First off, this is no ordinary core update, as it includes major changes to multiple core ranking systems – and it introduces brand-new spam policies. 

Not only that, but Google has now fully incorporated its helpful content system into its core ranking algorithm, meaning there won’t be any more helpful content updates.

This update has been in the works since the Helpful Content Update of August 2022, which explains why it’s so complex. 

If you’ve been in the SEO game long enough to remember the Penguin update, you’re probably shuddering right now. 

Back then, Google went completely scorched earth and began penalizing and de-indexing thousands of websites, causing businesses to lose 100% of their traffic overnight. 

The scary part?

The exact same thing has been happening over the last few days. 

Manual actions are going out left and right, and websites are getting de-indexed at historic rates. 

It’s no secret that Google has come under serious scrutiny as of late, with countless users complaining about AI-generated spam clogging up Google’s search results. 

And while Google claims that the March Update is separate from introducing manual penalties again, the two are happening in tandem. 

Eager to protect their reputation as the internet’s go-to search engine, this update is Google’s response to the criticism. 

Read on to learn everything you need to know about the March 2024 Core Update, including what to do if your site’s been impacted. 

March 2024 Core Update: Three Updates in One  

There was a ton of publicity from Google before this update, which isn’t common for run-of-the-mill core updates. 

Why all the PR buzz?

There are several reasons, the first being all the negative feedback Google’s been receiving over the past few months. Users aren’t happy with the amount of spam showing up on Google’s SERPs (which is partly due to the massive spam attack from a few months back), and it’s been hurting their reputation. 

As a result, the company is in recovery mode. It’s clear they’re eager to win back user’s trust with the severity of this update and the amount of PR surrounding it. 

Next, this isn’t a regular core update by any means. 

In fact, you can think of it as three updates in one. That’s because it contains:

1. Updates to Google’s core ranking algorithm 
2. Updates to the Helpful Content system (and integrating it into the core system) 
3. New spam policies and updates to SpamBrain

In other words, the March 2024 update is a core update, a helpful content update, and a spam update, so it’s no surprise that the SERPs are so volatile right now.  

Google released a detailed blog post explaining the reason behind the update, along with the prediction to reduce low-quality, unhelpful search results by 40%. 

Over on Google Search Central, the company published another post letting site owners know what they can expect from the update, and included its new spam policies. 

Overall, Google claims this update refines its understanding of ‘low-quality, unhelpful web pages that feel like they were created for search engines instead of users.’ 

The reaction so far: an SEO apocalypse?

While the update has only been rolling out for a few days at this point, it’s been setting the internet on fire. SEOs are reporting manual actions like never before, and websites are completely disappearing from the SERPs. 

Again, Google claims these are separate, but the bottom line is, they are happening, and at the same time as this new update. 

X user Lily Ray saw a whopping 10 websites disappear from the SERPs overnight, and it’s by no means an isolated case. 

In the not-so-distant past, manual actions were a pretty rare occurrence. Rather than de-index a website, Google preferred to devalue the impact spam, auto-generated content, and paid links had on a site’s search rankings. 

That’s no longer the case, as Google is dead set on improving the quality of their search results. 

So far, the sites that have been impacted the most are low-quality, AI-generated sites that only exist to manipulate search results. These sites have been popping up all over the place due to the prevalence of free tools like ChatGPT, and they’ve had a noticeably negative effect on the quality of Google’s search results. 

Yet, Google updates are never error-free, as there are also reports of websites disappearing from the SERPs that didn’t use AI whatsoever – but that’s likely due to one of the new spam policies. 

The New Spam Policies: Expired Domain Abuse, Scaled Content Abuse, and Site Reputation Abuse 

Google’s newly announced spam policies are the culprit for most of the manual actions going out, so it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with them. 

According to the post on Google Search Central, the update cracks down on the following:

• Expired domain abuse. A favorite trick of SEOs that build PBNs (private blog networks) is to seek out expired domains that still carry authority. For instance, an SEO may purchase an expired educational domain to take advantage of its ranking power, only to then populate the site with worthless content. The March 2024 update refined Google’s ability to detect expired domain abuse, and they aren’t hesitating to deliver manual actions. 

• Scaled content abuse. This is the policy that cracks down on mass AI-generated content intended to manipulate search results. These are low-grade web pages that don’t answer user’s questions or provide any valuable information, and Google is eager to rid their SERPs of them entirely. 

• Site reputation abuse. Some authoritative sites take advantage of their good reputation and publish unrelated third-party pages that confuse or irritate their core audience. This technique goes by the unflattering name ‘Parasite SEO.’ The example Google gives is a third-party site posting payday loan reviews on an educational website to piggyback off their ranking power (sort of like how remora fish cling to sharks). This particular policy features a two-month notice, so it won’t go into effect until May 5th. 

SEOs should not only memorize these policies but also pay close attention to the sites that were de-indexed/penalized to understand what they did wrong. 

What Can You Do to Prepare/Recover?

Google’s advice on ranking fluctuations due to core updates has remained unchanged for years now, and it boils down to ‘create better content.’ 

Yet, for this update, we have a lot of concrete information to go on.

In particular, ensure that your website does not employ any of the spam methods included in Google’s new policies.

AI-generated content isn’t inherently bad, but you should do your best to avoid it since Google is cracking down on it so hard. Also, exhibit E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) signals in every piece of content you create. 

There’s a reason why Reddit posts rank for so many Google searches. 

It’s because Google values real experiences and first-hand expertise – so demonstrate both whenever possible. 

If you run a reputable site that has some questionable third-party content, it’s in your best interest to remove it before May 5th to avoid a manual action, which can be disastrous to recover from. 

As long as you’re publishing valuable content that your core audience actually wants to consume, you shouldn’t have much to worry about. 

Wrapping Up: A Historical Core Update 

While it doesn’t have as catchy a name, the March 2024 Core Update will go down in history alongside milestone updates like Florida, Panda, and Penguin. 

It’s brought major changes to Google’s helpful content, core, and spam algorithms, and it has already massively reshaped the SERPs. 

Despite the chaos, the principle of sound SEO still remains true; create valuable content for your audience first, and search engines second. 

Do you need help mastering SEO in this uncertain age?

Then don’t wait to sign up for HOTH X, our managed SEO service that removes all the complexity from the process while yielding outstanding results.     

Or, book a direct call with our team, for a one-on-one deep dive on exactly how to move forward. 

The post Google’s March 2024 Core Update Hits Hard: Are You Prepared? appeared first on The HOTH.

Google Ads users can now run ads on Pinterest, which opens up a new range of possibilities for marketers running paid ads through Google. 

The partnership with Reddit focuses more on improving the quality and convenience of Google’s search results. 

