Out a Google core update just landed and Your website just lost 60 of its traffic In this video I’m gonna do a deep dive Into Google core algorithm updates You’re going to get a full understanding Of how they work and how to recover from Them and if you’ve been lucky enough to Avoid the rest so far I’ll help you make Sure that luck turns into routine my Name is Matt Diggity and I’m a director At the search initiative we’re an SEO Agency that specializes in penalty Recovery when you understand how the Core updates work you actually look Forward to them coming out here’s the Snapshot on how my portfolio did in the Previous core algorithm update in May Between 16 and 377 percent gains I want To show you how to get similar results But before we dive in what actually is a Google core algorithm update two to Three times per year Google releases Core updates these are large algorithmic Changes to how they order the rankings Typically taking one to two weeks to Fully roll out because of this you don’t Want to react and make any changes to Your website for at least three weeks I Know it’s hard but for at least three Weeks your job is to chill back out plus A lot of the time they’ve rolled back The changes which is another reason just To straight up chill so what actually Happens during these core Updates this
Is what Google search Central says about Them during core updates they make Significant broad changes to their Algorithms and in doing so you can Expect to see some quote widely notable Effects now what Google means by broad Is that they typically change a lot of Ranking factors at the same time a core Update doesn’t just change the way they Look at link quality for example there’s Hundreds of micro changes that occur at The same time during an update this Makes it extremely challenging to pin Down what exactly Google didn’t like About your site if you got hit by an Update but there’s a solution to this And I’ll get to that later also in the Search Central documentation they give This paragraph which in my opinion is Mostly accurate one way to think of how A core update operates is to imagine you Made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. a few years later in 2019 you Refresh the list it’s going to naturally Change some new and wonderful movies That never existed before will now be Candidates for inclusion you might also Recess some films and realize they Deserved a higher place on the list than They had before the reason I say it’s Mostly accurate is because some websites Get totally annihilated in updates you Wouldn’t see Spider-Man no way home in The top 5 movies one year and then the
Top 500 movies the next year but it’s True you should think of core updates as Refreshes Google assigns a quality score To each website which is made up of a Whole bunch of ranking factors content Quality link quality topical Authority a Lack of spam signals and so forth if They happen to turn up the volume on the Need for more content quality during a Core update then New Quality scores are Evaluated across the internet and we Have a refresh of the rankings this Quality score is assigned to your Website as a whole rather than Page by Page so if you got affected by a core Update it’s your whole website that got Affected all your pages will go up in Rankings or down or things might look Flat and unfortunately if you did get Hit you often need to wait to the next Core update for a recovery many of Google’s algorithms don’t run in real Time so even if you immediately repaired Everything that I’m going to show you You may have to wait till the next core Update to roll out so what are you Supposed to do if you do get hit Surprise surprise the search Central Advice isn’t actionable at all focus it On quality content I’m sure you heard This vague advice more times than you Want to recall but you can’t really Blame Google if they gave everyone Actionable advice like you can’t use
Keywords more than 4.8 percent in your Content then everyone on the web good or Bad would implement it and you’d have People ranking with poor spamming Content so in this video I’m going to Show you how to figure out what went Wrong and what to do to recover but Before I get started here’s where I ask If you could give that like button the Core update and unsmash like button is a Really bad signal for the YouTube Algorithm so if you could get my back Here on YouTube I’ll get your back on Google let’s start to take a look at the Various ways you can figure out what Went wrong during a Google core update I’ll give you a heads up one of the Tactics that I see people use is dead Wrong I’m only showing it to you so you Can stay clear of it after that I’m Going to show you a couple correct Approaches for debugging your site Here’s how not to do it if you have Multiple websites in a core update you May have some that went up and some that Went down incorrect seos might feel Inclined to dissect acting what the Losers did wrong by comparing what’s Different about their ranking tactics Here’s where this falls apart first you Don’t have enough data your portfolio of Five sites isn’t nearly enough to draw a Conclusion second there’s too many Ranking factors to track at the same
