Google's Helpful Content Update: A Pathway to Better Web Practices
So, you’ve been hit by the HCU; I feel you! That’s why I put together this short guide to help you; some of these tips you may already know but combined with the overall strategy may help your website recover; after all, if it is already in decline, what do you have to lose? Let's jump in! 1. Content decay It refers to content that has been literally ‘abandoned’ ’ or neglected over time, leading to a gradual decrease in its relevance and freshness. What happens is that if you don’t update old content, your competitors will start outranking you in search results; perhaps they build backlinks or make their content more ‘resourceful’ than yours. I know it's painful but think of it as if you were still in school. Today, you are the best in your class, but if you stop studying and learning, others who continue to work hard and improve will eventually surpass you. Also, another important factor is that if your pages don’t get any clicks, can pull your entire site down; those pages are, in fact, considered ‘dead weight pages’ Google hates wasting the crawl budget on unhelpful pages that don’t get any clicks. So what do you do? In my opinion, you should update those pages; I know that some people out there say that if updating those pages doesn’t work, then you should delete them altogether. This is where it gets controversial because a recent case study from Easy Blog Networks, mentions the following: 80% of deindexed blogs have 30% or more of all traffic redirected to the homepage. 90% of indexed blogs have less than 5% of all traffic redirected to the homepage. And it makes absolutely sense! If you have too many redirects, why would Google trust your site? It signals a lack of stability and consistency in your content structure. Now, I would try the following if your site doesn’t show signs of recovery: First things first, update old pages and use screaming Frog to help you streamline the process. I know is expensive, but I haven’t found any other quick solution for it.