Why 'Helpful Content' Isn’t Enough Anymore
When Google launched its Helpful Content update, marketers everywhere scrambled to make course corrections.
Well, the good ones did anyway!
Out went the fluff. In came the checklists. And for a while, that shift made sense, helpful content was a step up.
But here’s the problem: now everyone’s writing “helpful” content.
And a lot of it? It’s technically fine. It answers the question. It covers the basics. It might even rank.
But it also reads like someone Googled the topic, summarised five top results, and carefully removed anything with a pulse.
Helpful has become the new minimum viable content.
It’s no longer a differentiator, it’s just the starting line. If your goal is to sound like every other brand that reads the same SEO checklist, “helpful” will get you there. But if you want to stand out, be remembered, and actually earn trust? You’re going to need more than that.
Let’s talk about what “better than helpful” really looks like, and why your content should aim higher.
Short on time? Here are the key takeaways
Info
Helpful ≠ Memorable
First up, let’s get one thing straight.
I’m not anti-helpful. Your content should absolutely be accurate, useful, and clear. But that alone doesn’t make it worth reading, let alone remembering.
Most “helpful” content today sounds eerily similar. Same structure. Same phrasing. Same polite, generic tone. It’s like everyone attended the same SEO bootcamp and left with the exact same sentence templates.
And now, with AI overviews, zero-click search results, and social search summaries eating up visibility, helpful content has an even bigger problem: it’s getting scraped, paraphrased, and answered before anyone even clicks through.
I’ve seen dozens of articles that technically answer a question… but say absolutely nothing new.
They’re safe.
Polished.
Totally forgettable.
Helpful is what gets you into the game. Memorable is what gets you results.
Think about it: when was the last time you shared a blog post because it was “adequately helpful”? Probably never. You shared it because it made a point. Took a stand. Gave you a fresh angle.
Helpful content fades into the background. Memorable content gives you something worth remembering. Something AI can’t lift, rewrite, or reduce to a bulleted snippet.
What Helpful Content Leaves Out
The problem with aiming for “helpful” is that it’s become content’s version of beige. Clean, safe, and stripped of anything that might cause friction or connection.
Here’s what helpful content usually skips:
Point of view: It plays it neutral. No opinion. No take. No real sense of what the brand actually thinks.
Lived experience: It’s often written from research, not reality. Lots of theory, not much “here’s how we’ve seen this play out.”
Voice and tone: Helpful content tries to sound professional. But in the process, it loses personality. You could swap the logo, and no one would notice.
Challenge: It doesn’t push back on assumptions. Doesn’t say “most people get this wrong.” Doesn’t earn attention by being brave enough to disagree.
This all makes sense if your goal is to pass as helpful in an algorithm’s eyes. But it’s a problem if your goal is to stand out with actual people.
Because readers don’t just want information, they want perspective. Confidence. Clarity. Something they can’t just get with a couple of prompts in ChatGPT.
What Better Than Helpful Looks Like
So, if helpful is the baseline, what does “better” actually mean?
Think of content as a ladder, and “helpful” is the first rung. But the stuff that earns links, trust, and lasting visibility? That’s higher up:
Helpful → Answers the question
Useful → Applies to real-world challenges
Insightful → Adds something new (data, POV, first-hand experience)
Memorable → Branded, distinctive, not interchangeable
Shareable → So useful or smart it earns a forward or a backlink
This isn’t just theory. I’ve seen it play out with my client Connecteam.
Instead of chasing keyword volume or AI-styled rewrites, we built a system around genuinely valuable, expert-led content.
The focus was on competitor reviews, but instead of just providing information from across the web in one location, I challenged my subject matter experts to go above and beyond.
They were asked to obtain a free trial of the software, participate in sales calls, assess demos, and write about their experiences from their own perspective.
That meant:
Real-world product exploration and editorial rigour
SME writers and proper attribution
Clear, transparent insights that felt original, not optimised to death
The outcome?
Sustained organic traffic growth
Authoritative backlinks
Featured content in ChatGPT’s Deep Research results
And all of it rooted in doing more than just “being helpful.” It was content that brought something new to the table, offering an expert's opinion based on firsthand experiences, and couldn’t be reduced to a one-line AI summary.
You can read the full breakdown of how we did it right here.
How to Move Beyond Helpful
If “helpful” is the starting point, how do you move past it, without turning every post into a think piece or over-engineered brand story?
Here’s what I tell my clients:
Lead with lived experience
Write from what you’ve done, not just what you’ve Googled. Readers (and algorithms) can tell when content comes from actual practice. Think: case studies, internal data, lessons learned, even the stuff that didn’t work.
Inject real tone
Your content should sound like someone actually said it. That doesn’t mean quirky for the sake of it. It means confident, human, consistent. If someone couldn’t tell it’s yours without the logo, you’ve still got work to do. I’ve written a whole article on the importance of your brand tone of voice to read after this.
The best way to do this is to source quotes from internal experts on a subject, but HARO can also be an excellent resource for sourcing expert quotes quickly, easily, and for free.
Have a take
Helpful content often sits on the fence. Memorable content says: “Here’s what we believe. Here’s what’s overhyped. Here’s where most people get it wrong.” Safe is forgettable. A little friction is good.
Ever notice takes on LinkedIn that are clearly put there to watch the world burn? They’re also the posts that get the most comments, so don’t be afraid to have an opinion that others disagree with.
Treat your blog like publishing, not production
Stop viewing content as a tick-box or output target. Start treating it like something people might actually read. That means clear structure, clean writing, and stories that resonate, not just “informational content” with a few keywords jammed in.
It will also mean you likely produce less content, but as I’ve said before, reducing your content velocity probably isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Optimise for readers, not just rankings
Search intent matters. Formatting matters. But clarity beats keyword density. Trust beats traffic. Write like a real person trying to be genuinely useful, not like you’re trying to win at some SEO leaderboard.
Depending on the client, I sometimes suggest that they ditch the concept of ranking completely.
Closing Thoughts
“Helpful” was a necessary correction. It forced content teams to stop publishing spammy nonsense and start thinking about what readers actually need.
But now? It’s just the new minimum.
Helpful content won’t get penalised. But it won’t stand out either. Not in a landscape where AI is answering basic questions for free, search is fragmenting across platforms, and every brand sounds like they did the same SEO course.
The real winners are the ones saying something worth hearing. Sharing something worth citing. Writing in a way that feels like them, even if you stripped the logo off the page.
So yes, make it helpful. But then make it yours. Make it better.
And if you’re stuck trying to figure out how to go from helpful to high-impact? Drop me a line: graeme@gwcontent.co.uk.
This is what I help brands do.
