As I write this article a fresh Google update is rolling out known as the December 2022 helpful content update.
On the face of it Google says it’s an extension of its earlier helpful update, and targets all languages plus it has added signals to fine tune it’s search results.
If you’re a publisher like me then I can understand the uneasiness you’re currently feeling, however I feel that there’re certain steps we can take to protect our sites traffic from this recent update and any upcoming updates.
How To Prepare For Google Updates Using These 9 Powerful Steps
① Stop Using AI For Content Writing
Google is smart and can detect AI content, and as time passes it’ll only keep on getting smarter hence shun the practice of using AI content. While this type of content is scalable due to its low cost, but using it will hurt your site in the short and the long run if it comes under Google radar.
② Avoid Spamming PAA Questions In The Post
Lately I have seen many PAA type of sites popping up, and honestly many of them are not helpful at all, and thus they won’t survive in the long run hence it’s my sincere request please stop creating such sites and only use reasonable amounts of FAQ per post.
③ Use Correct Schema
As noted in step number 2, many people are stuffing FAQ schema and news schema and other schemas for quick indexing and hoping to get more traffic from Google, but I would urge them not to continue such harmful practices.
Sooner or later Google is bound to notice this, and will penalize your sites hence follow their schema guidelines strictly.
④ Content Is King
If I could give one advise to all new publishers then I would definitely say that content is king and they should put their heart and soul into creating the best possible content for their readers.
Furthermore, human written content which is well researched will always find a way to reach the top as Google and humans will not accept AI content, hence remember to write handwritten content which your user’s want to actually read, and do ensure that the hand written content should answers the end users queries well.
⑤ Building Backlinks
Google has already hinted that backlinks will lose value therefore it makes no sense chasing them, rather focus on building brand building and people will naturally want to link to your site.
Also you can use HARO and possibly earn links without falling foul of Google practice’s on building backlinks
⑥ Improve Existing Content
If you’re in a niche which requires constant updates then you should focus on improving your existing content, and remember again to update the existing content for your end users and not the search engine
⑦ Keyword Stuffing
While this topic has been spoken a lot, many bloggers do not understand this and continue stuffing the keyword multiple times, if you too do that then note this is a bad practice and you can probably get good rankings if you focus on answering the end user’s query
⑧ Content Length
When I initially started someone told me write as big as you can to get more traffic, and that puzzled me e.g. for a 300 words answer why to write 3000 words?.
Now don’t get me wrong there’s no hard and fast rule on this, but many times we complicate things by focusing on the length.
In lieu of this my advice is to only keep in mind what the end user wants and if it requires less words, then it is totally fine to write less words and there’s no need to complicate things by making posts bigger just for search engine ranking.
⑨ Do Not Shift Niches
I see this practice often e.g., a site which is in sports niche suddenly starts talking about dogs, and when they get hit, they curse at Google and to avoid this kindly make sure you do not deviate from your niche, and rather focus on researching more about it and work on expanding it.
Google guidelines are issued by Google and you can view them here
Follow Google representative
I would advise you to follow Danny Sullivan on Mastadon and ask him your questions, yes he actually replies back at times.
Final Words
Lastly here’s a small case study of Digital Trends showing how they grew irrespective of the updates, which proves my point that we do not need to fear Google updates if we focus on the end user.