How to recover from Google algorithm updates

How to recover from a Google algorithm updates

 

Written by: Ryan Walsh

Date: 09/November/2023

Google (Alphabets) algorithms, have the super complex job of organising millions of different company websites in the U.K and across the world. This is so whether you’re looking for a local restaurant or a plumber the most relevant, useful businesses appear on the first page. It is widely thought that the search engine, answers over 3.5 billion searches every single day! And that’s just absolutely mind blowing, right?
Google also regularly updates and improves its algorithms, as routine as clock work. So, when a business moves up and down quite considerable on Google, this is what SEO consultants, refer to as “ranking flux”, which basically causes businesses to either move up or move down the ranks say by 3 places or more in just one day.

 

How often does Google roll out these major algorithm updates?

It’s widely thought that Google rolls out between 3 to 4 major algorithm updates a year, from our experience, of helping many businesses to improve their search engine optimisation, we would say the largest most seismic algorithm updates seem to happen during December and January time every year.

This is often why during the Christmas period, this is why a lot of seo consulants are busy monitoring data on Google Analytics, to see how their clients’ websites have been impacted.

This is often why also a lot of businesses can get rather frustrated, because all their hard work carried out during the year, to try and improve their position on Google can sometimes massively change during the festive period, due to a major algorithm change.

However, with that said if a business does follow the guidelines (Google’s Webmaster Guidelines) and also best practices, then sure they may still see some gradual dips in terms of where the business ranks on Google, but if the business has followed white hat methods, then this shouldn’t change too much.

How does Google’s algorithm work?

So, our job as a digital marketing agency, is to improve the visibility and organic traffic for our clients.

But what does that mean in reality?

Well, what it basically means is as Google’s algorithm is constantly assessing how good a business’s search engine optimisation is- and this takes place by Googlebot crawling and indexing a website, often every single day of the week.

What’s Googlebot’s job? What does it do?

Well Googlebot simply crawls and indexes a website through backlinks, and internal links, if it spots that changes have been made, such as a new piece of work is added, then Google’s algorithm can then change where the company is positioned. So lets say a business adds a really good piece of evergreen content marketing, that’s not just good, its great quality, well, then the algorithm might decide to rank the business higher on Google.

 

Why does it take so much longer to optimise a new website?

A new website, (a website that’s just been built, and has been live for less than a year) let’s say a website that is under one year old, it’s much more difficult to get that website onto the first page of Google.co.uk simply because often the SEO will often be weak.
And Google doesn’t yet trust a brand new company website as much as it does a company that has been trading for say 10 years.

So, it’s our job to constantly improve what are called the businesses “ranking factors”, this is so Google’s search algorithms and Googlebot notice the hard work that we are putting in, and if you hire the right agency, they can help the business to climb the ranks on Google steadily, sure it still takes a long time, but when a business does reach the top of Google, well this can sometimes massively increase the profitability of that business.

 

Why all the content marketing should be quality and also relevant

So, let’s say your business sells ladders online, then it would be self-explanatory to make the website relevant for the term “aluminium ladders” right? And that’s all the seo company should focus on?

What is not as simple as that, that’s because a good marketing agency needs to understand every single term and phrase used to describe the products that you sell. So that these can start to be optimised, so that you can start to rank higher in Google.co.uk.

 

You have to make the website useful

Sometimes, some content writers working at various marketing companies, may write blog posts for their clients which are totally off topic. For example, they might be working for a business and they find the services that they offer quite complicated.

Some marketing agencies then really be bothered to properly research an article and write it so its quality. This causes what is called “content thin”, content marketing and it could actually cause a Google Penguin penalty.

 

Usability or UX

This is why a web design agency has to often work closely with a seo agency, because you want your customers to find the website as easy-to-use. In matter of fact, you will to be a piece of cake for your customers to find the products or services they want.

 

Quality should always come first

Your marketing agency should focus on “expertise, experience and authority and also trust”, you must create high quality content marketing that’s well written, and must always be white hat. There is absolutely no doubt in our marketing agency that we believe that EEAT is now a major consideration as to whether a page or blog post should rank on the first page of Google.co.uk or not.

 

What is a core algorithm update?