Google now has access to Reddit’s Data API, and Reddit gained access to Vertex AI to improve its internal search capabilities. 

It’s also rumored that Google could partner with TikTok. 

Why would they want to do that?

This is because, despite being a short-form video platform, TikTok has become the search engine of choice for younger generations (Gen Z and Gen Alpha). 

A Google partnership, then, could potentially benefit both parties. Google could lend its search algorithm expertise to TikTok to enhance its user experience, all while enjoying boosted traffic flowing from TikTok searches. 

It’s not yet clear whether the TikTok partnership will become official, but there’s currently a beta test in the works, so it’s clear both parties are open to the idea. 

Speaking of TikTok, YouTube Shorts (Google’s answer to TikTok) has some impressive capabilities that not enough businesses utilize. 

More importantly, all these partnerships pose interesting opportunities for SEOs and digital marketers. Read on to learn how you can leverage these new partnerships (and YouTube Shorts) to expand your online reach. 

Partnering with Pinterest for Ad Placements

Pinterest had a less-than-stellar Q4 2023 due to decreasing revenue. Since their earnings fell beneath analysts’ expectations, their stock fell by almost 28%. 

However, they had an ace in the hole. 

CEO Bill Ready announced Pinterest’s ad partnership with Google, which stands to boost its ad revenue by a significant margin. Ready claimed that they began the rollout a few weeks ago and that third-party ad demand is rising. 

The partnership is also an attempt on Pinterest’s part to capitalize on its sizable international audience. 

While 80% of Pinterest’s users reside outside the United States, they only account for 20% of the platform’s revenue. 

Pinterest hopes the Google partnership will boost the amount of revenue coming from international markets. 

This marks the second time that Pinterest has partnered with a third party to boost ad revenue, as they initiated a similar deal with Amazon last year. 

Much like the Amazon deal, the Google partnership will roll out over several business quarters. 

What does this partnership mean for digital marketers?

Marketers running Google Ads campaigns can now place ads on Pinterest from their Google Ads Manager. 

This is significant because it provides businesses with new ways to appeal to their target audiences. 

Pinterest is a massive platform with users from virtually every industry and niche, making it an ideal channel for third-party advertisements. 

Also, Pinterest is adding several new AI-powered features to boost user engagement and interactivity. 

The new collage feature lets users create scrapbook-style images using a combination of objects, stickers, and pictures. There’s also a new auto-organizing feature that encourages users to create boards whenever it identifies similar pins – which has led to an increase in user boards. 

These engagement-boosting features increase the chances of Pinterest users interacting with your ads, which is a plus.

Pinterest has more than 498 million monthly active users, so it’s definitely an advertising channel that’s worth your time. 

Improving User Search by Partnering with Reddit 

While Google is no stranger to Reddit (the two have a longstanding relationship), they’re taking things to the next level with their newly announced partnership. 

Google values the authentic human conversations and experiences that Reddit provides, and its goal is to highlight relevant Reddit content whenever possible. 

To make this happen, Reddit granted Google access to its Data API – providing Google with real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit that relates to Google searches. 

This means SEOs can expect to see more SERP features from Reddit, which may be good or bad. 

On one hand, if the Reddit posts mention your brand, then it’s a way to broaden your online reach. Yet, if a Reddit SERP feature appears at the top of the page and answers the user’s question, it can lead to a zero-click search. So, if you’ve put a lot of hard work into creating a piece of content for a keyword that triggers a Reddit SERP, you may lose out on traffic. 

That’s why it’s essential to check keywords for SERP features before targeting them for your SEO strategy. 

SEMRush’s Keyword Overview tool is a big help in this regard as if you select the SERP feature filter, it’ll let you know if a keyword will trigger something like a featured snippet or knowledge bar. You can get a free trial and check out their tools here. 

The Rumored TikTok Partnership 

This one is still up in the air, so there’s no need to panic (or rejoice) just yet. 

Google has been keeping a close eye on TikTok ever since the platform took over social media a few years back. 

As stated before, younger generations are now using TikTok as a makeshift search engine. Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s SVP of search, said, “Almost 40% of young people, when they are looking for a place for lunch, don’t go to Google Maps or search – they go to TikTok or Instagram.”

The plan is to combine Google’s search prowess and credibility with TikTok’s explosive popularity amongst young people. 

There are talks of including links to Google queries straight from TikTok. 

It would work like this:

• A user conducts a search on TikTok for a new restaurant or news story 
• A built-in Google link lets the user validate the information through Google search and reviews

It’s a best-of-both-worlds type deal where users can use their search engine of choice (TikTok) while still enjoying accurate and trusted information (Google). 

While a TikTok spokesperson claimed a trial version is underway, Google declined to reveal whether a financial agreement is part of the partnership. 

Broadening Online Reach with YouTube Shorts 

SEOs need to capitalize on every channel available to them, especially in the rapidly changing search landscape. 

After all, putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. 

That’s why it’s wise to take advantage of platforms like TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, and YouTube Shorts to build brand awareness and generate more traffic. 

That way, should one channel start to falter (like strict organic SEO), you’ll have other channels to fall back on. 

Many aren’t aware that Google expanded YouTube Shorts to include video reach campaigns back in May of last year. 

What’s a video reach campaign?

It’s an AI-powered video ad campaign designed to place your ads in front of the right people at the right time. 

Google gives the example of a Paramount + Mexico movie called At Midnight that used video reach campaigns to build an audience. The campaign resulted in significantly higher ad recall and efficiencies, so YouTube Shorts is a channel you shouldn’t ignore. 

Much like Pinterest, YouTube Shorts runs the gambit of all industries and interests, so your target audience is bound to have a presence there. 

Leveraging Google’s New Partnerships for Your Benefit 

These new partnerships are yet another example of the significant changes the search engine world is going through at the moment. 

The good news?

You can use Pinterest ads, Reddit mentions, and YouTube Shorts to expand your online influence and generate more leads and sales. 

Need help adjusting to this strange new SEO world?

Then don’t wait to try out HOTH X, our managed service that simplifies SEO and yields outstanding results.   

The post Google Partners with Reddit, Pinterest, and Possibly TikTok  appeared first on The HOTH.

Just as a physician checks your vitals to ensure you’re in good health, the Core Web Vitals test does the same thing for websites. 

The only difference is that Google checks for things like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability instead of weight and blood pressure.

However, one of the Core Web Vitals, known as First Input Delay (FID), is about to go by the wayside. 

Google introduced a new Web Vital metric called Interaction to Next Paint (INP) back in May 2023 with the aim of replacing FID in early 2024. 

The new year is here, and INP is about to become an official part of Google’s Core Web Vitals on March 12th. 

