Google Broad Core Update 2022 – What Are We Seeing?
Depending on where you are in the world, the month of May can get pretty hot. In the UK, though, we embrace the heat because it is far better than the impending endless winter we’re meant to suffer through. Weather aside, the Google Broad Core 2022 update is rolling out, and while many websites North of the Atlantic are feeling the heat from the update, we are just beginning to see Google’s SERPs shuffle for many of our clients.
The last core update was back in November 2021, and we didn’t see the effects of the update until mid-December. So, if that’s anything to go by, it’s safe to assume that webmasters in the UK need to brace for the next few weeks.
The core update is mainly a core algorithm update, and Google does not tell us much about it. The official press release about the update by Big G gives us no clues as to what to expect. But based on what we are seeing across the Atlantic, our team isn’t worried, at least for most of our clients…something we’ll get to in a moment.
Community Chatter About the Impact of The May 2022 Core Update
The core update was felt in a significant way in the United States, and Canada, with the SEO community reporting significant dips in rankings. However, many also reported improved rankings. However, even after a week since the update rolled out (we assume), the chatter hasn’t quietened down. Twitter, in particular, has been inundated with a barrage of tweets about how bad the update was for businesses and especially affiliate marketers.
Since Google does not reveal what has changed in the algorithm, it is up to SEOs like us to figure this stuff out. Fortunately, we at HookedOnMedia have the benefit of experience and that we only use best practices to rank websites. Now, this brings us to why we are not worried about our clients and websites being hit by the update in a significant way.
Why Your Website Is Safe With Hooked On Media?
Many of our clients are understandably concerned that the update may hit them. Obviously, for many of our clients, the website is their bread and butter. However, over the years, we’ve taken steps to ensure that our SEO is update-proof. While admittedly, your website can never be entirely ‘update proof,’ using best practices ensures that Google does not end up penalising our clients… allow us to explain.
Our initial assessment shows that websites with the following characteristics were hit the worst:
Spammy content – Google’s algorithm and AI work as a team to decide if your content is spammy, fair, good, or excellent. Low-quality content gets punished with every update. Since we put in a great deal of effort to ensure that our clients’ content is always as good as possible, there is no reason for Google’s algorithm to rule otherwise.
Websites with AI-generated content – Quite frankly, AI or Artificial Generated content like the type generated by applications using GPT3 is something Google sees as spam. That’s because the content being generated is drawn from various sources and pieced together. In other words these are glorified spinners. The resulting articles lack that human touch, and most of all, it is spam. For instance, AI can’t write a personalised experience of using a product. The Review Update that dropped two months ago saw so many websites being dethroned from the coveted first page. Think of it this way, don’t you think AI should be able to identify AI-generated content?
At HookedOnMedia, we don’t recommend that our clients use AI-generated content.
No Unnatural Backlinks – Google has repeated time and time that they do not want people selling and buying links. However, links are still bought by SEOs and often sold by third parties that run outreach campaigns. Fortunately, our link-building techniques also ensure that our clients have nothing to worry about. We don’t use gray or black hat techniques to acquire links and vet every site we get links from for our clients.
Technical SEO – Google has become a stickler for good technical SEO in the past few updates. In fact, your website needs to provide users with the best possible experience. If it does not, your website may be penalised. That’s why we have technical SEO experts who ensure that your on-page SEO and your technical SEO are excellent! We use a number of well respected tools, but more importantly we use our own experience to view issues and problems that tools cannot identify.
What If Rankings Start Shaking?
Well, it’s hard to avoid this in some instances. There will be an initial shakeup in rankings when there is an update, but based on our experience, things settle down after a while. This is something we deal with multiple times a year.
If you are concerned about your website losing rankings for specific keywords that bring in the best traffic being hit, then don’t. Our team works diligently to ensure that our clients are impervious to such updates.
However, we strongly recommend that all our clients invest in Google AdWords to ensure that their entire business model does not hinge on organic rankings. It is always good to ensure that you can turn the proverbial traffic tap on when you need to, especially when your main keywords are de-ranked or are part of a shuffle.
