SEO: Preparing Your Site For A Possible Google Update

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If you’ve ever checked your website for traffic and had a huge, inexplicable drop, Google algorithm updates may have been the culprit.

Preparing Your Site for a Possible Google Update

If you’ve ever checked your website for traffic and had a huge, inexplicable drop, Google algorithm updates may have been the culprit. Google’s algorithm contains hundreds of ranking factors in its never-ending quest to provide users with the most relevant search results. Google frequently updates different facets of its algorithm. When this happens, you may experience a drop in organic search traffic.

Read on as our team at Perth Digital Edge will walk you through exactly what the Google ranking algorithm is, why it’s important, and four tips you can use to prepare your website for future updates.

What Is Google’s Algorithm?

Google is constantly working to improve user experience and provide searchers with the most relevant answers to their queries. Its primary algorithm, which Google keeps close to the vest, contains countless ranking factors. While the SEO community speculates on many of these ranking factors, the actual list isn’t public knowledge.

As an example, the most recent update was the Google Page Experience update, which rolled out in March 2022.

In general, Google’s algorithm updates fall into three categories:

1.       Major Updates: Every major update has a purpose and addresses a specific concern, such as sites with pirated content These updates may even result in a new micro-algorithm. Typically, Google will notify website owners before major updates, which only occur once or twice annually.
2.       Broad Core Updates: A broad core update usually involves minor adjustments to the primary algorithm. For example, this update might change the relative importance of a ranking factor within the algorithm. These updates occur three or four times each year.
3.       Minor Updates: Every year, Google makes thousands of minor updates such as minor amendments to or revisions of the micro-algorithms.

Why Is the Algorithm Important for Your Website?

So, why are  Google algorithm updates  so crucial for website owners? If you’re not paying attention to these changes, you could find your website suddenly demoted from the first page of the SERPs (search engine results pages) to the sixth or seventh, causing a major hit to your organic traffic.

In our years of experience at Perth Digital Edge, we’ve learned that it’s better to maintain the overall quality of your website–like improving user experience and maintaining quality content–instead of trying to hunt down every algorithm update. Therefore, the best way to handle Google algorithm updates is by using SEO best practices (white-hat techniques), which will ensure that you stay prepared for the next major rollout.

How to Prepare for a Future Algorithm Updates

1. Remember the Golden Rule for SEO: Content Is King

Just like you, people searching on Google have one goal: finding a fast, factual answer to their query. If your website lacks relevant, informative content, users will quickly abandon your page and move on to the competition.

The best way to stay prepared for an update is by maintaining high-quality content that’s unique, informative, and engaging. Here are some quick tips from our SEO experts on how to keep your content high-quality:

•       – Create content for a human target audience, not a search engine or crawler bot
•       – Give your content a unique point of view rather than paraphrasing or rehashing old information
•       – Avoid black-hat techniques, like keyword stuffing, link spamming or spun content
•       – Add relevant images and videos to increase interactivity
•       – Include internal links and quality external links to other authoritative, relevant webpages
•       – Optimise your content to keep it easily accessible for mobile searches

2. Improve Page-Load and Rendering Speeds

One of Google’s most important core web vitals is page-load speed. To gauge your website’s performance, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to analyse your website, how fast it is, and pinpoint areas that need improvement. Here are ways to boost page-load times and rendering speed of your site’s content:

•       – Identify and eliminate code bottlenecks to reduce server response time
•       – Use a WebP image format to compress large images
•       – Eliminate resources that block rendering, like certain CSS and JavaScript files
•       – Reduce and minify unused JavaScript and ensure that it’s in optimal placement

3. Focus on Improving User Experience

User experience is another critical optimisation factor you should focus on to prepare your site to withstand the next update. You can achieve this by maintaining a responsive web design, which means that your webpage will automatically adjust to fit any screen size, whether it’s a mobile phone, desktop, or tablet.

Mobile-friendliness is also a vital ranking factor that ties directly with user experience. In fact, Google now indexes mobile versions of websites instead of desktop versions. So if you don’t have a mobile site, creating one should be the number one task on your to-do list.

Your website should also be user-friendly. Menus should function correctly and be easily accessible. Be sure to prominently display essential information and include relevant images and videos. Format your content for readability so users can easily understand the key takeaways.

4. Conduct Frequent Technical Evaluations

Although a full-scale technical audit can take weeks or months, it’s worth your time to perform smaller-scale evaluations as often as possible. Doing so allows you to quickly catch and address any problems that crop up before they can harm your site’s performance.

To keep your website ready for an algorithm update, perform the following:

•       – Incorporate technical SEO and a foundation of quality code
•       – Update broken and 404 links
•       – Remove or update thin or irrelevant content
•       – Eliminate unwanted redirect chains
•       – Eliminate unnecessary pages from your sitemap
•       – Keep your code bottleneck-free

Prepare Your Website for Google’s Next Algorithm Update

The four tips we just listed are essential to keep your website ready for algorithm updates. At Perth Digital Edge, we have extensive experience preparing websites for upcoming Google algorithm updates, and we offer a range of services to optimise your site and maintain performance.

Google’s algorithm is constantly changing, and your website should follow suit. Maintain quality content and fast page load speeds, improve user experience, and evaluate your site’s technical performance. If you’re unsure where to start, we can help.

Call our SEO Perth experts today on 0417911482 to schedule your initial consultation with our digital marketing team.