How will this affect SEO?

If you aren’t able to pass the Core Web Vitals test, you won’t be able to rank in the top spots on Google’s SERPs. So, if your website has slow interactions (which is what INP measures), you may see negative effects on your Google rankings. 

Stay tuned to learn everything you need to know about INP, how it differs from FID, and how you can ensure you pass the test. 

What is Interaction to Next Paint?

You can separate Google’s Core Web Vitals into three key areas that affect a website’s user experience the most, which are:

• Speed
• Interactivity 
• Stability 

Accordingly, Google has a metric that measures each:

• Last Contentful Paint (LCP) measures a website’s loading speed.
• First Input Delay (FID) measures how long it takes for users to begin interacting with the site.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a website. 

These metrics were the ‘big three’ up until last May when Google announced Interaction to Next Paint, which is a new and more comprehensive way of measuring interactivity. 

Why does Google need two metrics for interactivity?

They don’t, which is why INP is set to replace FID, the current interactivity metric. 

Google discovered some key limitations with First Input Delay in 2022. This led their team to experiment with a different way of measuring a website’s interactivity, leading to the creation of INP. 

While it’s still in the ‘pending’ phase, INP will become a stable Core Web Vitals on March 12th, 2024. 

How is INP different from FID?

It didn’t take long for the cracks to begin to show with First Input Delay, as it’s not a very reliable way of gauging a website’s interactivity.

Why is that?

It’s because FID only measures a user’s first interaction with a website and doesn’t consider any interactions that take place after. 

Going by FID alone, the Core Web Vitals test could determine that a website has ample interactivity since the first interaction loaded quickly. What FID failed to uncover, though, is that the same site struggles to load other interactions during the lifecycle of a user’s visit. 

For example, let’s say you visit a web page and click on the login box. The click registers almost immediately, causing Google to assume the site has acceptable interactivity (going by FID). 

Right after logging in, you attempt to interact with the site’s navigation menu, which is meant to drop down whenever you hover over an option like this:

However, it takes several seconds for the drop-down menu to appear, causing you to assume that the feature is broken (and making it difficult to navigate through the site). 

That’s why FID isn’t a good metric for interactivity; it only measures the first interaction. 

INP measures interactions during the full lifespan of a user’s visit 

That brings us to INP, which takes a more comprehensive look at a website’s interactivity. 

Instead of only measuring the first interaction and calling it a day, INP measures every interaction a user has during their visit to your website. 

Here are the interactions that INP measures:

• Mouse clicks 
• Touchscreen device taps 
• Physical or onscreen keyboard key presses

If you want your website to have a pleasant user experience, then your site’s responsiveness must be on point. 

We’ve all experienced the frustration that comes with delayed interactions, such as trying to click on an accordion-style menu only for the site to freeze up for several minutes before completing the task. 

Improving your INP will reduce instances like this, boosting your user experience as a result. 

Is Your Website Prepared for the Change to INP?

The good news is if you’ve already been optimizing your website for FID and the other Web Vitals, you shouldn’t have much trouble. 

Optimizing for FID provides a strong foundation for improving your INP, so you’ll already be well on your way. 

Even if you haven’t done any tweaking to improve your Core Web Vitals, it’s never too late to start, and there is no shortage of tools out there to help you. 

In particular, Google’s PageSpeed Insights should be your go-to when improving your site’s loading speed, interactivity, and stability. It’s an official tool from Google, and it lets you view how well your site scores on the Core Web Vitals test. It also provides helpful insights and actionable tips for improving your user experience. 

Here’s an overview of the INP threshold:

• A score of 200 milliseconds or under means your site has good responsiveness.
• Scores above 200 milliseconds but under 500 milliseconds need improvement. 
• An INP score over 500 milliseconds means your website has poor responsiveness.

Therefore, achieving an INP score of 200 milliseconds or less should be your goal. 

Suggestions for improving INP scores 

If you discover that your website has poor responsiveness, here are a few things you can do:

• If your interactions are taking too long to begin processing, you should optimize your input delay.
• Look out for excessively complex CSS selectors, as they can cause delays when users try to interact with your site. 
• Longer tasks may need optimizing if you have a lot of JavaScript getting in the way. 
• Minimize DOM size wherever possible. 

Should none of these suggestions resolve your issue, you can always check out this Google-recommended guide for optimizing INP. 

Making a Smooth Transition to INP from FID 

As long as you optimize your site to have quick responsiveness, the transition to INP from FID shouldn’t affect your website too much. 

Improving your INP score will make drastic improvements to your user experience, so there’s no reason to ignore it. With a strong responsiveness score, you’ll enjoy better SERP rankings, user engagement, and dwell times, which is why improving INP is worth the time and effort. 

Do you need help optimizing your website for INP?

Then you need HOTH X, our managed SEO service that lets you put your digital marketing on autopilot. If you’re ready to remove all the complexity from SEO while enjoying stellar results, don’t wait to get in touch.      

The post Core Web Vitals: Google Replaces FID with INP on March 12th appeared first on The HOTH.

What does this mean for your site? Basically, if your site is desktop-only it will no longer be seen in search. This includes content like comments, data, images, videos, or anything else you want indexed.

Although the original switch was scheduled for September 2020, Google developers never expected a global pandemic to impact businesses. In some cases, the virus has delayed older websites moving to mobile.

They’ve now indicated that this huge switch will happen in March 2021.

John Mueller, Google Developer Advocate, said earlier this year that 70% of sites shown in search results have already shifted over. But, if you’re not one of these sites, you have some work to do.

What can you do to make sure this change won’t destroy your online presence? Keep reading below to learn how you can prepare.

What Happens in March 2021 Exactly?

The switch will happen rapidly but not overnight.

Mueller explained that there will be an increase in Googlebot crawling after switching to mobile-first. The change will take some time and he said it could take longer depending on the size of your domain.

“Afterwards, we’ll still occasionally crawl with the traditional desktop Googlebot, but most crawling for search will be done with our mobile smartphone user-agent,” he said.

This change is also concerning for mobile sites set up as a m-dot version.

After the update they’ll only be able to link m-dot sites to desktop, which could result in dropped content if you aren’t redirecting desktop users. It’s more likely to happen with sites using hreflang attributes.

In fact, Google developers are recommending that sites no longer use m-dot because of the confusion between search engines and users.

Preparing Your Site for Mobile First Indexing

We understand that the big question on your mind is how can you protect your website going into March 2021?

Pat yourself on the back if you’re one of those sites who already set up mobile capabilities, otherwise take a deep breath and get to work.

First, you’re able to check the status of your mobile-first indexing in the Google Search Console. Another way is to use the URL Inspection Tool. Either one can help you tell where you’re at in the process.

