Google Core Update occurs several times a year or around once every two to three months. The search engine implements these major changes to ensure its system continues to provide high-quality, accurate, and relevant search results to match users’ queries.
These core updates introduce significant changes to how the Google search algorithm works and how websites may rank on the results pages.
Most importantly, they can greatly affect how a business or PA SEO agency should optimize a website.
What Is a Google Core Algorithm Update?
A Google Core Algorithm Update, also known as a Broad Core Algorithm Update, are fundamental changes to the building blocks of the Google search engine. These are major updates designed to change the formula that Google uses to rank its web pages in its search results.
The Google Core Algorithm is divided into several other algorithms, each of which manages interprets, and outputs a variety of functions and signals. The following components all make up the Google Core Algorithm:
- Backlinks
- HTTPS
- PageRank
- Schema or Entities
- Web Vitals or Speed
- Relevance
- RankBrain
Unlike minor updates, which often go unnoticed, a Google Core Update is essentially designed to change and improve how the search engine ranking functions. As such, it can affect all or the majority of these components.
What a Google Core Update May Affect
A core update can potentially affect between 5% and 10% of all searchers — thereby requiring a large number of companies to review and reoptimize their websites.
Here are areas that Google Core Updates may focus on or affect:
- EAT or Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness: These are factors that Google uses to assess a page’s reliability, accuracy, and relevance to a search query.
- Infrastructure: A core update may modify how Google indexes web pages and data. One example of such a core update is the Caffeine web indexing system introduced in 2010.
- Information Processing: An update may also affect how it understands the language or processes information. Like the Hummingbird update in 2017, it can change the information that goes into the sub-algorithms, instead of the output.
- Broad Signals: Like the Medic update in 2018, a core update may change how Google calculates broad signals or the information shared across various search algorithms.
Tips to Prepare for a Google Core Update
Preparing for an update can be extremely challenging, especially without the help of an expert PA SEO agency.
Here are our best SEO tips that can help you prepare your website for the next update:
- Optimize headlines or header tags
- Optimize image size and placement for fast loading times
- Ensure website navigability and link hierarchy
- Link to trustworthy sources
- Use secure HTTPS protocol
- Make the website mobile-friendly
- Avoid bad or manipulative SEO practices, such as keyword stuffing and link spamming
Maintaining Your Search Rankings
The key to preparing for a core update is to fully understand the key ranking factors. It is also essential to stay updated on Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines and to use it as a guide in optimizing your website.
Google Core Updates will continue to happen every year. Avoid stressing out over your website’s SEO and rank results by leaving it in the hands of a professional PA SEO agency. Call Pendragon Consulting today.
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