Has it ever occurred to you what allows a website to appear on top of the first page of search results? A plethora of digital businesses are formulating an exceptional marketing campaign, so they can have their brand promoted on the internet. But search engines like Google have some set standards to gauge the performance of these campaigns. The standards to check the performance of websites are known as an algorithm. Google has launched several algorithms to ensure each metric is performing just right. It also imposes a stringent penalty on the violators of the AdWords protocol.
In 2020, Google had been in news for its Core update in January, then again in May. As this SEO update got rolled out on the 4th of May, it brought a jerk to the ranking of a lot of websites. This movement in the rankings has affected several industries, posing the enormous percentage of change on travel, real estate, health, pets & animals, and people & society. The shakeup resulted in some unusual outcomes as it even plummeted the ranks of sites with high domain authority or domain score. While certain trends were impacted adversely because of Core update, other trends remained intact.
Here are these trends and ways to fix them.
Frequent Updates in the Content
A text asset on any website has always been the king of online marketing. This evergreen asset has undergone several tweaks to keep the sites performing wondrously. Publishing new and relevant posts on topics prevailing in the market and infusing them images and videos are some common techniques followed by the marketers. But most of them undermine the capability of old content in hurting and sprucing up the rankings. As the Core update approached, a page with outdated information and low-quality text and infographics got jeopardized due to the latest Google update. Alongside ranking, some webpages were also penalized for pushing down such posts without updating them for good. Tuning an old post with the trends of today should be done more frequently than publishing a fresh copy. It can involve anything from removing the fluff, omitting complex words, fixing dead links to updating the dates, and ensuring no duplicity.
Thicken the Thin Content
As per several reports, thin content is another failed attempt of a digital marketing campaign, which had become a reason why Google affected sites using its latest algorithmic update. Let’s not talk about pages like “contact” and “about us”, where you can’t write unnecessarily, despite how negatively that can affect the rankings. But some pages are still there on every site, which are kept hidden due to limited content and corresponding traffic. The latest Google algorithm left a sabotaging impact on the URLs containing thin text assets on the same day of its rollout. Statistically, while only 10% of total traffic grew on the websites, the negative impact in terms of declined search traffic was roughly 3 times higher. So, if your page makes some sense, add more words and compare it with the competition, if not, discard it immediately.
SEO Errors Amendments
Despite working day and night, marketers had made SEO mistakes unknowingly, which are resulting in a huge loss to the businesses today. Among several SEO errors, duplicate title tags and meta descriptions were pivotal to the negative influence of the Core update. Albeit many sites use duplicate meta descriptions and titles normally, those who had been using them repeatedly on a large scale, paved a way for the penalty. Again, not every duplicate description and tag needs to be fixed, such as on category pages with pagination.
As Google launches algorithmic updates, it doesn’t guarantee that you will not be affected. If you have gone through the foregoing trends, you must have realized all that the tech giant does, revolves around excellent search experience. So, keep your SEO tactics authentic and penalty at bay by fixing these trends.
