„Useful content and helpful content overlap, but they are not quite the same.“   Warren Laine-Naida 

The difference is what the content enables someone to do.

  • Useful content provides information someone needs.
  • Helpful content uses that information to solve a problem, make a decision, or take action.

For example, imagine someone wants to improve their website’s SEO.


Content Example What it delivers
Useful A list of 10 SEO tools Information
Helpful Which SEO tool to use, when, and why Guidance
Both A comparison of tools, including costs, limitations, and recommendations for different situations Information that supports a decision and makes you taking action

Steak with Cajun pastaUseful content lists the ingredients for Cajun spices.

 

Helpful content gives you a recipe that uses them.

 

The best content goes further:

 

step-by-step instructions, images or video that help you make the dish yourself.

Don’t just inform. Help people do.

Disclaimers:

With the Helpful Content Update, Google is aiming to ensure that content is created for people and adds value. Content that is created just for visibility will be detected by Google and can negatively impact rankings. If you’ve been following best practices and creating valuable content for users, the Helpful Content Update shouldn’t have a negative impact and could even improve your rankings. However, a new perspective is that Google will likely evaluate quality at the domain level, not on an individual page. This means that „bad“ content on a site can also hurt the „good“ content.

If you have content that doesn’t add value to your readers, was created just for search engines, or merely summarizes content from others, you should consider removing it.

What to do anyway? 

Google primarily assesses websites through its search algorithm, which considers a variety of factors. E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and the „Helpful Content“ update are concepts that Google emphasizes in its search quality guidelines. However, Google does not provide specific tools to measure websites solely based on E-A-T or the „Helpful Content“ update. The measurement and evaluation are rather done indirectly via a range of factors that influence these concepts.
Here are five important tools that can help to evaluate and improve the quality of your website according to Google’s guidelines:
1. **Google Search Console**: This free tool from Google allows webmasters to check and optimize the indexing status of their website. Moreover, it provides valuable insights into search queries leading to your website and shows if there are any problems with the website’s display in the search results.
2. **Google Analytics**: Another free tool from Google that provides detailed statistics about the traffic on your website. It allows you to see where your visitors are coming from, which pages they visit, and how long they stay, among many other factors. These insights can help you to improve the user experience on your website, which can positively affect your ranking.
3. **Google PageSpeed Insights**: This tool rates the performance of your website on desktop and mobile devices and gives suggestions for improving speed and overall performance.
4. **Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool**: This tool enables you to check whether Google correctly reads and interprets your structured data (e.g., schema markups). This can be especially important to ensure that Google correctly recognizes crucial information such as authorship of content (an aspect of E-A-T).
5. **SEO Tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz**: These tools offer detailed SEO analyses, keyword tracking, and backlink analyses to assist you in optimizing your website. They can also be used to check the content for quality and relevance, two key factors for the „Helpful Content“ update.
It’s important to note that Google’s algorithms are secret and very complex. The tools mentioned above can contribute to improving the visibility and performance of your website, but there’s no guarantee for specific results. The best strategy is always to create high-quality, relevant content that provides real value to users.
  • aka: Helpful Content