From our experience we would say that generally speaking every three months or so a major Google core update occurs, sometimes it can happen much more frequently than that, sometimes a series of Google updates can occur one after the other, and this can go on for some time.

As previously mentioned earlier on within the article, we would say the most seismic shifts in terms of where the business moves on Google often happens around the Christmas period.

However there have been some updates which are introduced to help fight spam, such as targeting businesses which use low quality link building, writing low quality content marketing, and these updates to the algorithm can be introduced and then they are updated on a regular basis as well.

 

How did the 2018 Google Medic update change SEO forever?

Basically speaking, if the website was to do with anything related to YMYL (‘Your Money or Your Life’), such as offering financial advice, then this type of business website was scrutinised to see how reliable the information was, if it was written by experts, basically if the website could be trusted or not.

if the information was not high quality, then websites would remove down greatly until they could improve their search engine optimisation and also prove that they are high quality source of information.

For example, anything to do with pensions, investments, the stock market are the websites that got heavily impacted by the2018 Google Medic update

The Penguin Update

Another massive update was the Google Penguin updates.

The Penguin algorithm update was massive algorithm update, and it penalised millions of websites that having low quality backlinks.
A lot of businesses took the wrong method of optimising their website, by purchasing low quality backlinks, and temporarily they might have seen an improvement in where the business ranks on Google. Yet as the Google Penguin algorithm update was rolled out, these websites, which had low quality backlinks, were removed from Google altogether or seriously reduced in terms of where they rank on Google, say moving off page 1 to page 7 overnight!

The Google Hummingbird Update

The Google Hummingbird update was again a massive algorithm update, first released by Google back in 2013.

The Google Hummingbird update simply made the Google organic results much more precise because the algorithm can then understand more complex questions that were asked to it.

For example, somebody might ask “how to change the motor oil on my motor vehicle”.

It would then understand that the person doesn’t necessarily want to go to a local garage, instead the person is directed to articles that explain how to change your engine oil and offering advice on how somebody with practically no mechanical knowledge can change the engine oil on their car.

 

How did Google’s RankBrain update change seo?

 

RankBrain

The Google Rank Brain update was truly massive, we seen a lot of businesses majorly change in terms of where they were positioned on Google.co.uk because of this major AI update.

This is when Google started to combine A.I, that’s artificial intelligence into its algorithm.

We think how this update works, is it measures engagement (bounce rate + time spent on the website). You can use Google Analytics to measure these two important SEO metrics.

So how can you start to recover from these Google algorithm major updates that we’ve discussed?

 

Talk to the experts

What we would recommend is talking to a highly experienced seo company, that can demonstrate that they have helped hundreds of different businesses recover from a Google algorithm.

Therefore, if your business has impacted by a Google algorithm update, then its important that that you pick a business that has helped many companies recover to recover from Google Penguin, Panda penalties.

 

Always focus on quality

A lot of businesses focus on quantity, when instead, they need to concentrate on quality.

 

Understand the algorithm updates

So, a common mistake that a lot of businesses make is noticing that their organic traffic has rapidly decreased, and they then start trying to improve the seo, yet not taking the time, to understand what the algorithm update was focused on, so they may end up doing more of what caused the business to incur a penalty.

However what important to do is to step back, and have a good think about what to do algorithm update address, for example if the seo expert start the say this update was addressing thin content marketing, instead of adding more written work, it might be worth just trying to improve the existing work rather than adding new work and possibly making the problem worse.

 

Always keep an eye on the competition

There are some businesses which say we’re going to do everything our own way, and keep blindly doing the seo work, even if it’s not generating any results.

However, we think at this seo agency, sometimes you have to take inspiration from your competitors. For example, if your competitors are positioned in the number one spot on Google for a very long period of time, then they’re doing something right, in terms of their seo.
Therefore, a good digital marketing agency will do what we call “reverse engineering”, that is looking at exactly why does that business rank at the top of Google, why is their SEO so good?

Then once you’ve worked out what aspects of the seo are good, the you can start then incorporating these ideas into your own marketing strategy.

Now don’t get us the wrong way, what we mean is do not copy the competition, because if you copy and this will lead to a Google algorithm penalty, but will we do need is to take some inspiration from the competition in terms, of for example, where are they getting their backlinks from?