What site owners should know about Google's core updates

What site owners should know about Google's core updates

Introduction

We've all been there. You sit down at your computer to check on your website, only to discover that it's taken a massive hit in search rankings.

Your traffic is declining, and you're scratching your head wondering what happened. Enter Google's core updates.

The updates are confusing, messy, and infuriating for businesses trying to keep up with their search ranking.

However, you can sidestep the drama altogether if you simply focus on the quality of your web pages — which should be the goal of every site owner anyway.

Google's rolling out two core updates in May and June.

Google is rolling out two core updates in May and June. The first, mobile-first indexing, focuses on the mobile version of your site.

If a user visits your site on a mobile device and you don't have a separate, optimized version of your content for that device, that page won't show up in search results!

The second update is focused on content quality—and it's not just about how many keywords are used in an article—it also looks at things like author authority, diversity of authorship, readability (is it easy to read?) and more.

Google isn't going to tell you what changes you need to make on your website; they expect us all to be savvy enough marketers with good SEO instincts who can figure out the best way forward!

Core updates are different than algorithm updates.

Google's core updates are different from their algorithm updates, though they share some similarities. Both types of changes affect how Google ranks sites in their search engine, but a core update affects the entire search engine while an algorithm update only affects certain areas of it.

A core update is a change to the way that Google indexes and ranks sites in its search engine. For example, when Google launched Caffeine back in 2010 (the first major core update), it completely overhauled the way that it indexed pages on the web and ranked them for searches by users.

This meant that millions of websites had to be re-crawled so that their content could be processed properly by Caffeine....

Google will not tell you what to change on your site.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Google’s core algorithm updates is that they are going to tell you what needs to be fixed on your website.

They won’t. Google won’t tell you how to fix anything either.

Google is also not going to tell you how to make your site better so that it can rank higher in search results and attract more traffic from organic social media marketing efforts, but I can help with that! If this sounds like something worth investigating further, read on…

Google wants you to focus on site quality.

It’s important to understand that Google wants you to focus on site quality. They want you to focus on user experience, site speed, mobile friendliness and content.

Additionally they want you to focus on site structure such as pagination and internal linking.

Google has a checklist for building high-quality websites.

Google has a checklist for building high-quality websites.

Google’s checklist for building high-quality websites is not a secret, but it’s easy to overlook. In fact, Google itself publishes the list on their SEO Starter Guide. There are four parts:

• Domain Level Page Quality
• Content Quality (on-page)
• Energetic Links (off-page) and
• Trust Rank (a combination of all 3 of the above).

Use a mix of keyword types.

When you're targeting certain keywords, it's important to use all three types of keywords.

• Broad match keywords: These are broad terms that can be used to match a large number of searches and will also include variations on these searches. For example, if you want to target the keyword "blue dress," broad-matching your content would allow it to show up when someone searched for "blue dress" or even "dress in blue."
• This kind of keyword is typically best used at the end of your page's URL so that Google knows what page they're looking at from their search results and will be able to read any meta description or title tag information specific to that page itself.
• Phrase match keywords: These are very particular versions of your main keyword phrase (for example, “blue dress”) that don't allow for any other words in between them—or at least not many other words before or after them—so that there's no confusion as far as what exactly is being searched for by someone using this term.
• In most cases, it should still rank well with broader searches while containing those two exact words next to each other; however, because it is more specific than broad matches and gets fewer searches overall per month than broad matches do (due out later), it may not always rank as high on Google's search results pages as something more general might rank over time due out later

Be sure to use the keywords that people are searching for.

You want to write for the people who are going to be looking at your content. What keywords should you use? Keywords that people are actually searching for. That's why it's important to know how Google sees the world. Here's how they describe it:

"Google looks at all of its collections of data—called "signals"—and ranks pages based on their relevance, while taking into account many factors like:

• How often a particular piece of content is linked to and from other sites. If lots of other sites seem to think this page is interesting, then we'll assume that you'll find it interesting too."

Follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

If you want to make sure that Google is indexing your site and serving up its content, there are a number of things you can do. First, check the Webmaster Guidelines for information about how to submit your site for indexing and make sure it's following best practices. If you can't find these guidelines on Google's website—or if you've never heard of them—you should take this as an indication that something needs to be updated on your end.

However, if you follow all of the instructions in this article and still haven't seen any improvement in search listing quality or traffic generation by using these methods (for example: submitting sitemaps), then there might be something else going wrong with how Google views your site (such as duplicate content).

Keep in mind that every situation is different so even if other people were able to fix their issues with these methods alone, don't expect them

Focus on continually improving the quality of your web pages, and you won't have to worry about these updates or what they mean for your site's ranking

Take the time to continually improve the quality of your web pages, and you won't have to worry about these updates or what they mean for your site's ranking. Focus on making your content as useful and relevant as possible to potential customers.

The more you can help people, the better off you'll be.

With that said, it's impossible to anticipate every update from Google—but if you follow best practices in terms of SEO (search engine optimization), such as using a combination of keyword types (e.g., long-tail keyword phrases) and not stuffing keywords into your text, then there's no reason why this shouldn't be a non-issue for most sites.

Conclusion

We've just covered a lot of details about Google's core updates and how they might affect your site. Hopefully this information will help you navigate the ins and outs of these changes with more confidence, whether you're a small business owner or someone who manages a large website.

That said, it's worth repeating that there is no one right way to build a site that will work perfectly for all visitors. The best thing you can do is continue creating quality content based on data you collect from your users.

Google wants sites like your own to succeed because it helps them provide better search results for their customers. So if you're putting in the time and effort to create great content, why not give it every chance to do well? You deserve nothing less!