How Do Google Core Updates Affect SEO?

How Do Google Core Updates Affect SEO?

Dec 18, 2023

Reading Time: 3 minutes
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Google often releases core updates to its algorithm in order to either address a problem or to improve the relevance and quality of search results for users. With Google changing how its search algorithm works so frequently, there can be some disruptions to SEO. But how, exactly, do core updates affect SEO and what can you do about it?

Do Core Updates Change SERP Rankings?

The short answer is that yes, an update can impact your rankings. It doesn’t always; in many cases, rankings may stay the same if your content still meets Google’s requirements for high quality. However, because the core update may reassess what Google considers to be top quality, rankings may decrease or even increase, depending on how your content matches up with the new qualifications.

What Does It Mean If Your Rankings Decrease After a Core Update?

Each core update just means that Google is adjusting how it ranks content in order to better match users with the best possible search results. In some cases, you may have ranked higher on a keyword that didn’t quite match your content as well and now you rank better for other, more suitable keywords. In other cases, you may need to revisit your content quality and update accordingly to meet Google’s standards.

What Can You Do If Your Rankings Drop After a Core Update?

Whether there’s something you can do or not will depend on the core update. If there’s a specific action you can take to restore your rankings to what they were before the update, Google will let you know. For example, when it switched to mobile-first indexing, optimizing for mobile devices first was something Google announced that you could do to improve your rankings. Sometimes, however, there’s nothing specific and Google will announce that along with the core update.

What Should You Do If There’s Nothing To Fix After a Core Update?

If Google has announced that there’s nothing to fix after a core update, then you should focus on improving the quality of your content and your website. This can mean focusing on EAT principles in your written content as well as improving the technical SEO on your website for things like loading speed.

Do Google Core Updates Cause Ranking Volatility?

It’s possible that a core update could cause volatility in the search rankings as the algorithm adjusts to the new criteria. Rankings may not stay static and may change multiple times during the weeks that the update is being rolled out. If in the immediate aftermath of an update, your rankings aren’t what you’d expect, don’t panic. It may take some time for the rankings to settle after the gradual rollout of the update.

Can You Anticipate a Core Update’s Ranking Changes?

There’s no real way to anticipate the changes that Google will make ahead of time. However, there are things you can do to future-proof your SEO. Focus on producing quality content that will benefit and engage your users. If users find your content genuinely useful and keep coming back to it, then your rankings may more easily recover or may not be affected at all by an update. You should also regularly revisit your technical SEO to make sure that your site is keeping up with current expectations for load speed.

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Google Passages and How They Impact SEO

Google Passages and How They Impact SEO

Sep 6, 2021

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Google Passages
In October of 2020, Google announced that it would be releasing Passages, a new feature that allows Google to rank specific sections, or passages, of a web page rather than the web page as a whole. What this means for websites is that you may actually have more opportunities for the same page to rank on the SERP rather than just one for the whole page.

How Does Google Passages Work?

If a user has a very specific search query, sometimes an entire web page doesn’t fully answer that user’s question. Instead of having to recommend a page to a user that the user then has to scroll through to try to find the answer themselves, Google instead shares the most relevant passage within that web page as the search result to the user. It’s similar to a Featured Snippet in that just a snippet of text is shown, but that snippet is the search result. For users, this means more results that are more specific to their search.

How Does Google Passages Change SEO?

The short answer is that it doesn’t. Google still ranks your page as a whole. The addition of Google Passages gives each page more opportunities to rank because each section of the page can also rank independently of the page as a whole even while the entire page is also ranked. Backlinks, keywords, on-page SEO, UX signals, and all of the other factors Google takes into account in ranking pages still apply.

The only real difference for SEO is that every web page you have now has more opportunities to rank on Google’s SERP.

How Does Google Passages Change Website Content?

If you want to take advantage of the additional ranking opportunities offered by Google Passages, you should make sure that every web page on your site is well-organized. Google chooses the Passages to highlight on its own, but you can help to boost your rankings with Passages by properly organizing your content. 

How Do I Organize My Content for Passages?

Divide up your website content into discrete, definitive sections. Use subheaders to separate content and make it clear that each section is, in fact, separate from the others. Every section should be a subtopic of the overall web page. Because Google will still look at your webpage as a whole in addition to individual sections, all content should be relevant to the overall topic of the page.

How Long Should Content Be?

Google has already favored long-form content (3,000 words or more) over shorter content. Long-form content is more informative and is typically more helpful for users. On the SEO side of things, long-form content provided more opportunities for keywords and other on-site SEO features. The only downside was that shorter web pages that had a more focused topic would sometimes out-rank longer pages.

That changes with Passages, however. If your long-form content has a lot of sub-topics, even if the overall page isn’t as focused, you’ll still have plenty of opportunities to rank for each sub-section of the page.

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Why Companies Still Need Blogs in 2021

Why Companies Still Need Blogs in 2021

Aug 2, 2021

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Why Companies Still Need Blogs in 2021
A lot of marketing trends point to social media and video content as the future of online marketing. Social media offers more opportunities for engagement with users and many people prefer to watch videos instead of reading. But that doesn’t mean you should stop blogging. Blogs are still an important part of your SEO and marketing strategy, even as social media and video content become increasingly popular.

Does Blogging Still Help With SEO?

One of the reasons to continue blogging is that it’s still a major part of SEO. Blogging helps with your SEO strategy and helps improve your rankings with Google in numerous ways. Social media and videos won’t help your search rankings in the same way that a blog can. But how does blogging help with SEO?

Blogging Keeps Your Website Active

Google likes to rank active websites more highly than websites that it thinks are inactive. But how do you keep your website active? By making regular changes to your site. Blogs are extremely useful for this because regularly posting can help Google to see that your site is active without having to make unnecessary changes to your actual web pages.

Blogging Helps With EAT

Google uses EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) as a part of its algorithm to rank websites on the search results page. It’s not through social media posting that you establish your expertise in your industry. It’s through blogging. Blog posts allow you to demonstrate your knowledge and that you’re a source to be trusted. On top of that, your blog content can provide users with information that is useful to them.

Does Blogging Benefit Other Marketing Efforts?

Another benefit of blogging is that it can help other parts of your marketing and SEO strategies. Blogging provides ready content for posting on social media. You can also include blog content as part of an emailed newsletter. The blogs are fresh content for your users to read and the social media posts and newsletters can help get that content to your users.

Is Blogging Good for Keywords?

If there are keywords you want to rank well with on Google’s SERP, then blogs are a great way to include those keywords. Trying to include every keyword relevant to your company, products, and industry in your web pages may result in them being unreadable for users. But focusing on your primary keywords on your web pages and using blog posts as opportunities to add other keywords will help you rank for more keywords while still making your content the best possible for users.

Does Blogging Help With User Experience?

Google’s primary focus is user experience. All tweaks to their algorithm over the years have been with the purpose of improving user experience and rewarding websites that do the same. Blogging can help your users by providing them with information that they need to know. Blog content can be extremely useful for users by answering questions they may have about topics in your industry.

Need some help growing your web presence and strengthening your brand? You’ve come to the right place.

Get in Touch with BrainVine!