Google’s Helpful Content System
What is it and what does it mean for your dental website?
We’ve discussed elsewhere on the Dental Media blog how Google uses various signals from websites to determine where they should be positioned in the overall search engine results. There are many of these signals which Google collects and then processes algorithmically to evaluate the quality of your website and most importantly how well it serves users and answers their questions.
The highly experienced SEO team at Dental Media has tracked the numerous changes introduced by Google over the last 20 years or so, from the early days where it website ranking was fairly unsophisticated, through to the far more complex and nuanced environment today. Google has become much better at differentiating between good and bad websites and it is important to understand how they do this so that we can give our dental SEO clients the best chance of success with their own websites.
Today we will look at Google’s Helpful Content System which is part of their algorithmic processing and an important ranking signal. This system has been known about for the last few years and periodically Google will apply changes to the system to introduce new features and update existing ones. Please note that the Helpful Content System is just one of the many mechanisms which Google uses to determine website quality, but it appears to be becoming increasingly important and impactful.
How does the Helpful Content System work?
Of course we’ll never know the specifics as Google keeps the details a closely guarded secret. However, if we read their guidance we will note:
“The helpful content system aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well”.
This alone should tell us what they are trying to achieve. They go on to tell us that the system also identifies unhelpful content i.e. of little apparent value and likely not serving visitors well. The system appears to look at the overall levels of helpful AND unhelpful content on a website and then aggregates this to create a site-wide signal for use in their ranking algorithms. Again we should note that this is one of many signals, albeit an important one.
What does this mean for a dental practice website?
Whilst Google tends to use these types of systems to isolate and penalise egregious cases, e.g. websites which scrape other people’s content and then publish it as their own, the principles still extend through to smaller websites and help to define best practice. Your site can still be adversely affected if you break the rules and equally, you can benefit greatly if you follow them.
At the core of the guidance is the principle that you must strive to publish content which provides a great user experience and answers user’s questions. Here we can see why minimalist content on your website isn’t a great idea, even though your designer or dental coach may have told you to concentrate solely on the aesthetics. Remember that you have to satisfy the user which in turn will help with Google. So if a user comes to your website looking for specific answers regarding dental implants for example, but you only provide a minimalist overview, then chances are you won’t win. You many wonder how Google knows? These days websites for dentists come equipped with Google Analytics and the data it produces e.g. the time a user spent on your web page, provides everything Google needs to make their quality assessments.
How do you satisfy the Helpful Content System?
I think this becomes more and more self-explanatory as we progress and the concepts are relatively straightforward. Here is a quick summary of our guidance to clients when we begin a new website project for them:
- Ensure your treatment content is comprehensive, unique and engaging. This will help to ensure that a user will stay for longer on your page and help send the appropriate signal for Google’s algorithm.
- Avoid minimalism – you don’t need to write a book but you do need sufficient to make your content meaningful.
- Use FAQs – to make sure your pages don’t become cluttered, ensure that the most impactful content is positioned high up on the page. Then use a comprehensive FAQ section lower down.
- Don’t let your content go stale. This doesn’t mean that good content needs to be changed out periodically – good content can be old but still very useful and Google can recognise this. However, if you have dry old pages which are years old and where your analytics data indicates poor engagement, then you really should consider changing this up.
- Use a blog – a blog is a great way to add useful new content on a regular basis and build the footprint of a dental website over time. For example, the Dental Media blog has well over 600 articles, has been under development for 12 years and is one of the key reasons why we rank top for many key searches. So it really is worth your time. Conversely, keep in mind that short, generic articles of the type added by many SEO agencies can be detrimental as they could easily be identified as unhelpful by Google.
Summary
Google is now very adept at identifying which websites should occupy the prime top spots in search, much of it based on the quality of those sites. One of the important ranking signals Google uses is generated via their Helpful Content System which identifies good and bad content on your website.
We’ve seen how the Helpful Content System works and how you can use it to your advantage with your own website. However there are no quick wins and so you need to invest the necessary time and resources to ensure your website and blog are first rate, not just for the initial launch but ongoing. By building a high-quality website on day one and then enhancing its footprint with great content and a blog moving forwards, you really are building an excellent foundation for top Google rankings.
Need more information or some help to get you underway? Please call the Dental Media SEO team on 01332 672548 for no-obligation advice.