5 Ways to recover from Google algorithm updates

Google undergoes 3200 algorithm changes in a time span of 1 year! Yes, you read it right. The SEO process regularly reacts to the changes made by Google, especially the algorithm updates. This becomes necessary if you wish to have your website on the top rankings. It is a task in itself. One wrong move and see yourself falling! 

Amongst these changes, there are a few changes that are minor and remain unnoticeable while there are some big, devastating changes that create such a fall. Over a period of time, Google has been actively removing low-quality sites. It has been introducing updates too often now which have been termed “core” algorithm updates. Google promotes those sites that provide friendly user experience. 

The question that intrigues here, at this point, is that how to overcome or survive through these algorithm updates? It is better to know where in the algorithm the change took place because these updates can either bring you more traffic or vice-versa. If you continue to receive traffic to your site then congratulations, you survived the update. But if you fail to do so, you need to realise that the new update has crashed your site. 

In order to take a toll over the spammers Google regularly comes up with such algorithm updates. As we know that Google is the most used search engine and it ensures to keep only the relevant sites on the top. If your site fails to provide relevant information you will not be placed on top of the Google rankings. 

Ways to survive post such updates:

Remaining stuck at this position and doing nothing will never be the solution to survive this casualty. You can always survive the updates, regardless of its numbers if you choose to do the following things:

1. Make sure your website is mobile friendly as well as tablet friendly

If your site does not perform well on all devices you will definitely miss a good amount of audience. You have to make sure that your site performs well on all the devices. You must also keep a check on the display. Sometimes an image and the content below the image looks fine on your computer but on the mobile it overlaps one another. 

You can even use a mobile-friendly test tool or use mobile usability report by Google search console. More than half of your audience browses through a mobile. Hence, you have to be mobile-friendly. There is no other option. 

2. Say goodbye to low-quality pages

In order to get a fair quality score of your site, Google evaluates all the indexed pages. If your site has a low quality page, then you might get caught up by the Google algorithms. A low quality page includes

•  Little or no amount of texts
•  Large amount of ads
•  Pages with just an image
•  Pages with broken links.

 Look for such pages at the search console coverage reports or go for a “site:yourdomain.com” search as it often lists low-quality pages. Either improve the content of these pages, make it high quality or redirect these pages to the other high-quality pages. You can even add a noindex tag to hide it from the google search results and you can always choose to delete them. 

3. Lower the amount of ads

Often sites with too many ads find it difficult to recover itself. There are lots of sites that have too many ads on the top. Also, there are sites which have more than 1/4th of its page occupied by ads. 64% of users say ads are more annoying. And as if this wasn’t enough, there are sites which even have a video that plays an ad in the background. This annoys the user. Most sites with such content do not survive google algorithm updates and also lose a lot of traffic. 

Your site may face ranking issues because of such annoying ads and autoplay videos. Infact, 82% of users close a webpage because of the autoplaying videos.Try to avoid such ads. And if you choose to display ads on your site, add a label of “Advertisement” below the ad. This will make your site user friendly and will help you get a ranking because google demands your site to be user friendly. 

4. Minimize the use of pop-ups

If your site is suffering a downfall because of the algorithm update then it might be because it might have misleading pop-ups. This does not give a friendly experience to the users. In 2017, Google had an update specifically targeting the sites with such pop-ups. 

These notifications are very distracting. If a user clicks on “Allow” by mistake, the user then struggles to find how to stop the notifications. If you are struggling to survive the update, try removing such pop-ups from your site or give it a least disruptive form. For example, you can give an option of not showing it again if the viewer opts to close it. 

5. Be credible

In order to get some competitive advantage you need to make your website credible. A user spends an average of 2.6 seconds before coming to the product that will enhance their first impression. There are factors that you need to consider in order to make your site credible. These factors are:-

• Making your website look professional becomes the most important step here. 46% of the people find the “designing factor” the most crucial factor in order to determine credibility. 
• Make sure that you keep the most important landing pages in the navigation main navigation. Make attractive and promising call-to-actions. Make sure the users reach their destination with the least amount of clicks. 
• Along with the website speed, check if any of your pages have technical errors like 404 pages or broken links. Also don’t forget to cite your sources!

The more credible your site is, the more confidence it creates in the audience to invest in you. It gives an honest evaluation of your business. 

  Summary:

 This becomes evident that Google is serious regarding improving the quality of search results. These updates affect the ranking of your site. These strategies will help you to save yourself from getting trapped. Make sure your website is user-friendly and see your site get the ranking that it deserves!