Understanding the Impact of Google’s Helpful Content Update: A Publisher’s Perspective
In recent years, the landscape of online publishing has undergone significant shifts, driven by evolving algorithm updates and changing content quality standards. One of the most consequential changes has been Google’s Helpful Content Update, introduced in late 2023, which aimed to prioritize human-centric, genuinely useful content. While well-intentioned, the rollout has left many publishers, especially smaller and mid-sized outlets, facing unexpected declines in visibility and traffic.
A Case Study: From Authority to Obscurity
Consider a long-established Australian men’s lifestyle publication I’ve been running for over 15 years. Prior to the update, it attracted more than 8 million monthly visitors, covering topics like watches, cars, and travel with a dedicated, small editorial team. Despite adhering to quality standards—original content, relevance, and tone—the site’s organic traffic plummeted to just 300,000 visitors per month over a span of two and a half years. Importantly, this decline was not due to penalties or manual actions but appeared to be an outcome of the algorithm’s natural evolution.
The Challenge and the Response
Initially, the decline was baffling. We aimed to comply fully with Google’s guidelines, undertaking extensive audits and editorial revisions—removing thin content, restructuring categories, enhancing internal linking, and ensuring content authenticity with expert contributors. Despite these efforts, the traffic narrative remained bleak, leading us to seek external expertise.
Engaging industry experts such as SEO consultant Lily Ray proved insightful. Her recommendations included refining category structures, improving internal link strategies, and isolating content that could be harming discoverability—such as potentially problematic tags or non-essential sections. Yet, even with these adjustments, the results did not improve as hoped.
Further scrutinizing our content and structure, we took drastic measures:
- Removing tags: We eliminated all tag pages, which, despite being common in WordPress setups, showed no SEO benefit.
- Deleting entire content verticals: Categories like Sports, Entertainment, and Style, which had slowed down or stagnated, were removed entirely, aiming to reduce any broadness or dilution of relevance.
- Auditing ‘thin’ content: Articles with low word counts or minimal substance, often under 200 words, were noindexed or removed, though this was not based solely on word count but perceived usefulness.
- Addressing embedded media and quote-heavy articles: We restructured or removed media embeds and lengthy quote-based pieces,