Google is constantly making changes to the way its search engine works. Sometimes these changes are made at a frantic pace: in 2018, it made over 3,200 updates! If these changes differ (in scope and scale), they can cause your results to fluctuate significantly.
Depending on your responsiveness to changes, an update can improve or worsen your ranking.
In this article, we will tell you what kind of updates are there and how to be prepared for future search engine changes!
Types of Google algorithm updates
1. Major Update
So-called major updates have a specific purpose and are known by funny names like “Panda” or “Penguin”. Applied to address a specific issue such as duplicate content or link spam, they can greatly affect your rankings. This is why Google warns webmasters in advance so that they have time to update their sites.
As recently as June 2020, Google provided insight into how “core web vitals” will be an important ranking factor in 2021.
These updates remain rare: there are one or two per year.
2. Classic Update
While major updates are implemented to address a specific issue, classic updates are more general in nature and usually relate to adjustments to Google’s core algorithm. This means that Google has changed the importance of some ranking factors.
For example, he may decide that page load speed or the quality of backlinks should be considered more important than the page’s word count.
These updates happen 3 to 4 times a year.
3. Minor Updates
Minor updates happen daily and you might not even notice: most are minor micro-algorithm refinements that help improve the relevancy of search results.
They constitute the majority of modifications, there are thousands of them every year!
How to prepare for Google algorithm update?
Google wants brands to focus on improving the user experience and relevance of content rather than chasing updates.
With the exception of times when Google explicitly communicates that it wants to accommodate webmasters in anticipation of a major update, the best way to prepare for an algorithm update is to use the right SEO practices.
easy to use website
A good user experience is essential to get good rankings. So make sure your site structure makes sense to both users and bots. A visitor browsing your site for the first time can easily find what they are looking for.
For crawlers, you should use a sitemap to help them find important pages on your site.
Use explicit URLs and not the random characters that CMS platforms use by default.
A Technical SEO Audit
It’s a good idea to check that you don’t have any technical issues that could be hurting your site. Depending on the complexity of the site, a technical audit is a cumbersome and time-consuming protocol, unless you do it more frequently (every quarter). A solid technical foundation will help your site through future algorithm updates:
- fix crawl errors;
- Check that important pages are not blocked in the robots.txt file;
- remove unimportant pages from your sitemap;
- Update broken link;
- remove redirect chains;
- Check the presence of “alt” tags on the images.
a site as soon as possible
Since 2010, Google has given importance to site speed. It also offers its own testing tool, PageSpeed ​​Insights: free, it gives your site a score on mobile and desktop.
Like fixing technical issues, improving your site speed improves the user experience, which will benefit you in future algorithm updates.
Disallow suspicious backlinks
It is known that getting backlinks from quality sites improves your page ranking. However, not all links are created equal, and if you find that your site is getting a lot of backlinks that are irrelevant and/or from spammy sites, be aware that this could hurt your rankings .
To prevent these scam backlinks from hurting your rankings, you need to examine the backlinks you have received and decide if there are any that you need to disallow. This is a way of telling Google not to associate these links with your site.
Create Quality Content
Ultimately, writing quality content that is relevant to your audience is the best way to establish your authority in your niche and protect yourself from algorithmic updates.
Make sure that each page of the site has a specific purpose and that the page content provides clear and useful information to users.
Still in terms of content, focus on quality rather than quantity. It is better to have well-ranked content than five mediocre pages that rank poorly in the SERPs.
Feel free to remove underperforming content to drive growth on your most important pages.
Regularly analyze which pages have declined (or had limited growth). The main reasons for this problem are:
- Poor content, less than 500 words;
- Outdated content (instead of deleting, update it);
- Duplicate Content.
Make sure you create quality content by entrusting their writing to professionals. Order your content writing at Redacteur.com and get fast, professional quality texts optimized for SEO.
conclusion
A healthy and well-organized site will ensure that you don’t suffer from search engine restructuring, no matter what kind of updates Google makes. Continually ensure the good health of your site and optimize it upon innovations.
If necessary, get help from SEO experts who will be able to identify areas of improvement and boost your SEO performance. Post your project for free on Codeur.com to find SEO freelancers.