How Does a Google New SEO Update Affect Your Website?
Google continuously refines and enhances its algorithms in order to enhance the quality and relevance of search results. These changes often have a major impact on website rankings.
Google previously issued algorithm changes ahead of their implementation to alert website owners of these adjustments. Unfortunately, this practice is no longer followed.
Core update
Google core updates are global modifications that affect various aspects of their search algorithm. Although these adjustments are not site-specific, they may cause noticeable effects on your site’s performance.
In general, core updates aim to make search results more pertinent and helpful across industries and user intents. On average, a core update is released every two to three months.
To effectively combat the negative impacts of a core update, prioritize content quality and create content that is truly pertinent to searcher intent. This means ensuring your material is expert, authoritative and trustworthy.
For instance, if your website reviews products, make sure to include information about the benefits, shortcomings and features of each item. Doing this will enable Google to recognize if your content is actually a review and how it should be ranked in search results.
Link spam update
Google’s latest algorithm update, the December 2022 Link Spam Update, aims to combat spam links. This update improves how Google detects link-building tactics used to manipulate search engine results and reduce spam related complaints.
This update employs an AI tool called SpamBrain to combat link spam. SpamBrain can identify unnatural link-building practices and nullify them.
Google is specifically targeting UGC (user-generated content) spam, which involves creating profiles on forums and social media platforms to post links to one’s own material. If you use these platforms for link building purposes, be sure to abide by their guidelines and utilize them sparingly.
Thankfully, this update won’t have a major effect on your website if you adhere to Google’s webmaster guidelines and focus on producing high-quality content. Even if rankings take a hit, you can quickly recover by cleaning up your backlink profile and submitting a reconsideration request to Google.
Mobile-friendly update
Google recently implemented an update to their search algorithms in response to the growing use of mobile devices for internet searches. This is an important development, as it enhances user experience by providing results optimized for use on phones or tablets.
Additionally, it helps them provide the most pertinent and useful results for a given situation. As such, it may increase the search visibility of websites designed to be used on mobile devices.
On April 21, 2015, Google released their new mobile-friendly update to their search algorithm that targeted sites that weren’t already optimized for mobile use. Marketers and website owners had been alerted that this change would be coming, giving them ample time to make their sites compatible before the change went live.
It’s essential to note that Google’s mobile-friendly update is a page by page signal, meaning it may take some time for them to assess all your pages. Fortunately, once your website has been transformed into mobile-friendly, Google will re-crawl and re-index it accordingly.
Helpful content update
Google’s helpful content update, which began rolling out in late August and early September, is a new site-wide signal that rewards genuinely satisfying and informative content while devaluing that which doesn’t satisfy users.
The helpful content update is an important step towards adopting a more people-centric approach to SEO, and it’s something all website owners should be familiar with.
This update seeks to eliminate content that was written solely for search engines and does not assist or inform people. It’s a welcome change for those who create quality material with useful information for their readers, and it will increase the visibility of your work.
To guarantee you’re adhering to Google’s helpful content update, create educational, user-friendly content that answers a user’s question and includes original insight from subject matter experts (SMEs). A focus on people first will also make it simpler for visitors to find the information they need, creating an excellent user experience and improving your search engine rankings.