With recent Google Updates, people will either love them or be devastated by the changes made. This was especially the case back in March when Google had its “Useful Content Update”, which shot some web owners’ content forward in rankings while penalising others greatly. Now, Google has added this in the August core update. In this blog, we’ll go over what exactly this core update aims to do, and the effect it’s had, that’s given this blog it’s name.
The Google August Core Update
As mentioned, its predecessor update back in March was aimed at what Google deems as Useful Content.
The basic premise of this update was to weed out web pages/websites that were clearly built to do well in SEO, with User Experience being an afterthought. As you can imagine, this dropped the rankings of MANY. A similar situation has happened in this August core update, but this time, Google is going after AI content.
If you’ve been a fan of using in-built website builder AI or ChatGPT to write content, you might, unfortunately, experience a drop in rankings.
As convenient and efficient AI is for generating more content in a quicker time frame, the best thing to do for this update is to produce original content.
Ironically, Google has been using AI in its algorithms to spot AI content, and that AI is getting better with every update. Especially when you look at ChatGPT for instance, as amazing as it is, even the well-trained eye of a human can spot certain phrases and sentence structures it likes to use. An example of this would be American spelling if you’re looking at content from a UK business/organisation.
So, this leaves the question of, what should we do now? Let’s get straight into it.
How to get ahead of the curve with the Google Update
In every recession of Google Rankings historically, there has been an opportunity for those “in the know”. In layman’s, if your content is deemed User Friendly, many others may be experiencing a drop in rankings, while you experience an increase! This is what I mean by getting “ahead of the curve”.
Now we know we need non-AI, user-friendly content, this leaves one question. How does Google define a good user experience?
Now, of course, there are the general things that have always been the case, like having SSL encryption. However, let’s take a look at some things that may have become more important in Google’s eyes lately:
- Mobile Experience- Increasedly, more and more people view web pages on their mobile now as opposed to a desktop. In a recent report from Exploding Topics, 61.95% of all internet traffic was via Mobile Phone. If your website has slow loading times and a lack of screen size optimisation, this could heavily impact your SEO, more so than ever now. This especially applies to E-Commerce websites, as we can all say we’d prefer to quickly buy something on our phones than boot up the laptop/PC.
- The User Experience- As mentioned before, Google is very good at spotting whether you’re trying to appease the algorithm primarily, or the users/viewers. Your main content needs to be concise, clearly displayed, and answer the questions users may have when reading. The last point is very important. Making content convenient for users IS SEO.
- Content- Updating old/outdated content or tweaking it when developments happen can significantly increase User Experience. After all, if you’ve made a blog about an outdated product/topic, the information you are provided could be invalid or even worse, inaccurate. Additionally, going for descriptive headings and page names rather than “hooks” sounds pretty useful to users too, right?
Conclusion
If you put all of the above into practice, I have no doubt that you’ll benefit from the core updates. Remember, Google isn’t trying to make your content invisible. The main objective of Google is to optimise their search engine, and give users the best content possible when clicking enter on the search bar.
We hope you’ve liked this blog! Keep tuned for more blogs just like this, and many more. Stay informed!
