How to Deal With Google Core Algorithm Update?
Google Core Algorithm updates are a mystery to the common man, but strikes fear in the hearts of the SEO specialists! I remember my friend’s worried look, an SEO expert, each time Google announces an update.
What is a Google core algorithm update?
According to the Google Webmaster blog, “Google releases changes to improve search results. Most of them are unnoticeable, but they help Google improve. Some others have a pronounced effect. Google usually confirms such updates with notice and advice months ahead when there is information that requires action from webmasters and others.”
These algorithms impact websites and their rankings differently, some websites could have a huge surge while others seem to plummet several pages down.
Let’s have a look at a couple of ‘precautions’ that will strengthen your SEO during these updates.
1. Unique and Quality Content
Google encourages unique and quality content by rewarding websites with better rankings or in other words, it helps you to stay at the top of the SERPs. Make sure that the content you write is based on questions asked by searchers. Google loves content that’s more than 1500 words. Ensure that you clarify and give clear answers to all the questions in your content. It should also have more information than all the blogs that are already on the top page of the SERPs.
2. Develop the Website’s E-A-T score
E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness in SEO. Google has hired thousands of people as Quality Raters and their job – to estimate the overall quality of the website. The concept is found in Google’s QR Guidelines. Webpages that have no beneficial purpose, that doesn’t help users or cause harm or hate, etc, achieve the lowest rating. But for all the other pages, the E-A-T is very important. It would be good to pay attention to the following to improve your E-A-T:
- Add an author byline to the posts to help raters distinguish the expertise level.
- Have a branding website of your own that publishes relevant and niche-content.
- Get featured on authoritative sites and mentioned on forums.
- Invest in encryption to boost trustworthiness and secure your site with HTTPS.
3. Quality Backlinks and Strong Social Presence
When building your backlinks, think ahead. Work on attaining sustainable and lasting link-building strategies. Guest posting, blogger outreach, influencers are some of the best routes to great backlinks. A website with strong E-A-T will have a strong social media presence which drives great traffic to their website and boosts their message to a larger audience.
4. Build your Brand with Users Coming Back for More
Stop creating short-term plans and tactics which will take your website down under during an update and the recovery could be really slow. Analyze your approach to search and how you implement the long-term strategy to avoid risks in the future. If you build your business on poor foundations you will end up paying a huge price.
With hard work, you can establish yourself as trustworthy and authoritative. You may not see the changes immediately. But keep in mind, the changes are for the long-term and will show results once the next core updates are done. As always, call us to know more.