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Google has recently announced one of the biggest algorithm updates, since the “Useful Content” update in 2022. This update has already and will continue to, change the SEO scene massively. As we all know, staying on top of Google’s major updates is crucial if you are in the SEO space, or if you just want to make sure Google won’t de-index your website.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the biggest changes made in this update, and how you can make sure this benefits your website’s SEO, rather than burdens it.
As mentioned earlier, this update is the biggest change to the Google algorithm since the 2022 Useful Content Update. Additionally, this update is quite similar in the fact, that Google has taken the results of that 2022 update, to build it into this one.
This means that essentially, Google is refining the quality of content on their search engine. Webpages are now being more closely inspected now, and possibly deemed “unhelpful” if they have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for pure SEO results instead of people. Therefore, if you have had a few pages on your website, so you can rank better for keywords, yet there isn’t much quality content on the page, this update is very bad news for you!
Likewise, Google is continuing to advance their anti-spam filters. This will overall be very positive, as no one likes spam sites, however, you might want to be careful if you have similar content across multiple pages…
Google has since made an official statement on the update. This statement was as follows: “Based on our evaluations, we expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%”. Now, of course, that is a big number when it comes to the sheer amount of content out there on Google.
While this brings the exciting prospect of more reliable and higher quality content on Google, it also poses a threat to a lot of legitimate websites out there. So, let’s go over how we can make this update benefit our SEO efforts, instead of penalising them.
We’ve gone over the changes Google are making, but how can we ensure that the algorithm doesn’t look at our website and think it’s “Low-quality”? Here are a few easy solutions we came up with:
I know, to most people in the SEO space, being told to “ease off” sounds like the last thing you should do. However, Google is getting better and better at identifying web pages that are clearly built to “wow” the algorithm.
This has caused many people to realise over recent years, that checking every box in the on-page SEO checklist doesn’t guarantee results anymore. In fact, it can now end up in your page being deindexed, or deprioritised by web crawlers. Now obviously, this doesn’t mean you should just blatantly ignore that checklist. What it does mean, however, is that you need to make your web pages informative, accurate, and helpful to users. This means everything from user experience (readability, images alt text) to the actual word count and content on the page.
We all know the temptation to copy the same template when making another web page and tweak the content slightly. Especially if the pages are quite similar, in terms of content. However, if you’re not changing a whole lot about the page, other than the name of the headings, and a few different images, Google will increase your spam score. No more page spamming to rank up on your keywords!
At Solutions 4 IT, our belief in any threat online, is that awareness is crucial. On the other hand, this logic applies to a lot of other things too!
If you are only hearing about these algorithm updates, weeks after they happen, you will struggle. This is because you’re giving competitors the chance to act before you. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, it’s the difference between Google’s updates causing you to benefit, or be penalised.
Those are my three top tips for staying ahead of the competition. We hope you’ve liked this blog and that you’ll stick around to see our future releases. We cover everything from recent IT News to Knowledgebase articles. Thanks for reading!