The new Google’s core update of 2023 is now live and it may take up to two weeks to complete. This is the second core update by Google this year.
Google announced it on X (Twitter) in August 2023 stating that
“Today we released the August 2023 core update. We’ll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete”
A core update is a change done by Google to its ranking algorithm that affects several web pages.
The core updates aim to increase search results. These updates will influence the search result ranking to give the best experience to the users, and seo and marketers have to continue observing the impacts on their websites.
Impact of core updates
After this new update, your site’s ranking in search results can improve, decline, or stay the same.
If your site is declining in performance after a core update, it does not indicate an issue with your site.
Core updates do not target any specific sites or web pages. Their main aim is to improve the overall system to assess quality. It is common for sites to get affected by these core updates.
How often does Google Core update?
While Minor updates can take place every day, core updates take place a few times a year.
For example, there is a 5-month gap between March and August core updates.
Why should we care about these updates?
Google algorithms have a significant impact on a website’s online visibility and ranking.
The time, energy, and resources you spent on optimizing your website for Google’s crawlers could be affected by the rollout of the core update.
While Google’s core algorithm update from August 2023 continues to unfold, seo experts need to be patient and continue to increase their website’s performance. The impacts of these updates can be unpredictable, therefore, it has become essential to remain engaged in seo practice, such as the website’s content quality, page load time, etc.
If your website and seo methods don’t change to keep up with Google’s ranking factors, your site will perform poorly in SERP.
What to do if your website hit by core updates
Google Core updates rollout is unpredictable, there are not any specific actions to do but you can consider these things to improve your ranking.
Stay calm
Most people start panicking when Google algorithm updates tank their hard-earned site ranking. Sometimes people make a bad decision by overreacting in the situation.
So, stay calm in this situation, and talk to the people who’ve been affected and also those who haven’t. So, you can get ideas on what should you do next.
Identify the content that needs improvement
Content is the main reason for getting affected by core updates. Review your posts and website content. Improve web content make it more user-friendly, and increase its readability.
Also, conduct a full site audit to get an overview of your site. Update your website audit checklist and start working in the right direction.
Competitor analysis
If your landing pages that performed well previously are no longer ranking well, then you should check out the competing pages that are now ranking in those positions.
Keep in mind that Algorithm updates don’t affect the number of people who use Google, so if your site not getting traffic like it once did, that means traffic is going somewhere else.
To conduct a competitor analysis, you can use tools to run an analysis. It will not improve your site ranking directly but will give you a basic idea of where you should focus to get your ranking back.
Update your ON-page seo:
Optimize your on-page seo to make your site more accessible to readers and Google’s crawlers.
To achieve this
- Ensure that all images have a meta title
- Optimize titles, they should be not too long or too short
- Resize images to decrease loading time
- Make sure that heading tags are correctly distributed
- Use your main keywords in Meta descriptions
Improve Technical seo
Identify problems like broken links, content duplicity, bad user experience, crawl errors, and poor mobile optimization. A technical seo enhances a website’s overall performance.
Give priority to users, mobile responsiveness, loading time, and secure browsing.
Secure websites denoted by HTTPS protocol, also give you seo points. Secure your site with an SSL certificate to build trust among the audience and improve ranking.
Backlinks
Use tools such as Ahrefs, and Moz to conduct a backlink analysis. Remove low-quality or spammy backlinks that could be lowering your site’s ranking. Start building high-quality backlinks that add value to your readers and also increase your website’s traffic.
Focus on E-A-T
No matter how many times Google will update their algorithms if you want to achieve top SERP rank follow E-A-T. It may not improve your ranking directly but it can impact your web content’s rank.
E-A-T full form is Expertise Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.
In short, E-A-T is a scale that indicates a web page’s high-quality content to make it useful to the users.
Publish new and high-quality content
Once you solve the issues on your site, it’s the right time to create and deploy the new content. Content is king, then creating high-level content to engage with the audience will be beneficial to your site.
High engagement with Low bounce rates indicates to Google that your web content is valuable and relevant to the users.
Google always considers a good user experience a ranking factor, so start publishing new and engaging content.
Be prepared for future updates
Google changes its algorithm from time to time so, you just need to be prepared for the next core update. Not every core update will affect you, but preparing in advance is a smart move to make. You can start it by posting high-quality content and reviewing your site, conducting competitor analysis from time to time.
Stay updated with Google’s core update to be prepared in advance.
