First, don’t panic! Understandably, that is the most expected reaction when it comes to Google Core updates. While these aims to improve search results, they significantly have very negative implications for businesses that run majorly on organic traffic.
Experiencing huge website traffic dips, affecting the website ranking, and manual action penalty on websites, Google’s core algorithm updates can often be a double-edged sword for businesses.
Not trying to scare you, but the truth is it may take days, weeks and months sometimes to have your website recovered from these handowns.
What is Google Core Update 2024?
Google keeps updating the algorithm all the time but when they make the big ones, that’s called the “core updates”. But this time it’s like an evolution, releasing both multiple-core system and spam updates.
Having finished rolling out the first core update in April 2024, these updates look more complex than the other usual updates.
Ensuring to deliver the most “relevant” and “authoritative” content to searchers, Google has 45% reduction in unhelpful content. Apart from this, Google Core Update 2024 also targets deceptive and manipulative practices that violate Google Webmaster guidelines.
Well let’s roll eyes on how they are aiming to tackle it:
- Reduce low quality unhelpful webpages rendering poor user experience.
- Declutter search results by reducing the spammy, low-quality contents produced by using AI tactics
- Calling out for parasite SEO, where low-quality third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes will be considered as spam.
Although google have released updates one after the other before, but it may get difficult to figure out which update has affected your websites.
Businesses often receive mixed messages about recovering from core algorithm updates. However, John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, has indicated that it is possible to regain lost traffic before the next update by making various incremental improvements after a ranking drop.
So, what can be those incremental improvements that can help you recover your lost traffic and bring you back into the SEO game.
How to Recover Your SEO From Google Core Updates 2024?
Before we go stepwise instruction, remember they usually take a few weeks to roll out. During google updates, you may see “Google Dance”, well that’s what colloquially known amongst the SEO experts, which means search results may see wild fluctuations in ranking, sometimes temporary.
But here’s the scoop: Sometime later you may find that traffic is back on track and if you are lucky enough, possibly it has increased from the original level.
So just dodge off the risk of having the radical changes in the middle of the update to the entire site, because you might make changes to content that later googles actually approves of.
1. Make Use of Data to Identify Content That Needs Improvement
We are already using SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush for rank tracking in place. However, this might also assist you in identifying rankings that have taken a particularly bad hit.
Other than this google search console and google analytics can also be used for pinpointing pages experiencing significant traffic dips.
Using data from these tools, construct a spreadsheet of “problem pages” that have experienced significant traffic drops. You may better focus your efforts in tackling these SEO difficulties by using this organized approach.
2. Improve the Relevance of Your Problem Pages
So, when you see the problems page it all comes down to those two terms, relevance and authority. With relevance, it’s quite clear which means Content freshness. For that ensure these following points:
- correct any out-of-date or inaccurate information they contain.
- you are covering topics in depth
- your content is highly relevant to humans, not search engines, in mind
- The content is well-researched, 100% relevant and factually accurate
As a part of content relevancy, make sure you also go for user testing. Try engaging more with your readers and ask them for feedback on the same. This might assist you in determining problem areas or validating advancements.
3. Remove Spammy/Unnatural Links
John Mueller on Google hangout recently shared, “In general, with the core updates, if you’re seeing changes there, usually that’s more related to trying to figure out what the relevance of a site is overall and less related to things like spammy links.”
It’s no secret that the content you create has a far higher chance of ranking well in search engine results pages if it has many high-quality links linking to it.
But what if you have a significant number of questionable links that you might have paid for or are they the consequence of unethical link schemes? Well then it must be removed.
Hence if you think that there are a lot of unnatural links to your content then either, try get them removed ASAP.
4. Address Blackhat Techniques
If you believe that Black-hat SEO is a hit for your content, well here is the reminder: It’s 2024!!
So let us quickly take you through a few black hat techniques that you might still be using, and you need to stop it immediately.
Cloaking: This black hat approach includes delivering alternate content to search engines and users to trick search engine algorithms and achieve higher ranks.
Redirects: Using redirects to send people to a page other than the one they clicked on, frequently to a page irrelevant to their query or laden with advertisements, is a bad practice that can lead to search engine penalties.
Parasite SEO: This unethical practice manipulates high-ranking websites by creating content on forums, blogs, or social media to influence search engine results, exploiting the credibility of established platforms for personal gain.
5. Publishing New, High-quality Content
So far, we have been telling you to make changes to the existing content to recover from the Google Core update. But writing fresh content can do wonders.
By adding more pages and posts, you not only boost your site’s search traffic, but you also increase opportunities for Google to index and present your content, and your users’ chances of linking and sharing it.
While you go for fresh content to get back your audience, consider establishing topical authority for your website.
Well for the term topical authority, it involves covering all aspects of the topic to the core and depth, down the line indicating Google about your content as an expert knowledge piece.
Apart from this, pay close attention to keyword research and the quality over quantity, keeping exactly what people in your niche are looking for. This can surely be a few things to count on while curating content for which your content can realistically rank for.
Wrapping up
So, while you are on it, do not lose your calm. While it might look like a lot to do but, this does require a multi-facet approach.
Staying vigilant, adapting changes and deploying ethical SEO strategies, can help you recover from the Google Core updates in less time than you thought.
Just remember to adhere to two things Google solely focuses on: Relevance and Authority.