Here are some mobile-first indexing best practices directly from Google:

1. Use the same meta robots tags on mobile and desktop
2. Don’t lazy-load primary content upon user interaction
3. Don’t block URLs from crawling
4. Use the same content on your mobile and desktop site (especially clear headlines)
5. Have the same structured data (bread crumb, product, video object, etc.) on both versions of your site
6. Make sure your ads are also placing on mobile
7. Follow the best practices for images (high-quality images, supported formats, and alt-text)
8. Place videos in supported formats at easy-to-find spots on your site

There are many other suggestions, including how to check hreflang links, cutting fragment URLs, and verifying your robots.txt directives. The best thing you can do is read about it from the source.

Don’t Panic About Mobile-First Indexing

This announcement from Google seems scary for businesses running older websites without a mobile component, but there’s plenty of time to update and optimize websites before March 2021.

Follow some of the best practices we listed above when working on your site. You may consider hiring a professional web designer to help if you don’t have someone on staff to do it.

Are you in the middle of updating your site and need help with web copy? We can help you to write SEO-optimized, conversion-focused copy that represents your brand and builds trust with visitors.

We’ll ensure that the copy for both your desktop and mobile site is the best it can be. Reach out today to discuss your site and what can be done to prepare for the next Google update.

The post Google’s Mobile-First Index Is Coming—Is Your Site Ready? appeared first on The HOTH.

For webmasters and SEOs, this year’s “May the Fourth Be With You” felt more like “Order 66” Day.

Google updates are nothing new. They happen several times a year so Google can search results.

Last year, we wrote about the June 2019 Core Update and how the “Diversity Update” was a welcome change for everyone. It prevented the same domain from appearing multiple times at the top of search results.

As you can see, not all core updates spell certain disaster, so let’s all take a deep breath!

So what happened in this most recent May 2020 Core update?

Let’s get into it:

What Is A Core Update?

Google has been releasing core updates for the last few years.

According to Google’s official blog:

What Happened With The May 2020 Core Updates?

On May 4, 2020 Google announced it was rolling out a broad core algorithm update called the “May 2020 Core Update”.

Large Serp Volatility

Early observations of this new update show that it produced higher SERP volatility than others.

According to RankRanger, the impact of this update is greater than the one in January.

Certain Niches Had Higher Volatility

The other point worth mentioning from RankRanger is how this update is affecting multiple niches across the board.

Ranking volatility so far has been sharpest in

• Travel
• Real estate
• Health
• Pets & animals
• People & society

The average volatility in both travel and retail, for example, increased from 1.9 at the end of April to 9.3 on May 6.

Without more from Google, it’s unclear if this volatility in travel and retail was the result of changing the algorithm or the effect of worldwide quarantine orders. These industries were already expected to be hit hardest.

There Were Some Winners

SEMRush tracked some winners of the Google May 2020 Core Update.

News Websites gained the most positions this month, followed by Business & Industrial and Online Communities.

Shakeups Are Happening In Local

What Should You Do If You Were Hit

It’s important to note that, according to Google, that these updates aren’t designed to penalize anyone, and there may not be a lot to do to “fix it.”

How can this be possible that there is nothing to fix?

There are a few scenarios in which getting less traffic isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and the most obvious is that of “search intent.”

For instance, you may have been ranking and getting traffic for phrases that didn’t match what the user was actually searching for. You’d be getting the traffic, but visitors would bounce off your site.

In this case, it’s all about getting the right traffic, not the most traffic.

What’s Google’s Advice for the Core Update?

Google is notoriously non-descriptive about their updates. They’re directing all Twitter questions back to an August 2019 blog post, “What webmasters should know about Google’s core updates.”

Google continues to stress the importance of having the best content possible on your website. Quality is the most important measure.

Here are some questions (from Google) to ask about your content:

1. Is my content original and substantial?
2. Does my content provide insightful analysis beyond the expected?
3. Would my content be referenced by authoritative websites?
4. Is my content well-researched and trustworthy?
5. Is my content clear, well-produced, and free of errors?
6. Does my content provide value and is it for the genuine interest of my readers?

You can also ask unbiased friends or colleagues to audit your website’s content and brush up on Google’s E-A-T standards (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

What Should I Do If I Saw A Ranking Drop?

First of all, don’t panic!

Google updates usually roll out for multiple weeks, in which we see lots of volatility. Keep an eye on it but wait until the rollout is complete before making any drastic changes.

In fact, in Moz’s recent post, they talk about how early data and assumptions get changed dramatically as the updates roll out – there is just too much fluctuation to draw conculsions.

The second thing is that with these core updates over the last few years, each of them often seems to be a reversal of the last.

The winners of one update become the losers of the next and vice versa.

With that said, check out our guide to diagnosing and repairing rankings drops..

Worried About Google’s Update? The HOTH Is Here to Help!

Google’s May 2020 Core Update sounds scary for businesses already struggling to pay the bills. But, following their content guidelines is a good start for holding onto your positions.

If your ranking and traffic has dropped substantially since May 4, you will need to shift your content and SEO strategies to stay competitive. That’s where we can help!

Our digital marketing experts can work with you to craft a new game plan to get back on top.

Contact us now to schedule a free consultation.

If you found that your site has been affected by the update, fill out our survey below and let us know what changed:

The post Google’s May 2020 Core Update: What You Need To Know appeared first on The HOTH.

The Google BERT update was announced on October 24, 2019, but reported that it has already been rolling out for a few days.

According to the release, Google says that this will affect 10% of queries, which means this is one of the biggest Google updates of the last 5 years!

Sound confusing enough?

Don’t worry about the technical jargon; we’re going to break down exactly it means in this article!

10/30/19 Update

I checked in with our internal team who manages and monitors hundreds of client accounts.

Steven Gill, a senior campaign manager weighed in on the recent update:

What is The Google BERT Update?

At its core, this new update is focused on interpreting the intent of search queries better.

(See our guide on Search Intent here.)

Instead of looking at the user’s search query on a word by word basis, BERT allows Google to interpret the entire phrase better to give the searcher more accurate results.

Slight modifications or even simple words in a search query can dramatically alter the search intent.

With this new update, Google is getting better at interpreting what the users are truly looking for when they search.

Google laid out a few examples in their announcement:

Example 1:

In this example, Google shows how the search results change when interpreting when a user is looking for information about traveling to the US vs. from the US.

Example 2:

In this example, Google previously identified the word “stand” and matched it with “stand-alone” which was the incorrect version of the word for this query.

Instead, the searcher is focused on the physical demands of the job, so with Google BERT, Google interprets the query more accurately.

As you can see, the results change based on a better interpretation of what the searcher is actually looking for.

