Google has released a broad core algorithm update recently just like it does every year. This update has been named as the January 2020 Core Update. Moreover Google has provided it’s guidelines like every time. For most local SEO NYC marketers this announcement does not surprise them much as the Google core updates happen several times every year. The most surprising part is Google claims to have carried out about 3234 updates in the year 2018. This accounts for about 9 updates each day, which depicts how much strenuously Google is trying to offer its customer with the best results.
Since this is a core update, this January 2020 core update is all set to impact the search results globally. This update is not something that the webmasters could easily make the changes and move on. Instead it calls for a combined and systematic approach to arrive at a solution.
Google’s Guidelines
Truly Google has not given any specific advice on dealing with this January 2020 core update. The only advice was to look back into the August 2019 blog on what should you know about the core updates. In this blog they’ve mentioned that there is nothing wrong with a page that performs less during a core update. Those websites which has not violated the webmaster guidelines, has not been subjected to any manual or algorithmic changes. The core updates is all about improving the systems and examine the overall content. In fact these minor changes might even cause the pages that were not working appropriately to perform better after the changes. The only piece of advice from Google is to stay focused on high quality content.
How to tell if your website was affected by the January 2020 update?
If you have identified that your website has experienced a sudden drop in the rankings after Google’s core update, the local SEO NYC experts, insist on asking yourself the following questions –
- Have you made any major changes to the website?
- Is all your pages displaying correctly?
- Is there any page on your website that has lost traffic significantly, or if it is as site-wide drop in rankings?
The SEO consultant NYC says that these questions are just a starting point to diagnosing the losses in the website traffic. You must examine the following areas also to check if your website has undergone an organic loss.
- Check the landing pages
- Check for the loss in traffic to the website
- Examine the loss in traffic by device
- Analyze the new vs. returning visitors to the website
- Examine Google search console data
It is not necessary that your site experienced the organic traffic loss due to the Google algorithmic update. It could be also due to the changes that you made to the website, the broken landing pages, the ad placements etc. So analyze your website properly.
What should you do?
Since the update has been released very recently, it is better to wait and watch for some time and see the impact. One best piece of advice would be not to make any drastic changes to the website anytime now. This way, if you experience any loss in the organic traffic, you will be able to detect the cause of the update. On the other hand, if you head on to make any drastic changes like – changing the website’s theme, layout, etc., you will not be able to know the actual cause of change in traffic. But, Google has recommended improving on the quality of Contents for your website for this core update. All you can do for now is to work with an internet marketing agency New York to build quality contents for your website!
