Search engine optimization is the most effective digital marketing method available to sites active nationally and internationally. However, it is not without faults or risks. Over the years, have you established backlink connections with sites relevant to your field of activity? Did your employees create SEO-optimized articles that are in tune with the requirements of your target audience? That’s fantastic. Yet, your digital empire could come crashing down if you don’t take the necessary protective measures to mitigate the impact of unexpected algorithm updates.
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Google uses thousands of different parameters for the algorithms leveraged to index content found on the internet. This means that frequently, the search crawlers undergo changes, which, in exceptional cases, may affect how your services and products are visible in the SERPs. Algorithm updates are unpredictable and have occurred with increasing frequency in recent years. These modifications can introduce volatility in the digital medium and make your site drop several positions in SERP traffic. It is not even always necessary to have done something forbidden by the webmaster guideline, as algorithm penalties could affect your services without a discernible cause.
SEO is the most efficient tool through which you can modify the back-end elements of your website that affect the indexability of your pages or the content that attracts the attention of your target audience. However, keeping up with algorithm modifications, checking to see their impact, and changing your site to follow the best practices for online visibility can be resource-intensive. Do you want your business to retain its market relevancy regardless of changes in the digital marketing sphere? Want to be one of the first businesses to adapt to algorithm alterations? Are you looking to build a solid SEO foundation fit for further digital growth? If so, you will need our services.
Our experts will do everything in their power to follow the latest SEO trends and adapt your business to the modifications happening in the online medium. Nevertheless, this can be a challenge. The algorithms used by search engines are complex and utilize thousands of different ranking factors that are not disclosed to the general public. In a way, SEO is a guessing game where the focus is to be one step ahead of search engine crawlers and improve the experience of the target audiences. It works, but how these algorithms work is still a partial secret.
To keep up and maintain your services relevant for search engine crawlers, our specialists must build a global SEO strategy focused on constant content optimization and adjustments to the back-end elements of your pages. As an example, for the March 2024 update that targeted unhelpful content and penalized the excessive use of AI tools, our experts focused on the implementation of schema markup, on the optimization of CWS, and on the increase of user’s dwell time on pages. On the other hand, for the 2023 helpful content update, our focus was on leveraging topic clusters and the incorporation of entity-based SEO.
Each broad core update requires a different approach, as the algorithms impacted this time will differ from those affected previously. The latest algorithm modifications have reduced the importance of link-building strategies for SERP ranking and have instead prioritized E-A-A-T optimized content and compliance with the CWVs metrics. Moreover, with the latest March 2024 update and the introduction of “AI overviews,” voice searches have increased significantly in importance as they follow an increase in the usage of AI-based assistants such as Google Gemini.
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Googlebot is wide-reaching. In 2022 alone, it underwent no less than 4725 minor changes, averaging around 13 updates per day. However, a couple of times per year, Google introduces massive alterations to its AI-based systems, which we call “Core updates.” 2023 witnessed no less than four separate core updates and at least six other major algorithm modifications that had a significant impact on digital markets. However, the history of core algorithm updates dates back far longer.
Perhaps the most critical algorithm update in recent years took place in October 2019 with the introduction of BERT. Standing for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, BERT is essentially a highly sophisticated AI-based framework that is used to identify the connection between indexable phrases. In other words, an NLP model. Another essential update took place in June 2021, when Core Web Vitals officially became a SERP ranking factor. CWVs have changed in the last three years, most notably with the replacement of FID with INP in May 2024. However, its relevance for websites was never more significant than it is now.
Not least, the list of the most important Google updates of the last couple of years would not be complete without mentioning the tentative March 2021 launch of the mobile-first indexation shift. So far, 2024 remains equally significant, being a year that witnessed two spam updates and a notable March 2024 core update, which brought fundamental changes in the processing of sites using AI-based technologies. Each of these updates, however, had one thing in common: they introduced market volatility, which inevitably affected the SERP ranking of countless websites.
Minor updates happen a few times per year and have no noticeable effect on SERP rankings. In general, these updates adjust how back-end AI components interact with each other. So, the impact on the markets, if any, is localized. For an SEO services company, small-scale algorithm modifications are not a priority, as they can rarely pose a real danger to the online visibility of pages. Plus, most of the time, these types of updates are not announced in advance, nor do they provide any insight into how they influenced the rest of the AI-based crawling algorithms.
Core updates, on the other hand, represent significant modifications to the search algorithm used by Google. Therefore, on each occasion, they are accompanied by significant market volatility. The impact of core updates on the SEO market is substantial and can lead to the delisting of sites that do not respect the amendments made to search guidelines. As for their purpose, these types of algorithm modifications are implemented to reflect the shifts in Google’s criteria for evaluating indexable content. So, considering that we are going through a veritable AI revolution, it is to be expected that the next few years will see more frequent core updates.