What Does This Mean For Your SEO?

The biggest thing to look for is if there are any changes in your traffic in the next coming days and weeks.

The good thing is that this is not an algorithm that penalizes anyone – It just is meant to better understand the user query and search intent.

The best way to make sure you win with this update is to have content that answers the questions of your target audience.

I expect sites that have lots of good content in the form of well-written, long-form guides to be the winners of this update.

In fact, we just had a client send in this screenshot of his traffic right after the update started rolling out:

What To Do If Your Traffic Is Dropping

Now, if you see a drop in traffic, I would not recommend making any dramatic changes until the dust settles.

Google has a history of rolling out updates, then reversing or tweaking them in the weeks after.

With that said, if you are dropping traffic and continue to in the weeks to come, there are a few things you can do:

1. Identify the queries or keywords that you are causing the traffic drop:

Go to search console (or install it if you don’t have it yet) and run a comparison report:

Then click on queries and look at which you have lost traffic for:

This will show you which search queries you should investigate.

Alternatively, you can use a tool like ahrefs traffic change report:

2. Determine what is ranking now

Search the queries in Google and see what types of content are ranking now.

• Is it a different content type?
• Is it bringing up a different angle?
• Is it answering a slightly different question?

3. Change or Tweak Content

Tweak your content to match the content that is now ranking, or create new content that matches.

Google always is showing what it wants, so all you have to do is model that!

What Are You Seeing?

Let us know what you are seeing on your end and we’ll report back the results!

Conclusion

The new Google BERT update may be one of the biggest updates of the last 5 years of SEO.

There is nothing to worry about because this update is not focused on any sort of penalization. Instead, it’s focused on understanding search intent better.

Keep an eye on your search results and let us know what you see on your end with the form above!

If you would like some help with your SEO, you can always book a meeting with us here!

Please share this article if it’s helpful to you!

The post The New Google BERT Update Explained In Plain English appeared first on The HOTH.

SEOs are calling this change “NoFollow 2.0” because it makes changes and gives new more granular options to the nofollow tag.

In this post, I’ll cover what you need to know and what it means for your SEO going forward!

First, What Is NoFollow?

Nofollow is a type of link attribute that tells Google to not give any credit to a link. The opposite is “dofollow.”

In general, getting “dofollow” links are much more powerful than getting nofollow links.

When Google originally introduced the nofollow link attribute, it helped webmasters protect their sites from giving credit to an outbound link when they didn’t want to.

This could be for a number of reasons:

• Comment Spam: By allowing the ability to drop a link when leaving a comment, many link builders would go and leave thousands of comments just to get a link. So by making all comment links nofollow, it discouraged this type of spam.
• Advertising: Say you want to sell advertising on your website and have banner ads that link to the advertiser. In this case, you could mark the links as nofollow, since they are not editorial choices.

In general, you can use the rel=nofollow attribute on any link that you don’t want to give credit to.

These are just examples of when nofollow links came in handy; there are many more.

What Is NoFollow 2.0?

“NoFollow 2.0” is the new name that the industry is using to describe the new link attributes.

There are 2 new types of attributes Google is rolling out:

• rel=UGC: Stands for “user generated content” and can be used any time someone other than the editorial staff of a website is generating content.
• rel=sponsored: This is pretty obvious, but this stands for any time the link has been sponsored or paid for.
• rel=nofollow: This just tells Google to not give any credit to the link. (This is not new).

Why Is Google Making This Change?

In the past, many webmasters would blanket nofollow links, which would tell Google to give the link zero credit.

But in the current ecosystem of the online publishing world, this doesn’t make as much sense anymore, and Google wants to give more ways to more accurately identify the links.

For example, in the past, large publishers would have guest contributors contribute a large amount of content to the site so they could increase their pageviews.

Some of the biggest publishers in the world have gotten into trouble because all the outbound links were dofollow.

So when the publishers got scolded by Google for this, they switched EVERYTHING to nofollow, which may not be the best blanket choice.

With these new updates, Google gives publishers more nuanced ways of categorizing links, and may allow Google to give users better search results by calculating link value more accurately.

What Will Actually Happen?

Just like every update, we’ll have to wait to see some actual data to make any real conclusions.

With that said, there are a few things that we believe will change in the future.

1. Adoption Rate

The biggest question, first of all, is – What will the adoption be?

Even Google says in their official statement that you don’t need to change anything, only if you want to.

The effort involved in changing link types for most publishers / website owners will not be worth the benefit (there isn’t much).

In my opinion, I think that adoption will be very low with the exception of large, SEO-savvy publishers unless some sort of event forces the changes.

There also may be some adoption by CMS changes as well, for instance, if a new version of WordPress comes out that automatically categorized blog comment links as UGC.

But for the majority of the internet, there aren’t many incentives to adopt the new link types vs just keeping things the way they are.

In the case that the new link types ARE adopted, they may affect rankings.

The following could happen:

• Nofollow links: Google may treat these a bit differently going forward. I believe Google already does weigh nofollow links differently depending on related factors (placement, type of site, relevancy etc).
• Sponsored links – Google will likely ignore these links entirely.
• UGC links – Google may give some small credit to these, depending on related factors (placement, type of site, relevancy etc).

Again, we will not know how this changes the landscape for sure until we see some real data on this.

What Should You Do?

Unless you are a publisher, there isn’t much to do here. Again, all of this will depend on the adoption of the new link types for it to affect anything.

1. Keep Building Links

Just as it’s natural currently to have both dofollow and nofollow links in your profile, it will be natural in the future to have all the new link types.

It’s also important to understand that none of the new link types are “bad”.

For example:

• It’s natural to advertise and link to your site (Google makes its own money on selling banner ads and links to sites through its Google Display Network).
• It’s natural to get links by contributing to online publications, commenting on blogs, and posting to forums as user-generated content.
• It’s also natural to get straight nofollow links through creating social media profiles or other methods.

In the future, a natural link profile will contain all of these.

2. Keep An Eye On Rankings

We’ll see how these affect rankings as they roll out, and it may be for the good as Google is able to give more credit where previously nofollow was treated as zero credit.

3. Diversify Your Traffic

I’m a big fan of being a multi-channel marketer. In this case, I don’t believe that this will have a massive impact on SEO (at least not right away), but you should still invest in diversifying your traffic sources.

If you need some help with that, you can check out our new HOTH PPC product!

Conclusion

Google released new link attributes to give publishers more nuanced ways to identify links. The impact of these new types will depend heavily on adoption.

What are you seeing on your end? Let us know in the comments!

The post Our Take On Google’s New Link Tags NoFollow 2.0 appeared first on The HOTH.

