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/ #seotips #searchengineoptimization #helpfulcontentupdate #marketingstrategy