Google's latest algorithm updates are more than just tweaks; they're transforming the very fabric of search engine optimization (SEO).
As these changes ripple across the web, they alter the strategies that digital marketers and SEO experts like Nathan Gotch have long relied on to secure top spots in search results.
The shift isn't just technical—it’s about adapting to a new way of thinking about what makes content truly stand out.
To demystify these changes and offer practical advice, we've turned to a range of seasoned SEO professionals.
Each brings a unique perspective on how to excel in this refreshed SEO landscape.
Their collective wisdom forms a guide for anyone looking to update their SEO tactics to align with the latest standards.
Jason Hennessey
Founder of Hennessey Digital
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhennessey/
To adjust your SEO strategy after a recent Google update, focus on understanding the specific changes made by Google.
Audit your website to identify top-notch areas, especially regarding content quality and user experience. Prioritize high-quality, informative content and ensure the website is mobile-friendly, fast, and easy to navigate.
Update on-page SEO elements like title tags and meta descriptions, and continue building reputable backlinks. Stay informed about ongoing SEO trends and regularly monitor your site's performance for any necessary adjustments.
Praveen Kumar
Chief Decision Maker at Wild Creek Web Studio
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spk100
What has become very evident is the importance of overall brand visibility and presence.
In addition to ensuring the content is top-notch, one needs to focus on having a brand presence on channels that matter, channels where potential customers and target audiences are.
Instead of looking at SEO as a silo channel, it is now more integrated with various other marketing channels. An integrated approach ensures the content is well distributed across relevant platforms and engages with the audience, thereby significantly amplifying the brand’s reach and impact.
This ensures that every interaction with the brand enhances overall marketing effectiveness.
As a result, businesses can better leverage their SEO efforts to drive not just traffic but meaningful engagement and conversions.
Andrew Peluso
Position and company: Founder of Bananas Marketing
LinkedIn/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewpeluso/
100-150 words for the tip here:
We've tackled SEO after the most recent Google algorithm updates by adding expert quotes, real stories, and vibrant visuals. In an era of AI content, Google and its users want authenticity.
Small businesses can’t rely on big-brand clout; instead, they must work to build genuine trust and credibility. One thing that hasn't changed is backlinks—they're still incredibly important despite what Google would like you to think.
Dhruv Shah
SEO Manager at Forge Digital Marketing
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhruv-shah-68b837152/
After the recent Google update, please remember to follow these tips.
Firstly, you must prioritize enhancing the user experience by focusing on high-quality, relevant content that addresses search intent comprehensively. It means creating in-depth articles, guides, and multimedia content that provide genuine value to your audience.
Then, optimize the technical aspects of your website, including page speed, mobile-friendliness, and schema markup, to enhance overall usability and accessibility.
Furthermore, diversify your backlink profile with authoritative and relevant links from reputable sources within your industry.
It will improve your website's credibility and boost its relevance in the eyes of search engines. Finally, monitor your website's performance regularly, using analytics tools to track keyword rankings, traffic fluctuations, and user engagement metrics.
By staying informed about the latest SEO trends and continuously refining your strategy, you can ensure your website remains competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Samantha North
Position and company: Founder of SamanthaNorth.com
LinkedIn/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/northsamantha/
My top tip for doing SEO in the aftermath of the recent update is to focus more on building an "online brand universe" for your brand – one that goes beyond just organic traffic.
I’d recommend creating a supporting content strategy on a social media platform, such as LinkedIn (or wherever your ideal client is), where you post regularly about similar topics to those covered on your blog.
For example, you could take one idea (e.g., a customer pain point), write a blog post, and then re-purpose it into a LinkedIn post.
As your LinkedIn presence grows, people will make more branded searches for your name or company name. This is an excellent signal to Google that you have an active brand presence beyond just keywords.
What's more, building a strong and relevant presence on one of these social media ‘outposts’ helps to reinforce your expertise across the web, which in turn feeds into your E-EAT and supports your SEO.
Volodymyr Kuriatnyk
Position and company: Founder at The Digital Bloom
LinkedIn/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirkuryatnik/
To survive the latest Google update, prioritize creating beneficial content that meets user needs. Leverage Google Search Console data to identify opportunities and tailor your content strategy:
- Analyze Search Queries: Look for common questions, informational queries, and topics to cover comprehensively.
- Identify Content Gaps: Find queries with high impressions but low clicks, indicating content gaps to fill.
- Address Common Questions: Treat frequent questions in the Search Console as content prompts to answer directly.
- Focus on User Intent: Create content that fully satisfies the underlying intent behind searches.