In today’s article we’re going to discuss what happened, what changed, and our advice for keeping your traffic high!

What Happened With The Google June 2019 Core Update

On Sunday, June 2, 2019, Google did something that they RARELY ever do…

They actually pre-announced on Twitter that they were going to be rolling out a core update the following day.

Here’s the Tweet:

On June 3, 2019, Google announced that the June Core Update had officially gone live:

Since Google typically does not pre-announce their algorithm updates, there were a lot of rumors spreading that this one was going to be BIG.

However, Danny Sullivan of Google said that this update was not particularly big or special in this tweet:

Interesting enough, despite Danny Sullivan’s comments, the SEO data shows this actually was a fairly significant update (more on that below).

On Jun 8, 2019 Danny Sullivan reported that the core update finished rolling out:

Google “Diversity Update” Rolls Out At The Same Time

At the same time as the core update was rolling out, Google released another update called the “Diversity Update.”

Essentially, this update will help diversify the search results so the same domain doesn’t appear more than twice.

Here’s the full text of the tweet:

What Was Targeted With The June Core Update?

Analysis of website traffic and ranking data suggests that this update may be similar in targeting to the March 2019 Core Update, which saw larger shakeups in certain niches categorized as YMYL (Your Money & Your Life) like health, finance, legal, etc.

Rank Ranger reported large shakeups again in these niches:

This is similar to what was observed in other core updates like the Google Medic Update.

With that said, Google specifically points out that this is a broad update not intended to target any site or vertical in particular.

Industry Observations About The Update

There have been many industry observations and theories about the update:

Was This A Reversal of The March 2019 Core Update?

Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics was reported in a recent SEL article saying, “my preliminary analysis is that parts of the core update from March were reverted.”

He added that “…it seems though that Google changed some factors to brand/authority too much in March and this is what was reverted. Especially in the medical space like a webmd.com or verywellhealth.com that lost, gained back their visibility.”

With the recent core updates, Google has a history of rolling back the dials. It seems like Google is trying to fine tune this, and with each core update, many of the winners are losers of the last update.

For instance, in the last core update in March 2019, Search metrics data points out that it many of the losers bounced back:

Fluctuations

There were sites that experienced significant increases in traffic one day, just to lose it the next. It almost seems like Google was just testing the waters:

Understanding Relevance & Changes In Search Intent

Google has said that with these core updates, you may be receiving less traffic but there is nothing to change or fix.

This may be partly because we’re seeing Google experiment with changing the results to match a different search intent.

Health Related Queries Intent

To give an example, in the past, we’ve seen sites with a specific health-related supplement sales page ranking for the supplement name.

Then Google changed the type of content ranking from displaying sales pages to informative content about the supplement.

For example, when you search “creatine” – Google doesn’t display actual products in the organic listings, it displays informative articles:

In this case, Google is trying to give the consumer more information about the supplement before purchasing.

If you lost traffic because of this type of search intent change, you could try winning it back by trying to rank informational content vs your actual sales page.

We’ve had a lot of success with getting traffic back to e-commerce sites by creating blog content around their products to help fix this.

Changing Search Intent Experiments

I’m going to go out on a limb and say something crazy – Getting less search traffic may not actually be bad in all cases.

For instance, this is page about how to shoot a youtube video. Right around this update, this page jumped up and then started declining, which may look bad at first sight:

But when you drill down, you can see that this briefly ranked for “shooting youtube” which has 106,000 monthly searches!

But when you investigate this and search “Youtube Shooting” right now, Google is displaying results about an actual gun shooting at youtube:

Clearly, if users are truly looking for the news story, losing traffic for this keyword is not that bad – those visitors would bounce anyways.

Google is always experimenting with this type of disambiguation, so try not to jump to conclusions before drilling down!

Advice If You Were Affected By This Update

The first thing that I’d like to point out is how much the serps are fluctuating. We showed clear examples of how the same sites are losing and winning with each Google update.

So if your site recently dropped, you may not have to do anything to get it to go back up. It’s unfortunate, but the best advice may be to just keep improving everything you can and wait for the next update.

Your site may not have anything “wrong” with it, Google may have just changed the search intent.

With all that said, here’s how we analyze sites and how you should go about analyzing your own:

1. Identify Pages & Keywords That Are Losing Traffic

Don’t just look at your traffic as a whole, drill down to figure out what pages are losing traffic and for which keywords.

You can use Search Console if you have it installed on your site, or you can use SEMrush Position Tracking.

In SEMrush:

1. Go to Position Tracking
2. Click “New Position Tracking” and enter the URL you’d like to track
3. Click the red number under “Declined Keywords” to see any keywords that are losing traffic

This will help you identify which keywords & pages you are dropping for. Look for patterns here.

2. Identify Winning Pages

One thing to remember is that if something is dropping, something else probably went up.

Google search the keywords you’re dropping for and see what types of content is Google displaying now and compare that to the content you have.

3. Adjust Your Pages Or Create New Content

If you find a different type of content, you may consider adjusting your content to what is ranking in the search engines.

Here are some things to consider:

• Create More Specific Content: Do you have a page that is covering the topic in general but now find more specific content ranking? Try breaking out your content and create more specific content centered around the keyword you’re dropping for.

• Add Video: Do you see videos as serp features in the search results? Consider turning your content into video and increase your chances of ranking multiple times! For an extra boost, add the video to your content.

• Add Questions & Answers: If you see serp features like “people also ask”, try adding a Q&A section to your articles!

4. Diversify

Now for some non-seo advice, every update like this is a good chance to diversify your traffic. We’re an SEO company, but we’re big fans of preaching multi-channel marketing.

As we’ve seen, Google keeps increasing the number of ads in the SERPs every year, so if you want to diversify your traffic, you might be interested in our newest product HOTH PPC.

Conclusion

Google’s June 2019 Core Update shook up the serps again.

If you were affected, make sure to use our advice above to drill down and investigate what really is going on with your site as well as what Google is now displaying in the search results.

What are you seeing on your end?

The post Everything You Need To Know About The June 2019 Google Update appeared first on The HOTH.

What is the March 2019 Core Update? What changes occurred and what can website owners do to optimize their site for search traffic going forward?

Here are some details about Google’s March 2019 Core Update including what it is and action steps you can take so that your site gets more search engine traffic.

Overview

Google launched a big core algorithm update on March 12, 2019. Danny Sullivan from Google confirmed that an update occurred in a tweet on March 13.

The marketing community previously referred to the update as the “Florida 2” update because the update happened close to the time of the popular Pubcon conference in Florida. However, Danny Sullivan later announced in a tweet that Google would name the update the “March 2019 Core Update” to avoid confusion.

