If you’re an SEO geek, you’ve probably been buzzing and gossiping about Google’s latest core update, which completed its rollout on March 20, 2024, after its initial release on March 5, 2024.
Some people’s sites were destroyed or even completely delisted.
There are many interesting technical tidbits to discuss regarding what happened — fodder for hours of discussion.
But if you’re a business owner, let me tell you that you can safely ignore every single one of these updates.
Why?
Because these updates are about how Google is getting smarter at detecting spam, such as expired domains, scaled content, and other techniques used by some SEO “experts” attempting to trick Google.
They’ll argue about how Google inconsistently enforces the rules.
And one prominent SEO expert even claims that everything Google says is a lie. Of course, that’s click bait to attract his fellow SEO experts, as they adjust their techniques to evade Google’s spam traps.
The Power of Authentic Content
For the rest of us, publishing “helpful content” is enough. “Helpful content” is a deep phrase that Google uses, consistent with their EEAT guidelines, where the first “E” stands for “Experience.” It genuinely demonstrates that we actually do what we say we do, in the city we say we do it.
Having a strong personal brand is important. It’s not about what you say about yourself, but about highlighting the expertise and success of customers and team members through real stories.
These stories ideally start as pictures and videos and are accessible on social media and websites. This approach positions your company as trustworthy in Google’s eyes, since you’re generating “EEAT” content.
When these authentic stories of your experience are repurposed across multiple channels and promoted, as we teach in the Content Factory process, Google receives a legitimate signal of who you are.
Google records click behavior to determine whether users like your content—and even how long they watch your videos.
“CTR manipulation”is when someone uses bots from disguised IPs that repetitively perform searches and click on your links, to make it appear as though humans prefer your content in the search results)
So, while the SEO “experts” play those tricks thinking they are smarter than the AI, we, on the other hand, have real traffic from real humans who actually find our content useful and relevant to their searches.
I hope this simplifies SEO for you—since there are a lot of people confidently selling a lot of nonsense, making you believe that it’s some mystery that only an expert like them can help you with.
Source: LinkedIn Post (March 6, 2024)
