Just in last couple of months, Google have rolled out back to back algorithm updates, this started with a core update back in August and as of me writing this on 21 November still 2 updates are rolling out – November Core Update & Reviews Update. Lot of people in SEO community have done analysis of these updates & I think that some of them have highlighted amazing insights that every SEO and business owner should be aware of going into 2024.
This rollercoaster of updates started with August Core Update which started to roll out on 23 August.
Lily Ray from New York based agency Amsive have written this amazing post showing that with August 2023 Core Update sites like Reddit, sites showing real experience saw massive increase in ranking/traffic while sites that were doing parasite SEO (publishing tonne of content that’s irrelevant to their primary content & selling links) were hit by Google therefore saw massive decrease in traffic. There are lot of other insights as well while Lily found after doing analysis of search volatility data from Sistrix.
Here are some of my own tweets about what I have noticed about August Core Update in SERPs, one tweet is about sites that I found while I was working on doing an audit for a potential SEO prospect of mine (glad to say they now my client ) and another tweet is about sudden decline in traffic of one of Australia’s largest brand Oddie.
August Core Update got done rolling out on 7 September but just after around a week of that Google started to roll out another update – September Helpful Content Update starting from 14 Sep and finished up on 28 Sep.
Don’t even get me started on this update it was truely insane!!!
I have seen so many tweets & chats in different places online about this update, so many people have shared screenshots showing how just in couple of days their traffic from Search or Discover or in some cases both just got halved.
But from whatever I have observed and even noticed with ranking of my own clients, it seems that Google specifically pushed the lever on must having HELPFUL & People First content and absolutely demolished the sites which had too much content which is either written to just rank or its primary purpose to just get traffic from search and not providing enough or zero value to users.
Now its really subjective to say things like
– What is helpful or what is not?
– What is people first or what is not?
Because I myself have worked with lot of businesses and have helped them build their content strategies so that they can succeed in search and get that organic traffic to their website, to be honest sometimes for ranking making sure that page’s content is optimised is necessary otherwise it would be a situation like publishing something and on one can find it because its not optimised enough to rank on Google.
But I think that moving into 2024 this will change a lot!!!
Primary changes I guess would be that Google being able to identify and then rank content which is helpful and is not just written for SEO purposes or getting traffic from search. To be honest I’m still little sceptical of Google being able to pull this off completely but with the changes in SERPs that I have seen during & after September Helpful Content Update its likely that moving into 2024 – actually helpful & useful content would be something that will be winning in Google Search and will be there on top as position 1 or featured snippet.
Talking about analysis of September Helpful Content Update and what changed in Google Search due to this, Marie Haynes have written amazing 3 posts about it and I have already shared all posts to all those links as a tweet back in October. If your a SEO or business owner or someone looking to understand what content they should be publishing on their site I would definitely recommend you to read through these blog posts.
Just after finishing up of rollout of September Helpful Content Update on 28 Sep, funny enough that Google even didn’t stopped and further released another 2 updates just around a week after it – October Spam Update starting from 4th and October Core Update starting from 5th.
YES!! It was insane because core & spam update were rolling out at the same time.
Rolling out of both these updates at the same time made it super hard to actually identify and pin down which update affected site’s ranking. Barry have written a lot about this and I would recommend you to read through it.
Data providers on the Google October 2023 core and spam update by Barry Schwartz
Google’s October 2023 Spam Update Starting To Target Spam Sites by Barry Schwartz
One of the interesting thing that I noticed with October Core Update is that even Australia’s one of largest website finder .com.au was affected and decline of both traffic/ranking was significant.
I have tweeted about this back on 9 Nov.
October Core Update finished rolling out on 19th and Spam one done on same day as well but Google didn’t stopped there and just around 2 weeks from 19th October on 2nd November Google started to roll out another core update – November Core Update and couple of days after start of this rollout Google started roll out of another update – November Reviews Update on 8th.
With the rollout of these updates I’m seeing similar trend of Google punishing content which is specifically optimised for SEO while keep on rewarding content which is actually helpful for people.
With all these updates at end of 2023, I think that SEO will be a lot different going into 2024. Below are some of my insights about what SEO may look like in 2024 based upon what kind of changes Google have made with all these updates.
SEO in 2024 – What I’m expecting
1. Little tricks here & there would not be working.
2. Actual content which shows experience & expertise would be rewarded by Google.
3. Content which is actually helpful & useful for people would be something that is not only rewarded by Google in Search but on other surfaces as well like Google News and Google Discover.
4. Any type of spam will be punished by Google either it be generating tonne of content using tools like ChatGPT and then pushing it to site or creating content for just purpose of SEO and getting traffic from Google.
5. I think that product reviews which are actual reviews written by people who have actually used product and is sharing their experience or opinions would be rewarded massively in Google Search.
6. Forums like Reddit and Quora would be a lot more visible in Search compared to what it is nowadays in 2023.
7. With hidden gems signal/system (I’m not sure what Google is calling it) I think that more useful content which is written by people on Internet would be highlighted more in Search.
8. More videos explaining things in SERPs for sure, I think that with all these updates recently Google is specifically pushing youtube videos panel in ranking and moving it towards top positions for queries in lot of vertical industries.
9. Lot of AI tools specifically designed for SEO would come out but I’m little sus of these specifically the ones that say things along the lines – write content with AI and rank on Google in one day or something.
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