This year, so far, 4 Google Algorithm Updates occurred – two in January, one in May and one in June. The one in May, the Google Broad Update had the most significant effect of all, with many websites suffering through the losses of their rankings. A lot of websites saw a bewildering fall through the cracks of Google results paging without knowing what was the reason. If your website is among this unfortunate group, you must be asking yourself “How do I fix this?” or “What is wrong with my website?”
And even though Google reassures that there is little to be done to fix the momentary situation apart from the fact to focus on creating unique content that satisfies your users from now on, there are several things you can do to ensure a comeback. Here is a little more info about the affected niches and a guide about how to survive the fall and get back on track as fast as possible.
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Most Affected Niches from Google Broad Core Update
The top 5 niches affected by the May 2020 Google Broad Core Update are travel, real estate, health, pets & animals, people and society. The list then continues with food & drink, books & literature, computers & electronics, hobbies & leisure, science and so on. It seems that sports and news are the niches the least affected as only a small percentage of change in rankings is noticed in the websites in these two categories.
So, how to get back on track? Consider the following ideas.
Update Your Content
The content on the website pages and blog posts must always be fresh and up to date. If you have information featured that is no longer reliable, existent or true, change that as soon as possible. When it comes to the blog posts, don’t go and change only a few paragraphs – it won’t do any good. Think about doing a complete do-over and editing the texts with statistics, information and advice that is hot and currently sought by your website visitors.
About the copy on the homepages or other affected pages of the website – revise the value of the content you offer to your readers. What is the intention, what do you want to achieve with it?
Start from here: do you precisely state what is your offer? And its benefits? And the results the clients will get? Make it as clear as possible, understandable for people and comprehensible for Google. Reveal its value and make it useful.
Check the Length of Your Content
Long copy or a short one with a focus primarily on visuals? Of course, in-depth blog articles that offer a new perspective into the matter of the topic are always appreciated, but should the copy on the pages be long as well, just for the sake of being long? The answer is a simple NO. If the message can be clearly communicated in several paragraphs in a few hundred words, then it is enough.
In addition, you might want to do a little bit of research of your competitors’ content and see what it is that they are offering to their clients and it might give you an idea how to expand or organise your content to be better than theirs.
One more thing, if the page is not necessary or relevant, it is better to delete it or merge it with another one with a similar context.
Have an SEO Audit
This is probably the most important thing to do after this update. You need an SEO audit – not a generic one that your program of choice will give to you as a report, but an exhaustive one that will precisely pinpoint your SEO mistakes. These SEO mistakes are vital and need to be fixed so that your website has a fair chance of competing with the SEO-optimised competing websites online.
User Experience
Finally, all that matters is the user experience. If you don’t convince the website visitors that they are getting what they are searching for right there, on your website, then definitely you are doing something wrong and Google sees it. The user experience is all about getting to the right audience and offering them value.
So, what you need to do is examine the funnel that brings you to your clients and whether this funnel is built the right way; does it have all the necessary shortcuts and challenges and solutions to get past them?
