Google is constantly making changes to how search works based on user behaviour, research and data collection. SEO can therefore seem like a game of constant catch-up as best practices change and search becomes more sophisticated.
Some of these updates are more important than others and are called core updates. If you keep a casual ear on SEO news, it’s usually these that you’ll hear about. They signify a big change that can send search rankings plummeting and skyrocketing – sometimes for unclear reasons.
Theoretically, if you follow good SEO practices, create content for the user and not search engines, and avoid black hat SEO techniques, you shouldn’t suffer too many negative effects after a core update. In fact, in such cases, core updates should provide websites with better SEO results. That could be in the shape of more traffic, better rankings, or more relevant traffic.
Google rarely gives any advance notice of its core updates, so you may be tempted to scramble into action as soon as you hear about it. But instead, follow these steps for success, recovery and smooth sailing.
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Before and during a core update
Follow best practices
Most core updates won’t affect what is already best practice in the SEO world. That could be writing content that’s useful for your audience, ensuring your website is mobile friendly and easy to navigate, reducing load times, or including accessibility features such as image alt tags. In many cases, you can reduce potential negative effects from a Google update simply by fulfilling some basic SEO requirements and regularly reviewing these.
Keep on top of the news
There are many SEO experts out there who will be closely monitoring any updates, assessing their own data and comparing details with others in the industry. That means there will be lots of news stories and articles about any significant changes and trends. This is mostly educated guesswork, but can be handy to help you work out if your website is likely to be affected. These investigations can also help you identify where your site may fall down. If, for example, there’s a lot of evidence that heavy use of AI content is being penalised, and your website uses lots of AI content, then think about changing that.
Keep an eye on Google’s own news feeds too. Though not usually forthcoming with helpful information, they will sometimes offer some clues and detail about what to expect.
Wait it out
Don’t panic if your traffic and rankings start dropping or bouncing. Similarly, if you see them shoot up, don’t assume all is well and that there’s no need to do anything more. During a core update, search results become very volatile, which means they – and your traffic – can move up and down quite considerably. Think of it like a mini earthquake for your website.
What this also means is that the results you see during a core update can’t be fully trusted until some time after the update is complete. So it’s often not worth doing anything dramatic to try and change things until a week or so after the update completes.
Saying that, if you see really dramatic changes – such as a complete traffic wipe-out – then you should take prompt action to start the recovery process as soon as possible.
After a core update
Assess the impact
Once a core update is complete, check what’s changed with your website rankings and traffic. Free tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console are incredibly useful for this step, but you must have had them up and running before the update. Looking at average rankings and the amount of traffic to your site will provide an overview of what’s happened, but it’s also important to dig deeper.
For example, your overall ranking might have dropped, but if that means you’re no longer ranking highly for irrelevant searches, then a drop isn’t actually a problem.
Using the reports on Search Console, have a look at the individual search phrases you’re now ranking for compared to previously. Are they more or less relevant? Has your average position for important searches climbed or dropped?
On Analytics, assess your overall traffic and then look into individual pages and user detail such as traffic country of origin, length of time on page, and interactions. Each of these can tell you something about the traffic you were getting and the traffic you’re now getting. If your traffic has dropped but users are spending more time on your website and are more likely to take actions, then you’re benefiting from the update. Remember, quality over quantity.
Compare against competitors
How have your competitors fared compared to you? Tools such as SEMRush can help you review such information. If competitors have seen gains where you’ve seen losses, take a closer look at their site. What are they doing differently? And how does that compare to what you know about the update? If SEO news indicates that websites with more detailed content have fared well, and your competitor shares more thorough product descriptions than you, then use that to make improvements on your own site.
Never copy other websites directly, but use them for inspiration.
Check for penalties
If you see a dramatic drop in your visibility in search, then check Google Search Console for manual actions. This will be a note that tells you that your website has been penalised and why. Manual actions can be pretty serious as they generally mean that your website is partially or completely de-listed from Google – which means it can’t be found in search at all.
A manual action generally means a pretty serious disregard of search policies, so check your site for black hat SEO and fix any issues as a matter of urgency. It may take a considerable amount of time for your site to recover from such an event.
Compare individual pages
Review pages on your site that have seen improvements and those that have seen drops following a core update. Look for trends that could indicate why there has been a change. By breaking pages and groups of pages down in this way, you can use trends from the improved pages to update and revamp those pages that have seen drops.
Keep reading the news
In the fallout after a core update, SEO experts will continue analysing results and sharing their findings online. This gives you a lot of information to tap into. Look for case studies similar to your situation and find out what helped (or hindered). There can be clues in these articles, videos, and social posts that can help you recover any losses.
Go back to basics
At the beginning of this article I recommended following SEO best practices as standard. You may be doing that, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check, especially if you’ve encountered issues following a core update. Running a basic SEO site audit can help you identify and action potential problem areas.
Core updates usually focus on penalising poor practices and rewarding those sites that are user-focused. We can lose sight of that, so it’s worth going back to basics and ensuring your website helps the user.
Conclusion
Google core updates are algorithm updates that aim to improve user experience. They can affect websites both negatively and positively, and analysing your website during and after such an update is an important step to remain on top of your SEO. Following best practices at all times is the best way to reduce negative impact from an update, but if you do suffer big changes, review the industry, your competitors, and your existing SEO practices to improve and get back on track.
