Google’s September Broad Core Update Is Officially Released!

Google recently released their September broad core update on the 12th of September. It signifies this year’s second broad core update, with the first one released earlier this year. Taking approximately two weeks to be fully implemented, Google’s latest update follows the release and completion of Google’s Helpful Content Launch just a while back, showing Google’s intention to shift its direction towards connecting users to helpful, quality SEO content.

A broad core update is a significant change in the search algorithm that Google usually announces when its changes are significant enough to affect search marketers and publishers targeting lead generation.

Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and updating. However, what makes a broad core update different is that instead of changing a specific portion of the algorithm, it targets multiple aspects of the algorithm, making it more noticeable to many users.

What to do if your page is affected?

In all of its earlier core algorithmic updates, Google’s statement has always been that it is unavoidable that pages are affected by the updates. In fact, Google reiterated that there is often nothing to fix on affected pages after the core updates. A negative impact on search ranking might not signify that the page has any mistakes. Google’s update just adjusts how the system assesses content in general, in which you should change your page’s content according to what Google is looking for in order to rank well.

Some questions you can consider when assessing your content are:

• Does my content offer original information, research, analysis, and reporting?
• Does my content offer substantial, comprehensive, and complete descriptions of the topic?
• If my content consists of information drawn from external sources, have I rephrased and reconstructed the information such that it remains accurate but does not copy the sources?
• Is my page title too exaggerated?

Google’s recent updates, including Tests Read Labels, have evolved the way its system is rewarding people-first content, where content creators focus primarily on providing users satisfying content rather than content optimised purely for the purpose of ranking high on search engines. Hence, some of the guidelines you can follow are:

• Avoid loading pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Avoid scraped contents that do not add value to your users.
• Avoid using automatically generated content, such as including content that has useful keywords in it but makes no sense.
• Avoid creating doorway pages that result in the user seeing multiple similar pages that all bring them to the same destination through secondary pages that do not benefit them.

The best approach in response to this core update is to maintain and be extra observant for these two weeks. There is no rush to conduct a major revamp of SEO marketing strategies or engage professional SEO services. Search results and ranking may bounce around the initial stages as the system assess and updates, but hopefully, it will settle down after.

Conclusion

This broad core update is a major update in Google’s search ranking algorithm. Over the next two weeks or so, your page may rank better or worse in search results. Being aware of such updates allows us to understand better what we might need to change or update on the creation of new content as well as any existing content that has been affected. It would be best to wait for your ranking and analysis update to be released by Google over the next couple of weeks to assess your next steps better.

Meanwhile, we would recommend going through and optimising existing content on top of creating new content, ensuring that every aspect of good SEO practice, such as optimising images and utilising good meta tags, is followed closely. Remember, good quality content that Google aims to reward is when you put user benefits first.