Recovering from the Helpful Content Update
This article was originally featured in Issue 13 of Benchmark Magazine, Titans of Search.
Myth: amending your site after a Helpful Content Update requires too much effort to have a worthwhile effect
Reality: Google’s algorithms and regulations are constantly changing, and updating your website content to reflect this can help you flourish
If you’re familiar with the story of the fall of Troy, you may remember the fate of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. Agamemnon was the leader of the Greek armies who had come to besiege Troy, and he’d ordered these armies to come together at Aulis, a rocky outcrop where there was plenty of room for the fleet to gather.
While they waited for the rest of the armies to reach Aulis, the early arrivals entertained themselves with song and dance and, most importantly, hunts. It was on one of these hunts that Agamemnon himself rode out and killed a fine stag which, unbeknownst to him, just so happened to be sacred to the goddess Artemis. Enraged, she becalmed the fleet at Aulis so they couldn’t sail on to Troy.
The goddess issued an ultimatum to Agamemnon via his prophet, Calchas. If he wished the winds to return so he and his armies could lay siege to Troy, he must sacrifice his only daughter, Iphigenia. With little choice, Agamemnon did so. In some stories, Iphigenia dies as you’d expect, and in others she is saved by the goddess and spirited away to another town – but in all of the stories, the sacrifice of Iphigenia appeases Artemis and allows the winds to return.
Like many Greek tragedies, the story of Iphigenia has a hidden lesson that we can learn from, and apply to our modern day lives. So what lesson can be extracted from this? And more importantly, what parallels can be drawn from Greek tragedies that can help us enhance our digital marketing, more specifically Organic Search (SEO) efforts?
The kind of straightforward ultimatum in Iphigenia’s story may sound appealing – once you get away from the idea of human sacrifice, of course – but unfortunately, it’s one myth of Greek legend that doesn’t translate well to SEO.
In reality, Google can be harder to appease than Artemis – but not if you’re willing to put in the work.
So, what can you do to help your site recover after a helpful content update? Well, there are lots of things that can affect the E-E-A-T of your website, helping raters to decide whether your content is helpful or not. Things like authorship, social profile links, and accreditations can be useful – but the biggest impact is likely to come from the content itself.
Let’s take a look at the most common different forms of unhelpful content and how you can rectify them – with a little help from Greek mythology, of course.
