What Sites Will Thrive Post-Helpful Content Update?

What Google means by "helpful content"

“Write GREAT CONTENT (tm)” has always been the meme way to rank a website in Google.

*insert Neil Patel soy face here*

People make fun of it because of the obvious: tons of poorly-written, low-IQ articles rank very highly in Google. So obviously great content isn’t the answer.

Googlebot is a robot and can’t tell whether your content is high-quality or not…. right?

Helpful Content Update: max pain

The recent Helpful Content Update - despite all the pain it caused - is a step in the right direction.

It seems like Google is now doing a much better job at actually detecting GREAT CONTENT (tm).

This extremely painful update mainly targeted SEO-focused content sites for destruction.

E-com and UGC sites (Reddit, Quora, forums) all jumped in the rankings.

So is the content business model dead and gone?

No.

The funeral bells are ringing at full volume for low-effort Prajeet/AI sites that don’t add any additional value. That’s a fact.

(yes nitpickers I know that some are still doing well but their days are numbered).

High-effort sites are doing just fine.

What do I mean by high effort? Let’s look at a site that’s killing it post-Helpful Content Update.

High-effort site example: Epic Gardening

Take a look at the traffic for epicgardening.com.

Do you think the owner is depressed about the Helpful Content Update? Are they whining on X about how betrayed they feel by Google and begging for a reversal?

Of course not.

Chad tip: Big G doesn’t care, they aren’t your daddy and they won’t give you credit for effort or for following their made up rules and guidelines. They’re a business that exists to make money, that’s it. You and your website mean nothing to them.

Let’s take a look at a random article titled “15 Benefits of Raised Gardening” and see what Epic Gardening is doing right.