Time let’s say you had five websites in Your portfolio four of them went down in Traffic after the update but one of them One that you built using AI content Skyrocketed after the update would you Then conclude that this update was about Penalizing websites with natural content It immediately becomes clear what this Approach is so what are the right Ways to debug an algorithm drop the First is correlation studies this is Where you constantly track thousands of Websites for hundreds of ranking factors All at the same time when a core Algorithm update hits you compare how All these websites moved after the Update and what were the common ranking Factors amongst the winners and the Losers as you can tell this takes a lot Of data for example if you found that The average domain rating of the winners Increased by 15 we could make the Conclusion that Google turned up the Volume on backlinks there’s a bunch of Folks that do correlation studies that I Trust for example Eric land trees Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray I’ve even had the Opportunity to run a correlation study Myself where I found that in the December 2020 Google core algorithm Update Google introduced a ranking Factor that punished affiliate websites That had a high ratio of review versus Informational content that said there
Are indeed some problems with Correlation studies first as you already Noticed most people don’t have access to This level of data so you’re at the Mercy of waiting for other people to Release a study and you’re going to have To trust that they analyze the data well Another problem with data studies is This concept of correlation and Causation just because the data looks Like it’s indicating something it could Be entirely coincidence this is a graph Showing how both ice cream sales and Shark attack Spike at nearly identical Rates in the summer months for the love Of God please stop selling these damn Ice creams and protect our children Which brings us at last to the right way To debug core updates as you know core Updates change multiple factors at the Same time it’s impossible to figure out What is the one thing that your website Did wrong most likely there are 30 Things you need to improve so the only Only way to recover is to assume that Everything is wrong with your site you Need to do a complete website audit and Recheck everything and I’ll get to that List of everything very shortly sure This may sound like a lot of work but Shouldn’t you be giving your website the Royal Treatment anyways penalty or not In the affiliate lab we call this Concept do all the things and it’s no
Surprise our membership basic tracks the Best in the industry what constitutes a Full website audit let’s go into what Actually is do all the things first we Start with technical SEO technical SEO Issues can completely ruin your quality Score on Google when you make life hard For Google technically they make life Hard for you to run a technical SEO Audit I recommend using one of the Following tools that will scan your site And spit you out a list of items that You need to fix atres has a very nice Site audit tool which displays errors in A nice GUI interface and if you already Have ahrest then there’s no incremental Fee then we have siteliner which is a Standalone tool for technical Audits and It’s got a nice interface as well then Lastly we have screaming frog which Doesn’t have much of an interface but It’s free for websites less than 500 URL Here’s a list of issues you want to be On the lookout for crawl errors are There certain parts of your site that Are completely inaccessible to Google or Do you have pages on your site that are Extremely hard to reach and are more Than four jumps away from your home page Missing titles and descriptions and ALT Tags did you forget to fill out all These critical places for meta info do You have non-https URLs indexed a quick Check you can run is to Google site
Colon your domain name then minus https Do you have broken links and this Applies to internal links between the Pages of your site and incoming external Links going to pages that don’t exist Anymore do you have duplicate content This is what a siteliner duplicate Content report looks like for Dignitymarketing.com do you have Indexing issues are you wasting Google’s Crawl Budget on indexing tags and images Do you have problems with schema make Sure to always check your schema and Google’s free structured data testing Tool and lastly do you have issues with Your core web vitals and the overall Speed of your website pour deep dive Into core web vitals and website speed Check out the link in the description After you finish up here next you want To perform a complete audit of your con Content here’s a quick check you can do To see if Google has devalued your Content Google an exact sentence from One of your top articles and make sure You’re still coming up number one for it If you’re not you’re in deep next you Want to check for thin content on your Site I wrote an article on how to do a Complete content audit and I give a list Of items that usually trigger thin Content duplication scrape content Auto Generated content such as AI Regurgitated affiliate content and
Doorway Pages after that you want to see If you have adequate topical coverage in Your content clusters bro what are you Talking about man now I know it just Spit out a ton of jargon so let me Explain myself if you write the best Piece of content on the planet on how do Saltwater fish Google doesn’t give a it’s only when you write on all the Topics related to phishing where they Start to care like how to care for a Fishing pole and what’s the best lure For Rivers then and only then will they Consider you how deep are your content Clusters did you cover all the topics in Your Niche or just a subset get on it Next check for keyword cannibalization You see Google doesn’t like to rank two Articles from the same website for the Same keyword and when two or more Articles compete neither of them get to Rank what you need to do is decide which One you want to rank and de-optimize or Delete the other one after that and I Touched upon this before if you’re an Affiliate SEO you need to get your Ratios of informational versus Commercial content correct what is the Right ratio it depends on your Niche Make sure to watch my video called all Affiliate websites need to do this after You finish up here next you want to Start looking at your individual Articles one by one check for search
