Google’s Helpful Content Update: How Black Hat SEOs Killed Blogging

E581: Over the last two years, the Google Helpful Content Update has been killing small and mid-sized blogs.

Just recently, it’s gotten more serious. Even HubSpot has lost 80% of its blog traffic.

But was this due to the Google Helpful Content Update or to something else?

And all the data suggests there was a different root cause.

It wasn’t just Google taking out the blogs with the HCU (Helpful Content Update). It was a preventative measure to stop searchers from leaving Google altogether.

Black Hat SEOs exploited and ruined blogging, and searchers were getting sick and tired of it. Google did what it had to in order to survive.

This podcast episode explains what the Google Helpful Content Update was trying to accomplish, who it was targeting, if there’s a way to recover, and what to do now.

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00:00 Introduction to Google's Helpful Content Update 00:21 Impact on Blogs and Websites 01:22 Theory Behind the Update 02:01 SEO Practices and User Experience 05:46 Rise of AI-Generated Content 07:48 Google's Response to Content Quality 08:20 Effects on Large and Small Websites 08:56 Challenges for Good Actors 11:54 Possible Recovery Strategies 13:44 Bottom of Funnel Content Strategy 14:45 Repurposing Content 16:33 Future of Top of Funnel Content 18:45 Conclusion on Google's Update 22:50 Alternative SEO Strategies 23:38 Final Thoughts and Outro

The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/

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