In June 2019, Google released another major update it called the core and many sites (as usual with these events) suffered in rankings, as usual.
If yours was one of them, there’s specific things I’ll be talking about that you can do to your site to regain your rankings and even improve them. I say this because the very same SEO guidelines I’ve been following across all my major websites have continued to work and this most recent update did absolutely nothing to hurt my rankings.
I wanted to wait at least one month after the Google core update was released to be sure and let me prove that my sites are OK. I wrote a recent article on whether SEO was dead and on that article, I displayed a few websites of mine and how their traffic is doing. Overall, there were no major changes to it after this event happened.
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Here’s how my sites are doing after the Google core update:
Site 1:
As you can see during the June period (when this happened), the traffic was at the very worst, stagnant, but I also suspect this is because the niche topic of this site generally sees a stagnancy during this summer periods because of vacations and other events. Either way, this page was not affected.
Site 2:
In this site’s case, the traffic actually grew during the update, BUT I don’t actually attribute it’s rise because of that. I was actually making updates on this particular site and improving the content and SEO of it. And I assume the improvements started getting noticed by Google around the same time this core event took place, so it’s a coincidence.
BUT I am certain the event had no negative ranking results on this page either.
Site 3:
In this site’s case, it’s basically the same results as site #1. No major changes.
I have at least 2 other sites, but their results are the same so I think I’ve provided enough evidence to show that this whole event didn’t affect my pages.
Now why is it that nothing bad happened to my sites?
Well that’s because I’ve continuously preached about how to properly do SEO and follow the most important trends, on my websites and I have before when I talked about other updates such as E-A-T and Medic that I don’t care about them, because my sites in question follow the most important Google guidelines for getting great rankings and it’s these 15 guidelines.
Ok, that’s wonderful for you, but what about me? My sites suffered!
If you have seen DRAMATIC decreases in rankings and traffic for your site during this Google Core period, there’s 2 things I need to say…
1) It may not be that bad and there are many cases where even good websites that follow good SEO strategies still suffer, BUT they are temporary, meaning that as the update is occurring, it can hit good websites, but that eventually settles and the good sites return to their original rankings and in some cases rise.
So if you are indeed doing white hat SEO things on your site and you saw decreases in rankings, give it a little bit more time and see if they rise again.
2) If you’ve been waiting for at least a month while this whole event occurred and have not seen improvement, my guess is that your website is either…
Not doing white hat SEO things, in which case, I’d tell you to start a new one and STOP trying to cheat at the SEO game because this core update is one of many to follow and one or more of them WILL doom your site, even if you get away from one of them.
Or if your site is indeed one of the good ones and the rankings just aren’t picking up, then you need to follow this 15 point SEO guideline. I have said many times that these guidelines are the exact ones I use to:
A) Make my new content rank as high as possible.
B) Optimize my old content to get better rankings if it’s not doing so well.
If you follow these 15 things, you will see the positive results too.
What are other experts saying about this update?
The most trusted experts I know on SEO are basically saying the same things I am, and if you look at the major forums, you’ll also find similar advice I’m giving, but let me share other articles that provide good overviews of this new update and what to do if you need more info other than my own to show you what needs to be done:
Here is a link to an article where one of my original SEO teachers talks about this event. He gives good general advice on how to handle this thing.
And there is also another SEO expert I often consult with who basically gave these tips regarding this event:
Improve your content (add more to it).
Interlink more of your site.
Do a URL inspection on webmaster tools once you’ve improved the content to help Google see you’ve made improvements.
These guidelines are actually part of my 15 point strategy so I can vouch for them.
The main point: Expect these updates, but don’t fear them.
As I say in every article that I write which covers these SEO topics, you should not fear any Google update if you follow the main concepts that have always worked, which is writing great high quality content, and without going through the “short cuts” in SEO, which happen to be the same shortcuts that make you the first target of these updates anyway.
If you have a website that has experienced negative effects from this latest Google event, let me know the specifics about it, so I can help you recover it’s rankings the right way, but ultimately, do note that I will likely suggest you follow that 15 point strategy I linked above.
It’s almost guaranteed to help your site improve, unless it was penalized by Google.