In May, Google rolled out its latest so-called core update – a major update to the search algorithms. How has this affected the ranking of your site?
Google’s search algorithms are the unknown variable that all the SEOs in the world have to deal with. However, it is not completely unknown. Google is quite good at providing clues about how the algorithms work to determine which pages are most relevant to which search results, and thus end up in the coveted first place in the search results. They also have clear guidelines for how to make their site as relevant as possible in the eyes of Google.
Ultimately, according to Google, one should primarily concentrate on creating good and relevant content on one’s pages, rather than trying to take shortcuts or adapt the content to how one thinks the algorithms work.
Has your ranking been affected?
A core update, as the update in May was, is a major update of the algorithms that sometimes, which in this case had a major impact on certain types of pages. The industries most affected were travel, real estate, health, pets and community information. Many pages have lost or risen in the rankings after the update, and many SEO experts are frantically trying to understand how and why their pages have been affected.
There are many indications that the update has implemented a higher degree of machine learning, ie that the search engine learns itself while working . The users’ actions on the sites are also believed to have gained more importance, for example if you quickly click back to the search results after entering a site, which indicates that the page was irrelevant or otherwise discouraged the user.
The update also seems to concentrate on identifying which pages really have relevant content among both smaller and larger sites. Consequently, many smaller websites have risen in the rankings while some larger ones have lost.
Thousands of updates every year
In the end, though, it’s not so much about trying to figure out exactly what this update, or Google’s search algorithms in general, looks like. If you do that, you will always work reactively instead of proactively. Google makes more than 3,000 updates each year, and the fact that your page rises or falls in the rankings may have to do with any of these updates. Major updates such as the one in May are also made approximately once a quarter.
How Google determines which pages are relevant
If your site has lost in ranking, it does not automatically mean that Google thought it was bad and wanted to punish it. It is rather that the search engine has opened its eyes to other pages that are judged to be more current and well-written. If you want your site to climb again, and then maintain its high position, you must first know how the search engine works and what it generally values in a website.
The first thing Google does when a user types something in the search box is to try to interpret the purpose of the search. Is the user looking for news, facts or entertainment? Can the keyword mean more than one thing? Interpreting a search phrase is a difficult art, which has to do with understanding synonyms, meanings and grammar in all the languages of the world and in fact trying to read the user’s thoughts in practice.
The next step is to find the pages that may be relevant to the user. This is done, as you probably know, by Google regularly browsing pages and indexing them so that they can be quickly found in search results. When Google looks at a page, it makes an overall assessment of the page and assesses, among other things, how reliable, well-written and original the content is.
Focus on good content – not on the algorithms
The best tip for you who want to make your site as relevant as possible in Google’s eyes is to invest in producing your own material, which clearly focuses on one topic at a time. If there are several pages on your site that all have roughly the same content but with different keywords, then the search engine will notice it and rank it lower. Thin or duplicate content on one of the pages can also drag down an otherwise well-built site, so be sure to compress the content and have two or three really well-written pages instead of a large amount of half-good and “talkative” pages.
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