For us SEO professionals, it’s well known that Google notoriously loves a good algorithm update, throwing rankings up into the air and sending everyone on LinkedIn into a frenzy. Whilst in the early days, Google only made occasional updates, they now make thousands of changes each year – and recently it’s felt as if new algorithms are rolling out practically every other day. This, understandably, can be stressful for those responsible for maintaining client rankings or their own website’s performance. With so many updates, it’s easy to feel lost in the sea of changes and unsure how to maintain strong SEO.
This blog post will break down the key updates implemented in recent months, explaining their impact on your SEO strategy and offering actionable tips to keep your rankings climbing amidst the algorithm shifts.
What is a Google Algorithm Update?
Google’s search engine relies on complex algorithms to sift through its massive index and deliver the most relevant results for every user query. These algorithms consider a multitude of ranking factors to determine which web pages deserve the top spots on SERPs. While Google constantly tweaks these algorithms, most changes are so subtle they go unnoticed. However, Google occasionally rolls out major updates that significantly impact the SERPs.
These major updates, referred to as core updates, are designed to improve the overall quality and user experience of search results. So, they may be irritating but they come from a good place! However, because they often involve significant changes to how Google evaluates websites, this can cause fluctuations in rankings across the board. Even the biggest and most established websites are affected by core updates, experiencing shifts in their ranking positions and visitor traffic.
Why you should care:
So, we’ve established that Google algorithm updates can significantly impact your website’s traffic and ranking – bringing new visitors or temporary dips. Understanding each update and how it impacts your SEO strategy allows you to adapt and adjust your strategy to regain lost ground. It’s crucial to keep up with the updates so you can align your content accordingly if necessary. This proactive approach will ensure you keep your website visible to its target audience.
2024 updates
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the updates we’ve seen in the past 6 months. We’ll work through them in reverse chronological order and provide some pointers for dealing with each one.
⚙️The March 2024 Core Update
You must be living under a rock if you’ve missed this huge update; as the longest-ever core update, it only finished rolling out on April 19th and was said to reduce unhelpful content by 45%! It marked a big shift in Google’s ongoing fight against low-quality content and signalled strong recognition of the wave of AI-generated content that’s hit the web in the past year. The update further refined Google’s ability to identify and penalise content deemed unhelpful, particularly targeting unoriginal AI content.
What did Google have to say? A spokesperson said this update has refined how it understands which webpages are “unhelpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people.” This “could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries”. As a result, websites with content that lacked value, originality, or depth may have seen ranking declines.
What does this mean for you?
This just means more of what we already know – we need to be writing helpful content for people, and not just to rank in search engines. There are no big new changes you should implement, or secret hacks to rank well in this update – just more of what you’re (hopefully) already doing.
The algorithm update also means that you should see better quality results when you’re using search engines. The web has recently seen a surge of AI content that lacks accuracy and authenticity. This update should cut down on that and improve the overall quality of what we see on the SERPs.
Been hit by this update? Approach recovery by, first and foremost, working on the quality of your content. If you’re experiencing a traffic loss for queries you used to rank for, there’s probably an issue with your content (if you’ve already confirmed there’s no technical problem). Look at the competitor pages now ranking for this content and work out why Google’s seeing it as preferable. Is it more relevant? Longer-form? Demonstrating expertise through author profiles? Video or image content rather than written?
Whilst Google hasn’t given us a lot of new advice in the aftermath of this new update, it might also be useful to look at their previous list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Work your way through and identify the areas where your content could be improved.
⚙️The March 2024 Spam Update
At the same time as we faced the March Core Update, Google also rolled out a hefty Spam Update, taking 15 days to complete. It took action against new types of spam, particularly scaled content abuse and expired domain abuse, which we’ve been seeing an increasing prevalence of.
Scaled content abuse is a tactic where spammers create vast amounts of AI content aimed at manipulating search rankings and tricking Google into thinking they have the answers to popular searches. Whilst Google has always fought against this practice, the advancements in AI have called for a revamp of their strategy.
Then, expired domain abuse is where someone exploits the reputation of an expired domain. They purchase the domain and repurpose it to boost the rankings of their low-quality content. It misleads Google and users into believing that the new content is associated with the older, more reputable website.
It goes without saying that if you’ve seen a change to your traffic or rankings after this update, ensure you’re not violating any of Google’s spam policies, even accidentally.
Other recent updates
⚙️November 2023 Core Update: This was the final core update of 2023, beginning on November 2nd and completing on November 28th. Like most core updates, it resulted in many sites seeing ranking volatility – particularly in ‘Your Money, Your Life’ verticals.
⚙️October 2023 Core Update: With this core update, Google began handling backlinks differently. The reputation and relevance of the linking site was more important than ever before and a single link from a high-authority site now carried much more value than lots of lower-quality links.
⚙️October 2023 Spam Update: October also saw the release of a spam update, designed to clean up several types of spam that Google community members reported in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi and Chinese.
Are any more updates heading our way?
In the past week, we’ve seen the beginning of a site reputation abuse update rolling out. This will target something often referred to as “parasite SEO”; sites found to be practicing site reputation abuse will face drops in rankings and even deindexes of pages.
But what exactly is site reputation abuse? This is when websites with significant authority exploit their trust to push low-quality, irrelevant content. According to Google, the update will be going after “third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam.” They used the example of a third party publishing payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefits from the site:
“Such content ranking highly on Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”
Has your site been hit? We can help
Cedarwood Digital is an award-winning SEO agency based in Manchester and we have extensive experience helping our clients to prepare for and recover from algorithm updates. Our team of experts has an advanced understanding of what Google wants to see, and possesses the strategies to help you rank in the top positions, and stay in them.
Get in touch with us today to learn how we can optimise your SEO for long-term success.
