All You Need To Know About Google's May 2020 Core Update

On May 4th, Google started to roll out an essential update to its algorithms.

They call it a "Core" update as it's a massive difference to their algorithm, which means it impacts a lot of websites.

Real estate, health, travel, pets & animals, and people & society saw the biggest fluctuations with rankings/user experience.

Other industries have also impacted the ones at the bottom of the list were the least affected, such as News - there was also a shakeup in local SEO results, but that started before the core update. Update your content regularly. Publish four articles a month.

And when we say update, it is about just adding an image or adjusting a sentence. It is quite simple as it is about adding a handful of new paragraphs, deleting irrelevant information, and sometimes even re-writing entire articles.

They do whatever it takes to keep articles up to date and valuable for the readers, just like how Wikipedia is continuously updating its content. 

 

Can you simply guess how many of them noticed a search traffic drop off 10% or more than that?

One thing to consider is when we are calculating organic search traffic estimates- a glance at the average monthly volume of click through rates as well as keyword-based on rankings.

So leaves such as May 1, which is Labor Day for major of the world, didn't drop the results.

There is no Rubric on how should the old content be updated your old content/blogs as it makes a difference per article but the key is to do whatever it takes to keep it authentic for your readers and make sure that it is better than the competitors.

If you still want guidance on updating old content, here are a few points;

If the content is not relevant anymore to a reader/website visitor, delete the page, and 301 redirect it to the URL, which is relevant on the site or updates it to make it suitable for your readers.

 

Check and see if there are any dead links on your site and fix them immediately. Dead links create a poor user experience.

If the article is translated and has significant global viewers, ensure the images and videos make sense to anyone reading the content in those languages specifically.

 

Can you make the article simpler? Remove fluff and avoid using hard words that very few people can understand/interpret.

Does the article discuss a specific time frame or a year? If possible, make the article fresh by avoiding the use of dates or specific time ranges or dates.

If the article covers a precise problem people are getting introduced with, ensure you look at Quora first before updating the articles. Glance to see popular responses on Quora as it will give you a sense of what people are ideally looking for and are interested in.

Is this article plagiarism free? Not from a wording point of view, but are you much covering precisely similar concept as another article on your website.

If so, adapt merging them, and 301 redirect one URL to the other one.

Fix your thin content on site

One glitch that our system looks at is thin content pages with low word count.

 

On average, 46% of the websites which gets analyzed have at least one page that is thin in content.

For the pages that are to be more in-depth, fix them instantly!

Here are the three main questions to take into consideration while fixing thin content pages:

Is it really required to add more words?

If you can get the message in a few hundred words or through videos or images, it may be enough. Don't add words when it isn't needed. Instead, think of the user experience.

People would rather won't chose to wait for minutes when their question is answered in a few seconds.

How does your page compare to the competitors? Look at the same pages that are ranking on 1st page.

Do they have more or less content than you?

This will give an idea if you require to boost your page, precisely if everyone who ranks on the 1st page has at least a few thousand words on their pages.

Does keeping the page makes sense?

If it renders little to no value to the readers and you can't make it more beneficial by updating it, you may want to consider deleting it, and 301 redirect the URL to another similar page on your website.

Conclusion

Even if you do everything discussed above, there is no guarantee that an algorithm update will impact you. Each one is distinct, and Google's goal is to generate the best experience for users.

If you look at the above points, you will notice that fixing them creates a better user experience, and that should always be your aim.

It isn't about succeeding on Google. SEO is about presenting a better experience than your opponent. If that's your prime focus, in the long run, you' will find that you will do better than your competitors when algorithm update is the subject.

To know more about the SEO rankings and how your business can reach new horizons, connect with the SEO experts of Houston - ITs Guru today!