With HCU, Google also made it so that if the algorithm detected that just one page had poor, unhelpful content, it would downgrade the entire website, its traffic, and ranking.
James Ogunjimi
If you work in marketing, you may have been hearing digital marketers kick and talk about something called HCU since last week after Google’s web creator summit, and how it has done damage to their SEO work.
You may have even noticed a drop in organic traffic to your own business or personal websites. If you’ve been vigilant enough and tracking, you’d have noticed it’s been declining for a while and not a sudden development. So, what’s going on?
Well, it’s Google.
Let's start from the beginning...
Sometime in August 2022, Google released an algorithm update called the Helpful Content Update (HCU).
This update was supposed to help Google prioritize and rank content created for humans over content created deliberately to rank on search engines using the necessary keywords whether or not they’re helpful.
An example of content created for ranking purposes would be those list-based blog posts whose inspiration came from Semrush or the likes. Like “5 reasons why Nigerian jollof is better than Ghanaian jollof” with a view to ranking for “Nigerian jollof” keyword or its variation.
With HCU, Google also made it so that if the algorithm detected that just one page had poor, unhelpful content, it would downgrade the entire website, its traffic, and ranking.
Anyway, with that August 2022 update, so many websites fell off badly. Their ranking for keywords plummeted and since some were even making money off of the traffic, their earnings dropped.
But Google didn’t stop there, 4 months later in December 2022, Google released E-E-A-T, an improvement on E-A-T that was launched in 2014.
The new E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) prioritized and ranked website content written by authorities within that field.
So, in finance, medical, legal, etc, only content written by actual professionals within that field got priority and ranked over the ones written by random people or content people looking to make money off content they have no expertise for.
This made even more website traffic go down badly and caused an uproar.
It didn’t help too that OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, which further made the job of deciding which content was written organically and which ones were AI-generated even more difficult for Google.
To calm frayed nerves, earlier this year in March, Google loosened the noose a bit, deciding that the algorithm would no longer downgrade entire websites based on bad content on just one page but would downgrade just that page instead.
That has not solved the problem.
Google held a web creators summit last week and at the event, Google representatives claimed they don’t even know how to solve the problem of falling traffic despite good content and that if you were affected, don’t expect things to go back to normal.
Google emphasized that Search has changed and nobody should expect things to go back to what it was before HCU was launched even if they did find a solution through a coming update.
In fact, Google’s VP of Search told marketers present that “I am very, very sorry for you… I can’t give you any guarantees about recovery… In the meantime, I’d do something else.”
Basically, we feel your pain, but find something else to do.
Anyway, nuff said already. What can be done? Here’s what I think:
1. Try Social Media
If you’ve already experienced the drop in organic traffic numbers, consider using social media to support rather than relying on just being found on search engines through the keywords or backlinks.
When you publish a post, share on your socials and encourage friends and followers to read. It doesn’t quite have the same effect and can’t pull the same numbers as organic search but it’s better than nothing.
Add share buttons on your posts. Or make it possible for people to quickly share snippets to their socials without needing to copy directly.
2. Use notifications
Integrate notification widgets/plugins that allow people to subscribe directly to get notified when there’s a new post. That way, when you publish a new blog post, a notification pops up on their phones or laptops asking them to read.
If your business has an app, consider using push notification tools to push your new content to your customers or audience.
3. Consider email marketing
With email marketing, you can push your content to hundreds, or thousands, depending on your email list size. That way, when you publish a new post, your subscribers get it directly in their email.
You can consider SMS too if it won’t be too invasive for your subscribers. You know them better, so, decide.
4. Change your content approach
This is something I implemented recently: let the pros within each department in the company author content that relates to what they do.
Don’t worry, I’m not naive enough to think that you’d get the finance manager to sit down and write a blog post for you.
But… you can sit down with them, get their points, and let the comms or marketing team do the writing. But the ideas/opinions need to come from the actual pro with their names also listed as author of the content on the website alongside their title and bio.
For instance, if you work as a content person in the health space, most times, what’s obtainable is that the content team writes a blog post like “Most Common Health Issues of 2024 and How to Avoid Them” based on what Semrush says people are asking.
A better way going forward would be to sit down with one of the doctors or pharmacists or practicing pros, let them share their professional opinion on this. Then the content team writes the piece, publishes it and puts the name of that Doctor as the author, with their bio showing their qualifications.
If your name as the writer absolutely needs to be there, you can add “Edited by” and put your name. But if you want to retain your organic traffic numbers or keep it from plummeting, you need to consider this.
While all of these suggestions won’t magically fix a drop in traffic that has already occurred, they’d give you a chance to still continue getting eyes on your content while Google sorts out their shit.
If you’re looking for help with your content, let’s talk here.