- Prioritize Quality: Ensure content is well-researched, accurate, and authored by experts to build expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Mike Ciffone
Founder of Ciffone Digital
LinkedIn/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-ciffone/
Take a close look at your content and ask yourself whom it benefits most: is it you or the user?
From what I’ve seen, many sites that were negatively affected by the most recent Google updates—particularly the March update—prioritized monetization over user experience.
These sites were running heavy affiliate or display ads, offering content that was just on par with their competitors, and failing to add any unique value or say anything different.
User experience also falls short, particularly in terms of navigation and information architecture.
No matter where a user is on your website, every element should be relevant. It should always be clear who you are and what benefits they can gain from your site.
Moreover, my advice is two-fold:
- Focus on providing genuine value to users.
- Have something fresh, unique, and different to say.
Victoria Kurichenko
Position and company: SEO Content Writer and Founder at SelfMadeMillennials.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-kurichenko/
A drop in organic impressions and traffic after Google’s updates doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong with your site, but it is a signal to investigate.
Is the impact scattered across your site, or is it hitting specific pages?
If just a few pages are affected, update the content to ensure it aligns with Google’s focus on Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). This approach worked for me after low-quality Google’s Helpful Content update.
For a website-wide traffic drop, we took a different approach with a client. We examined their backlink profile, disavowed low-quality backlinks, and improved pages with AI-generated content. These steps, along with strategic link building, helped us get their site back on course.
Ian Ason
Solo Founder at Topyc - Website Content At Scale
LinkedIn/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmasonbuildpath/
Google’s recent updates have shown us that you’ll have a much easier time ranking if there’s a real personality behind the site, with real social following and brand searches.
A no-brainer way to eliminate potentially low-quality sites from search results would be to only rank those who get at least a certain blends and searches/month.
Ian H. from Niche Site Growth and Mack from Byword both analyzed over 10,000 sites and saw that the ones that got hurt the most either wrote about things “outside their lane” to abuse domain reputation for rankings or didn't have a strong social media presence.
Sites run by people with big social media followings seem to be experiencing growth after the March updates.
Connor Butterworth
Position and company: Chief Rug Slinger at Southwestern Rugs Depot
LinkedIn/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connorbutterworth
This high-quality update prioritized authority websites in the SERPs. You want to make sure that your website blends in as much as possible with the site metrics that the authoritative sites in your niche have.
That includes active social media profiles, driving traffic from those platforms, traffic from email marketing, and blog content that is actually read.
For e-commerce SEO, you want to make sure you are collecting as much user-generated content and product reviews as possible.
The way you win as a smaller brand is by going deep and building trust. An easy way to build trust is by building out the product pages on your site.
Hire a photographer to take custom, high-quality photos. Record a video talking about the specific product.
If you show you are an expert on a particular product then users are more likely to buy from you - even if you are competing against authority sites in your market.
And the more users are seeking out your website in the search results, the more positive you are sending to Google to rank your site higher across the board.
Aryan Jalan
Position and company: SaaS SEO Consultant at https://aryanjalan.com/
LinkedIn/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aryanjalan/
With the latest Google updates and advancements in AI, it’s crucial to ensure our content is optimized for the Search Generative Experience (SGE) to maintain strong rankings. Here’s how I'm staying ahead:
Targeting Conversational and Long-Tail Keywords: By focusing on specific, conversational queries and long-tail keywords, we not only enhance user engagement by meeting their needs but also increase our chances of appearing in relevant SGE-generated results.
Enhancing with Visuals: Incorporating high-quality images and detailed infographics enhances our text content. Visuals not only make the content more engaging, but they also aid in clarifying complex ideas, making them easier to understand.
High-Quality Link Building: Contextual links remain a crucial ranking factor for competitive keywords. In 2024, effective strategies include guest posts, niche edits, PR, SaaS link building, brand mentions, and indirect link exchanges.
Enhancing User Experience: Ensuring that our website is easy to navigate and mobile-friendly, with a clear structure that both users and search engines can follow effortlessly, is essential for both user satisfaction and SEO.
Luca Tagliaferro
Owner @ https://www.lucatagliaferro.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luca-tagliaferro-509b709/
Let’s start with what you should not do, and then we move on to what I think is the root cause for traffic drops. Given the negative impact I have seen on affiliate marketing sites, I don’t think you should look at how to improve your SEO.
Standard traffic, content, or backlink analyses don’t help in this case. I am afraid most of the affiliate model is good and gone. Google never liked it.