Intent issues Google is expecting to see Certain types of content ranking for Various keywords for example if you Google best wireless router you’re Likely to see listicles if you Google Buy CBD oil you’re likely to see E-commerce pages in a core update these Expectancies can get scrambled so check To see if it’s changed for your keyword Next you want to check the subtopic Coverage of your article when you write An article that you expect to do well on Google you should be researching how Your top competitions structured their Articles for example if you wanted to Write an article on how to lose belly Fat you go to this top ranking article From Healthline and see that you need to Talk about eating fiber avoiding trans Fats and not drinking too much booze you Need to include these subtopics in your Article when a core update rolls out the Top articles ranking on Google get mixed Up so the golden set of subtopics Required to answer the query might have Been jumbled around two you need to Check on that to learn more make sure to Watch my video on how to write content That ranks number one on Google after This video next you want to fire up a Tool-like surfer to check on two things First is the word count of your article Still the average of the top five in Google I ran an experiment where I
Deleted 2000 words of content to reclaim The number one position for SEO coaching After a core update I documented the Whole thing in this video you’re seeing Here also in Surfer you want to check How well your words phrases and entities Are optimized this is a big one Google’s Expecting to see certain words and Certain frequencies in your content if You’re writing an article on how to make Beer then there’s a sweet spot on how Much you should use the word beer in Your content and that goes for every Word even non-keywords such as hops Taste and poor when the search get Scrambled up after their core update Then the expected word densities change Too also check to see if you’re linking Out and citing where you’re getting your Information from there’s an example in Google’s quality Raider guidelines where They actually bash a website for not Citing its references they also talk About eat which I’ll get into soon for a Full content audit checklist check out My article I wrote on the subject after You finish up here next it’s time to Audit how well your website lives up to Eat standards eat is an acronym the E-part expertise requires your content To be above and beyond typical Information that people can find on the Subject effect a Authority requires your Content to be created by a credible
Source and T trust requires that content Should be factually correct and backed Up by external sources EET has mentioned Over 120 times in Google’s quality rater Guidelines so yeah it’s kind of a big Deal that said a lot of the guidelines Have extreme recommendations such as Requiring your content to always be Written by experts but we have to think About this from an algorithmic Perspective can the algorithm actually Check up and make sure your author Graduated from Harvard no I don’t think So but what it can check for is a Complete lack of authorship and Credibility signal so here’s how you Cover those bases include an author bio Also known as an author box at the end Of each post add author schema teach Article to hammer home yo this is who Wrote this article and make sure to Feature your authors on your about page The quality Raider guidelines also Stress that credible website owners Should be contactable so make sure your Contact form is up to scratch they also Say that your content should be up to Date so make sure you’re updating your Old posts and not referencing any aged Facts and last but not least what I Think eat really boils down to is this In this tweet Marie Haynes reported that Google has even said eat is quote Largely based on links so make sure that
Your link profiles and I’ll get to that Soon but before that check on your Internal linking how good is your Website architecture when one page on Your site links to another page on your Website that helps to establish topical Relevance for the receiving page are Your high priority Pages receiving Enough supporting links from other pages On that topic you can use ahrefs Internal backlinks tool to run an audit Now let’s take a look at backlinks a Poor link profile can easily contribute To a crash after a core algorithm update Google is set on multiple occasions that They’re able to ignore most spammy links The key word here is most most isn’t Good enough for your sites so consider Creating a disavow file this is the file You use to tell Google what links you Want them to ignore in this case City I Wrote on how to lift an algorithmic Penalty I gave a checklist on whether or Not you should add a link to your Disavow file for example there’s a Website looks spammy does it link out to Tons of websites is it placed in content That makes sense is it comment spam and So forth also you want to take a look at Your anchor text since the penguin Algorithm was introduced in 2016 Google Has taken a Crackdown on anchor text Over optimization each URL on your Website is expected to have a balanced
Mix of Target URL brand topical and Miscellaneous anchor text as determined By your competition on page one as Mentioned before once you do all the Things you might not see a recovery Until the next core algorithm update but Rest assured Google cannot hold back a Properly optimized website from where it Deserves to be if you want me to do all The things for you head on over to the Searchinitiative.com and use the form at The bottom to get in touch I’d be happy To help get your site back on track