Has Google’s Recent Algorithm Update Affected Your Business?

Backlinks have remained unaffected

As the saying goes “content is king”, and this couldn’t be truer considering that the recent algorithm update focused on the quality of content currently on our websites. Even industry experts were stumped to discover that the update did not relate to links, a fact that means traditional link building may well and truly be dead.

There’s still something you can do to gain effective results when increasing traffic for keywords however. Since the update, many have seen an organic increase in keyword based traffic due to improvements made to content quality. While the significance of content quality has increased, it still remains a difficult task for local businesses to rank highly for surrounding areas with companies experiencing mixed results in terms of keyword impact since the update.

Organic and local results are changing

Both organic and local results play vital roles in getting your business noticed by all the right people. The update brought a flurry of changes for both. Before the update sites that ranked highly organically also ranked well in local search. The gap between the two is widening since the update however to show not much of a connection at all. In fact, there are many cases where local rankings have dropped and organic reach increased.

In instances where the update has had the opposite effect, the businesses at the centre have seen a rise in local rankings and telephone enquiries from Google My Business. Some have even reported triple the amount of calls they were receiving at the start of 2018.

Video is becoming increasingly important

If you don’t do video marketing, now is certainly the time to reconsider. The recent update saw an increase in video carousels for local search terms. The highest ranking videos now take pride of place at the very top of the page, even for terms that didn’t sport video carousels before.

It’s bad news for some industries

Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) websites and specific YMYL pages have been the focus of Google’s attention for some time now, so it’s no surprise that the algorithm update has affected these websites. YMYL pages can be defined as pages that affect a user’s current or future well-being either physically, financially or safety-wise. Think pages that handle personal information, solicit monetary transactions, or provide medical or health guidance. These pages have seen huge drops in organic traffic with one drug rehabilitation website losing just over 65% of its traffic overnight!