How I Saved My Client from Google’s Core Update! Game Changing Ideas to Get Your Traffic Back

Google recently annouced a major update to its core alogorithm. Usually, they don’t annouce the update to the public and it is always a mystery if there is an update. But this time they did and the SEO world was curious to see how it will affect their website traffic.

A lot of people saw their website traffic drop and many others saw the traffic increase.

There is a saying “someone’s loss is someone’s gain” So, what happened to my clients?

One of my client’s called me about the update and below is a perfect example of how the latest Google update affected my client’s website traffic.

Based on the above stats our client’s overall stats dropped by nearly 8.3%.

I’m sure you’re wondering how I can claim to have saved the client when their traffic actually decreased.

What if I told you that we deployed a contingency plan, or plan B as it’s called, WHEN the traffic dropped?

Ok, first, I would like to give you a bit of history. I started SEO a long time ago, I’ve been in the industry for more than 10 years now. I started as a PPC specialist and then turned my focus to SEO.

Over the years, Google’s algorithm has changed and become much more complex. It’s no longer just about whether you are breaking Googles rules but more about enhancing user experience.

What I noticed in the past was that traffic was not just increasing or decreasing – there was dip down and up. So, I prepared for it and eventually our traffic started to move upwards as a result of us adopting to the changes in algorithm.

In SEO, you can’t guarantee results even if you do everything correctly. I get this question all the time. Google is not perfect and continually adjusts. They do over 3,200 updates every year.

I love Google and love working on SEO but, I don’t like the feeling of helplessness and answering clients about traffic when I have done everything right.

So, what steps did I take?

Although I am pretty good with SEO – and have managed to keep my clients happy with my results – I have to come up with a strategy to sustain those results in the long run and keep my clients satisfied.

Remember, Google ranking might fluctuate and drop in the short-term, but I know if I focus on long-term user experience, my ranking and traffic will pick up. Checking the last 7 months’ results, I noticed there’s been a steady increase in traffic.

So, are you saying you don’t need any SEO?

No, I love SEO and I practise it heavily. I am a big fan of looking at a website’s errors and fixing them consistently. My goal is to please the users and make sure they have a very positive and gratifying experience when they visit the site. Having said that, trying to read into every Google update and working on that and reacting to it is like trying to catch something which you can’t catch. I don’t like using the word “CAN’T” but that’s the reality.

It’s very time consuming and exhausting homework. Like I always say, SEO is like building a house or a growing a plant, you need to think LONG TERM.

So, what’s the secret to sustain long term and make Google love you?

• Content is the King: Just pruning and cropping the contents can triple your traffic. It’s a simple process, check all the pages and look for contents vs code ratio or thin contents. Simple example:
• List out all the urls on your website. Tools like screaming frog or SEM Rush will help you list them. This is will also give you the meta tags and description of the page. I can get the same data using Google analytics custom report as well.

You can import from a plugin from gallery and set up a custom tab for the contents which will highlight all meta tags and description including the traffic for each URL.

• Check the backlink for each URL using SEM Rush or Ahrefs to check how many backlinks each URL has.
• Finally using SEM Rush or SharedCount you can get the total share per page URL.

Make sure to create a simple spread sheet with all the URL, backlink count, traffic, word count, internal links and whether you need to optimise or delete the page. If you find any pages with no traffic or duplicate contents it’s important to remove those pages 301 redirect them. Once you have a complete spread sheet it is important to review each URL and optimise them accordingly.

Fix Website Issues

Let me simply ask a question here, what if half of your website’s internal links are broken? Would you be upset? Well I would be, as a user and webmaster. That would provide a terrible experience to users – and of course to Google crawler. That’s why it is important to fix broken images, links, site speed and files. I like to use SEMRush or Ahref to identify these issues. You can use tool like broken link checker to quickly check the broken links.

Search Console

Let me tell me you Google search console is the first place I go to check for any issues. Google search console usually sends an email with errors. Checking and fixing them regularly is a good practise.

Brand

Building a brand and awareness is where the future of SEO is. Big brands usually dominate the listing. The main reason being people relate to the brand when shopping. For example, if someone is looking for shoes and are searching for ‘Adidas’. It’s not always on Google. By building a brand it allows users to just search for the brand name. Google trend is a great tool to check this as well as your analytics and Google mentions.

Conclusion

If you want to get around Google’s updates and algorithm changes, you must focus on users. Do what’s best for the users and you don’t have to worry or deal with Google’s ever-changing algorithm.

Concentrating on short-term results is just a tactic used to try and please the client on a temporary basis. And that’s not what SEO is about. SEO is a long-term game.

Don’t react to every small update or changes. Just focus on making sure the users are happy. Working towards user experience will serve well in the long term.

Occasionally your ranking and your traffic will drop, don’t freak out and stress, just keep focusing on users.

So, do you stay updated on all the Google algorithm changes? Let me know your thoughts and any new ideas which will help a site when it comes to core updates.