Google Checklist: What You Should & Shouldn't Do After a Google Algorithm Update

Do you know what to do after a Google Search update?

Some can be relatively minor, but others can negatively impact your website’s visibility, traffic, and revenue, and if you make the wrong moves, you can make matters worse.

Digital marketers create strategies and choose tactics based on the way Search functions, but when that functionality changes drastically overnight, the results can be catastrophic.

The stakes are high, and after seeing your site’s performance drop, your anxiety could be even higher.

But don’t panic. Here’s how you can stay ahead of Google updates along with tips to help you recover if your site is impacted.

There’s nothing worse than receiving a message from your boss asking, “What happened to our site traffic?”

Hopefully, you should be able to find answers quickly if it’s related to a Google update. Google officially announces the rollout of each Search update on the Google Search Status Dashboard on the day the rollout begins.

It pays to check the dashboard daily, but commonly, you’ll find industry chatter about the rollout well ahead of time by following SEO blogs and social media accounts.

Maintaining awareness is key to ensuring you aren’t caught off guard by a significant core update. However, knowing about a Google update is only the first step.

As a digital marketer, you should be obsessed with metrics. They tell the story of your brand’s performance and are key to diagnosing problems, such as complications posed by a Search update.

Monitoring metrics regularly will give you a baseline for your site's health, allowing you to analyze the impacts of a Google update easily.

When you can identify fluctuations and correlate them with the timing of an update rollout, typically lasting anywhere from a week to a month, you can dig deeper into your site to fix longstanding issues and perform opportunities research.

Relevance is the first (but certainly not the only) thing your pages need to achieve high Organic Search rankings. If your landing page doesn’t satisfy the users, there’s no reason Google would rank it highly on Search, bottom line.

But how can you decipher the search intent behind each of the keywords you’re targeting? You’ll glean the best insights by looking at each SERP firsthand.

If page one is full of educational articles, blog posts, or forum discussions, Google is clearly trying to satisfy an informational search intent. On the other hand, product grids and shopping carousels tend to demonstrate a commercial or transactional search intent.

You may find your landing page isn’t aligned with the search intent the SERPs are trying to satisfy for your targeted keyword. In that case, consider whether it’s possible to revamp the landing page to better match the SERP’s user intent.

If your page and keyword(s) simply aren’t a solid match, it’s time to dive back into your keyword research and find more suitable keywords for that landing page or select a new landing page altogether.

Remember, SERPs are anything but static. What performed well one month may not rank as highly the next, so you must familiarize yourself with the SERPs for your targeted keywords and adjust accordingly.

Even a relevant page may suffer ranking fluctuations from month to month. This could be because users simply don’t like using your site despite its relevance and quality content, which points to one factor: your user experience.

User experience is a fairly broad area, incorporating numerous metrics and individual elements such as Google’s Core Web Vitals and performance issues identified in the PageSpeed Insights report. Even so, it’s critical your site delivers a best-of-web user experience to compete with other sites in your targeted SERPs.

Pages that load slowly, don’t respond promptly to inputs, or otherwise fail to satisfy users are less likely to rank well in Organic Search results. This is because Google wants to serve the most satisfying results for every query to maximize the quality of search results and keep users coming back.

As a digital marketer, it pays to get acquainted with Google Search Console, your Core Web Vitals scores, and the PageSpeed Insights assessment. Use these tools to identify key UX issues and flag them for the appropriate team member(s) to resolve.

Optimizing page performance is typically a long-term effort that requires consistent attention and a clear direction. However, because UX is a key organic ranking factor, these optimizations are definitely worth the investment.

In addition to issues that directly affect how users experience your website, technical problems can make it more difficult for search engines to understand your pages, which leads to reduced visibility for your brand.

Regardless of size, every site update, from small changes to a full site migration, is a chance for something to break and hurt your ability to rank in Organic Search results. If you’re seeing significant ranking decreases across numerous pages, a newfound technical problem could very well be the culprit.

Some errors can even prevent Google from indexing your pages, which means they won’t appear on Search at all.

Use Google Search Console to ensure all of your pages are indexed. GSC is also helpful in identifying technical issues, inspecting your existing sitemap, and examining individual URLs to spot problems before they begin to hurt your bottom line.

As digital marketers, we’re living in the age of Google’s helpful content system. The thin, outdated, or even inaccurate content that once proved an effective placeholder no longer provides any benefit.

Some sites have gotten away with it for years. If you’ve let your content take a backseat and your site experiences a rankings hit following a Google Search update, it’s time to reevaluate both your existing content and your approach to publishing new content.

Google wants to serve the most valuable results for every Search query, so your content needs to provide genuine, original value to users. You can still sell through helpful content, just be sure you’re providing value and following E-E-A-T best practices.

In short, give the people what they want and do it better than anyone else in your vertical. A set-and-forget approach won’t work.

Google considers freshness when evaluating content quality. So, while your post about the top 5 red carpet looks for 2019 might’ve captured a lot of traffic at the time, it’s not doing anything to move the needle for your brand today.

Evergreen content is still the way to go; you simply need to keep it current to ensure it’s still just as valuable to users as it was last year.

Trying to course-correct after a Google Search update isn’t just stressful, but it also reduces your team’s efficiency and keeps your brand stuck behind the eight ball.

At VELOX, our SEM specialists understand the direction of Search and work proactively to keep our clients moving forward while avoiding the sitewide impacts of Google’s latest updates. We operate as your business intelligence wing, building and executing a fully custom strategy to drive exponential growth. As a Google Partner, we’re recognized as among the top 3% of agencies worldwide.

With VELOX at your side, sustained Search dominance is finally within reach. Contact VELOX today for your free marketing plan.