What Causes the Google Helpful Content Update (HCU)

E498: What causes and what triggers the Google Helpful Content (HCU).

Here are my notes, explained in the episode:
-Google Helpful Content Update uses a tag, a machine learning classifier. Very little chance of recovery or a long recovery period.
-Content websites that are making money through ads and affiliate links.
-It’s really many affiliate sites being hit.
-Less e-commerce, less news, more content sites being hit.
-Having a brand reduces chances of being hit.
-Having good Domain Authority reduces chances of being hit.
-Sites that are hit use lots of automation, are buying links, are using AI text, etc.
-Sites that are hit are doing too much “best of” keywords and titles. Too much “top 10” “top 5” keywords and titles, as well.
-Having a product to sell puts you at an advantage.
-They’re targeting top and middle of funnel keywords with a different page for each granular variation.
-It’s a punitive update applied to your whole site.
-The content on pages is clearly written for search engines and not for humans.
-The HCU was sandwiched between other updates, so attribution got messed up.
-It’s not about what niche you’re in, it’s about what type of website you have.
-Again, going after tiny keyword variations with a page per each. Duplicate spam AI content.
-The sites are only getting their traffic from search.
-The sites are automating a lot of content creation.
-Mediocre to low-quality content made for search engines. It doesn’t feel like the content was written by a human. The content doesn’t feel like it’s from somebody who knows what they’re talking about.
-Automated pages.
-It’s best to try to build a real brand or even a personal brand with somebody behind it.
-Reddit has grown so much partially because it absorbed the losses from the HCU.

00:00 Introduction to Google's Helpful Content Update
00:43 My Research Sources
01:28 Identifying Affected Sites
01:46 Common Traits of Penalized Sites
03:52 SEO Strategies to Avoid Penalties
04:56 Case Study: Analyzing a Penalized Site
07:57 Building a Brand
14:21 Takeaways
14:56 Podcast Outro

The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/

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