Some marketers speculated that this update reversed changes from the Google Medic update from 2018, which largely impacted medical, health, and fitness websites. The reason for this speculation is that many webmasters that previously saw a drop in traffic from previous updates reported seeing their traffic levels increase after this update.

However, analysis of website traffic data appears to suggest that this update is independent of the previous update and is intended to reward sites that focus on providing a good user experience.

What Happened with This Update

Google does not typically provide details about what they changed when they release an update. But the SEO community usually figures out the most important changes by conducting their own research and data studies from live websites.

Let’s take a closer look at what happened in this update and which websites were affected.

Eric Lancheres from Traffic Research ran a thorough study using over 1.7 million search results, data analytics tools like AHrefs and Scrapebox, and 58 Google Analytics accounts to determine the impact of the March 2019 Core Update.

Here are some key findings…

Word Counts and Title Tags Not Impacted

Average word counts for high ranking articles and keyword phrases in a web page’s title tag remained consistent, which suggests that these on page factors were not affected by the update.

User Experience Appears to Have an Impact

Many sites that experienced traffic drops from the previous Medic update saw an increase in traffic, but not a full recovery.

However, some sites did see a full recovery. The Medic update appeared to negatively impact sites that over-optimized for SEO by doing things like having too many instances of keywords in their navigation links or too many keywords on the page.

Sites that provided good content and good user experience could see a full recovery, despite over-optimizing for keywords. Google now appears to be willing to ignore over-optimization if the user experience is good.

Sites that saw an increase in search traffic and rankings also had a higher average page load speed than before the update.

Excessive Pop-Ups, Ads, and Large Overlays

The Traffic Research study also found that sites with too many advertisements or excessive pop-ups suffered a search traffic decline after the update.

The reason for this decline is likely due to the negative user experience that these sites provide.

Another thing that can negatively impact user experience is large drop-down navigation menus that show up on some e-commerce sites. These large menus can block visitors from viewing the rest of the page and can be particularly annoying if people hover over them by accident.

Low-Quality Content

This update also appears to have reduced traffic to sites filled with low-quality content.

Prior to this update, publishers could create low-quality content and hire cheap writers to research and create the content quickly and inexpensively. Google might be taking other factors into account like bounce rate or dwell time to determine if the content is good.

Sub-Domains

Another important finding is that sub-domains could see a drop in traffic while the main domain is unaffected. For example, if your blog is on a sub-domain and the content or user experience are not good, then that sub-domain might see a traffic drop while your primary domain stays steady.

Backlinks

This update did not appear to apply any new penalties for linking practices. However, the number of total links to pages ranking on the first page of Google went down slightly although the total linking power remained the same.

The decrease in the total number of links suggests that getting fewer links from higher authority domains can have more impact than getting lots of links from lower authority sites.

Another interesting finding was that backlinks from .gov sites increased by nearly 2.5x for pages on that ranked on page one in Google while backlinks from .edu site decreased slightly. This trend could suggest that Google is giving more weight to .gov sites as these links may be harder to get.

Jeff Coyle from Market Muse also conducted his own data study and discovered some useful information for content marketers.

Splitting Large Sites into Multiple Domains

In the past, some website owners that had content sites that experienced a decrease in traffic from previous updates could re-launch their content by moving their articles to separate domains. This tactic worked well over the past 18 months, but the recent update appears to have caught on to this tactic resulting in a decrease in traffic to such sites.

Long-Form Content

The Market Muse study examined search traffic to long-form list posts. The idea of creating really long list posts grew in popularity over the past few years due to studies showing that long content tends to perform better in the search engines.

However, excessively long content isn’t necessarily good content even if people are more likely to link to it and share it. An example of a really long list post article might be something like “101 Places to Visit Before You Die”.

Some list posts showed an increase in traffic while others experienced a decrease so the data from this study is inconclusive. However, Jeff speculated that the articles that experienced an increase in traffic might have attracted enough links from authority sites to offset any penalty from the recent update.

Publishing Consistently and Creating New Content

Another important finding was that publishing regularly appeared to help sites maintain their traffic levels after this update. Creating content regularly allows websites to keep their readers engaged which enables them to send positive signals to Google, including links, social shares, comments, and website visits.

Sites with lower quality content that also did not publish consistently faced the largest risk of traffic decline. Publishers that got lazy sometimes just updated and republished old articles without creating any new content. However, this strategy now seems riskier than before.

Action Steps

Google doesn’t usually tell us what the exact changes are when they roll out a new update. Luckily, other marketers have already analyzed data on how this update affected other websites.

From what we have seen so far, here are some action steps that you should take to make sure that your website performs well in search after the most recent Google update.

1. Focus on Creating a Good User Experience on Your Website

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Google’s March 2019 Update is to make sure that you create a good user experience for your website visitors. You still need to get links and do on-page SEO, but creating a site that is user-friendly is becoming increasingly important.

Limit pop-ups and ads even if you are running an affiliate site. Focus first on creating a good user experience and check metrics like your bounce rate, time on site, and pages visited to be sure that visitors are engaged with your website and your content.

Basically, remove anything that will make a user hit the back button to look for another search result on Google, including things like slow loading pages and poor navigation.

2. Focus on Getting More High-Quality Links Instead of Focusing on Quantity

Tactics like doing email outreach to lots of sites are popular tactics for link building, but you may be better off trying to get fewer links from high authority sites instead. And if you can get links from trusted .gov sites, those could help you even more.

3. Focus on Creating Quality Content Consistently and Updating Old Content

Most content creators know that being consistent and maintaining a regular publishing schedule is important. But many fail to stay consistent due to the time and resources required.

After the March 2019 update, staying consistent with publishing appears to be more important than ever. Be sure to not only update old content to keep it fresh and interesting to your readers, but also create new content on a regular basis to keep people engaged.

Also, make sure you are investing in creating high-quality content. Google appears to be cracking down on tactics like creating a high volume of low-quality content and getting links to it through aggressive SEO as well as long list posts that readers don’t actually provide value to the reader.

4. Avoid Splitting Old Underperforming Sites into Separate Domains

Some marketers are always looking for an easy way to trick the search engines or create a fast fix for their SEO problems. Over the long term, Google always seems to catch on and such sites get penalized.

Splitting old sites into multiple domains and re-launching the content does not appear to work well after this update, so avoid using this tactic. Instead, focus on creating good content going forward and updating older content to make it more relevant and interesting.

5. Optimize Title Tags to Improve Click-through Rates

One way that Google likely helps determine if search results are relevant and interesting to searchers is if people click on the link. Test out different title tags and try to improve them so that users choose to click on your link rather than competing search result pages.