Core algorithm changes are usually announced in advance, and their implementation may take considerable time. The latest March 2024 core update, for example, started rolling out on March 5th and concluded 45 days later on April 19th. The implementation of mobile-first indexing took even longer, as Google began migrating websites to mobile-first indexing in September 2020, completing the process only in October 2023. Core updates have an international impact and are characterized by complexity. So, most definitely, you will require our professional SEO audit services to minimize their effect on SERP rankings.
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Has your business been affected by a core algorithm update that wreaked havoc within your industry? If that’s the case, our company is the perfect partner to recover the ground you have lost. Our specialists will boot up Google Analytics and the Search Console to identify the exact timeframe in which your website suffered a traffic drop. Then, once we have this information, we will investigate the patterns of the update, check which of your pages were most affected, and analyze the timeline of the modifications.
Knowledge is power. So, to adjust your SEO strategy to market modifications, we’ll first need to identify the nature of Google’s latest update. Core algorithm modifications are announced in advance and come accompanied by a general outline of the shifts they will bring to the SEO market. It’s not much, as the information is minimal. However, it’s enough to understand if your site has been affected due to the content policy, external links, back-end elements, or the use of AI-assisted tools.
Our specialists will review the relevancy and structure of your site’s content and ensure it adheres to the E-A-A-T guidelines. On top of that, with the help of professional programs such as Google Keywords Planner, we will identify keywords relevant to your core demographics and implement semantic SEO techniques by utilizing related terms that match the query’s principal intent. We will also ensure that your site’s back-end elements align with CWVs, check the Search Console for crawl errors, and acquire new, quality links with sites with a superior authority score. Our approaches are efficient and represent the best way to mitigate the impact of core algorithm updates.
Our team can utilize a complex set of professional tools and techniques through which we can determine the impact of algorithm modifications both on your business and on the industry in which you are active. We will begin with an analysis powered by Google Analytics, whereby we will compare the level of traffic on your pages before and after the implementation of the update. Then, with the help of the Search Console, we will determine the actual ranking of your site for specific queries. Something is off? If that’s the case, we will investigate your competitors with the help of third-party SEO applications like SEMrush or Moz.
The tools we have at our disposal can be used to analyze the specific impact of algorithm modification on your indexed pages. Plus, based on the insights we have gathered, we can adjust our SEO strategy and modify either the back-end elements of your pages or the content written by our specialists. Algorithm modifications may have a local impact or a broad effect, impacting businesses outside of your sector. Do you want to know if the update had a global impact? Then, we could check for an official announcement on the Google Search Central Blog.
Plus, we could also follow internationally known SEO websites like the Search Engine Journal and browse for clarifications from official sources. Once a core update is launched, its impact on the SEO sphere is quite apparent. Our specialist will score the market’s volatility with the help of programs such as MozCast or Mangools. However, to perform the changes necessary to restore your site’s SERP position to normal, we will primarily use Ahrefs and SEMrush.
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E-A-A-T is a set of guidelines used by Google to determine the SERP position of indexed pages based on content quality. E-A-A-T consists of four separate principles, which act in different ways. The “Experience” principle refers to the author’s familiarity with the topics discussed in the created articles. Want to write a blog about cooking recipes? If so, its visibility will rise if you have previously created articles in the same niche. Moreover, to improve the impact of the “Experience” metric, you should present evidence of real-life experiences with the topics you write about.
The “Expertise” principle, on the other hand, ties in with the credentials of the author, while “Authoritativeness” refers to the credibility of the sources you utilize. At the same time, “Trustworthiness” is intertwined with the transparency of your firm’s operations and with the utilization of up-to-date information that can be easily verifiable. Creating E-A-A-T optimized content can negate the adverse effects of core algorithm updates, as Google nowadays looks mainly at the semantic contexts behind indexable content.
Equally crucial for maintaining SERP stability is following the CWV metrics, of which there are three. The “Largest Contentful Paint” measures the server response time and takes into consideration the duration until the graphic elements of your pages finish loading. A good LCP score should be under two seconds. The second CWV metric is “Interaction to Next Paint,” which measures the duration until the site’s pages react to visitor interactions. It can be thought of as website lag and a good INP score should be under 200 milliseconds. Finally, the last CWV is “Cumulative Layout Shift,” which measures the movement of text elements after the page finishes loading. Ideally, CLS should be below 0.1.
About Author
Remus Honceriu
Remus attended Ovidius University in Constanta, graduating in 2017 with a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations and European Studies.What Remus appreciates most about being a content writer is the ability to manage his schedule and the feeling that he improves his writing skills with each finished project.