The reason for this is that when you start your site with the sole purpose of earning affiliate revenue or revenue from ads, monetizing your entire SEO with that goal in mind.
You’ll always be biased, no matter what you do. Your reviews will not be helpful to users but to you. You write them to get affiliate traffic and profits.
So even if you follow EEAT guidelines, build amazing backlinks, write 4,000-word articles, nail internal linking, and fix your tech SEO issues (all things that would help a site rank higher), you won’t see any improvement because the affiliate business model is broken to begin with.
Think about the sole purpose of your site—how to genuinely help people achieve their goals, not your own. Then, you can start ranking, generating traffic, and finally monetizing.
Yash Chawlani
Position and company: Founder & CEO at Merlin Marketing
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yashchawlani/
Google's recent updates have changed the rules for SEO again.
Keeping up with these changes can sometimes feel like you're chasing a moving target. But here are some practical steps you can take today to stay ahead in the SEO game:
- Focus on User Experience (UX): Ensuring that your website is fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate is more crucial than ever. We've seen firsthand how improving page load times significantly boosts our search rankings.
- Optimize for Intent, Not Just Keywords: Gone are the days of keyword stuffing. Now, it's all about understanding the intent behind searches. We've shifted our strategy to focus on creating content that addresses the specific needs and questions of our audience, leading to better engagement and more qualified traffic.
- Quality Over Quantity: We’ve found that investing in comprehensive, authoritative content pays off more than churning out lots of lower-quality posts. High-quality articles that deeply explore topics have not only improved search rankings but have also established us as thought leaders in our field.
Remember, SEO is not just about adapting to algorithms; it's about connecting with your audience in the most effective way possible.
Adam Connell
Position and company: Founder & CEO at https://bloggingwizard.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamconnell/
The March Core update was devastating for smaller publishers in particular. But it wasn’t just the Core update and HCU being folded into Core that was the problem.
A massive link spam update and wave of manual actions rolled out at the same time. Brands with a budget for link building were naturally more resilient.
Moving forward, we’re all going to need a lot more links. For the Core update specifically, we’re all going to need to “stay in our lane” and focus on specific topics if we want to rank.
It appears Google is deciding what topics we can cover, and if we go outside of that topic area, they’ll bring down the hammer.
As usual, the same rules don’t apply to sites like Forbes and Business Insider. They can continue to discuss George Foreman grills and Gluten withdrawal symptoms all they like.
Brooks Manley
Position and company: Owner of Brooks Manley Marketing
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooksmanley/
I think the most important aspects to focus on in post-HCU and following the recent March Core Update are legitimate business signals. Whether you’re an actual business or running a content site, you’ve got to make it abundantly obvious to Google that you’re legitimate.
A few things I’m focusing on with my clients are PR, acquiring traffic from outside of Google, and focusing on the highest-quality placements for backlinks. When it comes to content – it’s got to be valuable and unique. If you’re going to get help from AI with blog posts, make sure you add expert analysis.
Amit Kakkar
Position and company: Founder at Growthner.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/digital-marketing-expert-amit-kakkar/
Google is experimenting with generative AI in SERPs. We’ve seen Google already display AI-powered overviews in SERPs. We’ve also witnessed SGE, Bard, and New Bing.
How can you adjust your SEO strategy to increase the likelihood of your website's link, image, or product recommendation appearing on AI SERPs?
- Prioritize SEO strategies that align with evolving user search behaviors and AI-powered SERP features.
- Focus on long-tail queries associated with your brand to capitalize on conversational search trends.
- Leverage AI-powered tools for SERP analysis, enabling automated data extraction and competitor benchmarking for informed decision-making.
- Strengthen your linking strategy through ethical practices to build authority and trust.
- Optimize for local SEO to cater to user experience and local searches.
- Embrace dynamic content generation and personalization at scale to cater to user intent and preferences.
- Stay adaptable and proactive in integrating AI-driven techniques into your SEO practices to maintain competitiveness in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Conclusion
Wrapping up, it's crucial to recognize that relying solely on Google for website traffic is no longer sufficient.
Today's digital marketers need to broaden their horizons beyond traditional SEO. Embracing platforms like TikTok and YouTube and engaging in podcasting can diversify your traffic sources and strengthen your online presence.
Additionally, cultivating an active online community and developing your website into a recognizable brand are essential strategies.
These efforts will ensure you're not just another site in the search results but a brand.
Author Bio
Georgi Todorov is a self-taught entrepreneur and content creator with authorship in a broad range of publications. Featured in Entrepreneur and Forbes. He founded 'Create & Grow' to help people create and grow their online business.