Conclusion

Overall, Google’s update appears to focus on user experience factors. Links and on page factors are still important, but be sure to spend resources on creating quality content and making sure your website is user-friendly.

What have you seen on your end? Let us know in the comments!

The post March 2019 Core Update: What It Is and Action Steps to Take appeared first on The HOTH.

Many have referred to the August 1st, 2018 update as the “Medic Update” because it largely affected health/medical sites.

However, the updates have spread outside to many different niches including e-commerce, fashion sites, local, affiliate, and more.

Google has said the original update wasn’t targeted specifically at Medical sites, but was a broad core update.

The general consensus is that this targeted what Google calls “Expertise, Authority, & Trust” (or E-A-T) in their Google Rater Guidelines, which is determined by a variety of signals (as we’ll discuss below).

As the “Medic” update rolls out, don’t forget that other factors may be at play as well, including rolling Penguin updates as we have seen evidence of link-based changes in the last few months.

If your site was hit, the unfortunate part of the updates is that the majority of the advice to fix it up until this point has been a bit bland without strong compelling evidence to back it up.

So in today’s article, we’re going to look at the latest data and break down what you need to do based on everything that’s out there.

We’re also opening this up to the community – If you have information, even anecdotal, please let us know in the comments. We will compile the information and publish it to help the community.

Medic / Late 2018 Core Update Timeline

Like we mentioned, there have been many updates and SERP fluctuations associated with this update after the initial rollout.

Here is a timeline of the various tweaks that have come out over the last few months:

• August 1 – First “Medic Update” Rollout
• Aug 17-18 – Tweak To Medic Update (source)
• Sep 8-11 – Local Update (source)
• Sept 17-19 Medic Updates (source)
• Sept 24 – Broad Core Updates (source)
• Sept 27 – Update (source)
• October Updates – Sistrix points out there is a tie between links and medic, especially for october updates (source)
• Oct 15 – Update (source)
• Oct 16 – Update (source, source)
• Oct 31 – Halloween Update (source)

We continue to see tweaks to this update and we expect to see more.

Actionable Steps For If You Were Hit

As with any update, it can be hard to determine the exact cause of the problem, but the good news is we’re seeing evidence of sites bouncing back.

Over the last 5+ years as Google has come out with updates, the industry panics about getting penalized.

But with almost any form of marketing, there is almost always a way to recover. Let’s talk about the strategies that you can implement and check on for this update:

Create New Content To Support Search Intent Changes

One of the things that we have noticed is that Google has changed the “search intent” for many queries. Google is trying to provide more information up front to help satisfy users.

For instance, if you searched for a supplement before, Google may have displayed product pages to buy the supplement.

After the update, Google is starting to display more information based pages that explain the supplement before displaying a product page/buy page.

(Well to be clear, Google shopping ads impressions have increased by 47 percent year over year – so if you want to be at the top, you can always pay for it! But if you want to rank, it’s probably a good idea to create informative content)

This is why it’s a good idea to really flesh out your pages, create blog posts and articles that explain your services, and likely points to why our HOTH Blogger service has skyrocketed in sales in the last year.

For any terms that you have lost or dropped for, check out what types of pages Google is now ranking. It may be that you need to create a different type of content vs trying to fix what you currently have.

Penguin – Disavow Unnatural Links

We’ve seen reports that disavowing unnatural / low quality links can help with recovery. Sistrix pointed out a connection between links & the medic updates.

Check & Improve Page Speed

Another big talk has been page speed. As Google is moving sites to mobile-first indexing, they are placing a larger emphasis on user experience.

Check your page speed with Google’s tool here.

Read Google Rater Guidelines

Much of the talk about this update is in reference to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines.

The document is quite repetitive and long, so we went through it and pulled out the actionable advice below:

Create An About Page, Make sure it’s linked from every page of the site.

In the rater guidelines, Google is huge on being able to find who is responsible for the site and the content. One way to make that clear is to create an “About” page and make it easy to find.

From the rater guidelines:

Create an author bio on every post

Google also wants you to clearly state who is creating the content and what their credentials are.

From the rater guidelines:

If you’re on WordPress, you can use a plugin like Simple Author Box.

Create a Job / Careers Page (If applicable)

This is a sign of a real company and comes up in the rater guidelines.

From the rater guidelines:

Create A Contact Us / Customer Service Page

This is pretty obvious for any real business, but Google makes multiple points about it.

From the rater guidelines:

Get Reviews Off Your Website

Google is huge on reputation. We’ve seen evidence of this in the last few years of more and more schema stars being displayed in the SERPs and aggregate reviews being pulled into knowledge panels.

From the rater guidelines:

A great way to encourage real reviews is to set up a system for collecting reviews as we do with HOTH Stars.

With HOTH Stars, we help automate asking for reviews and getting reviews on third party sites that matter most to you.

Get Awards For Credibility

Google likes if you have awards or other signs of credibility.

From the rater guidelines:

Get Good Ratings on BBB

Google actually calls out the BBB multiple times in the document.

From the rater guidelines:

Check your BBB rating on the official Better Business Bureau site.

Improve Content

“Improve content” is pretty generic as advice so we will break down what are some ways to do that in the following bullets. Here are some examples from the raters doc where this is addressed:

Add References To Content

Marie Haynes commented that as part of a successful Medic recovery, they “Added a large number of references to scientific articles in each of their posts”

Update Old Posts

From the rater guidelines:

Publish Editorial Policies

From the rater guidelines:

Flesh Out Content Fully

From the rater guidelines:

For E-Commerce Sites: Add Customer Service Information

From the rater guidelines:

For E-Commerce Sites: Flesh Out Product Pages

Google wants your product pages to have a significant amount of information on them. E-commerce sites are at risk if they are just providing stock manufacturer descriptions.

From the rater guidelines:

If you have just stock descriptions, you might be interested in our e-commerce descriptions product.

Remove ClickBait Style Headlines

Google doesn’t like clickbait, they want you to just be straightforward with what the content is.

From the rater guidelines:

Remove Distracting Ads

Ads are mentioned multiple times in the document. So despite Google drastically increasing ads on their own platform and making them look more and more like search results than ads, Google doesn’t want YOU to do that.

This is probably the funniest one of them all.

From the rater guidelines:

Fix Grammar & Punctuation

From the rater guidelines:

You can use a program like Grammarly to help out.

Create Original Content (Especially for E-comm Sites)

Make sure you have original content that’s not “stolen”.

From the rater guidelines:

Conclusion

Most of the recoveries from the Medic updates involve taking the ninja approach and fixing multiple issues at once. We hope this article was helpful in giving some actionable advice for improving your search results.

What have you been seeing on your end? Let us know in the comments!

The post The Medic Update Aftermath appeared first on The HOTH.