotely a new idea for Google.

Why are they suddenly concerned about it now?

If this solves the problem where their results are useless unless you add "reddit", it's the best thing they could be doing.

Not a new idea, but they've stepped up the language and announced new signals to encourage sites to stop trying to game the search engine with useless content.

SEO consultants might need to start hiring good writers instead of bean-counters: "We've audited your site and you need 10 more landing pages each containing 250 words of lifeless keyword-stuffed repetition."

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