When recovering from a broad core algorithm update, Google’s John Mueller recommends focusing on improving your website’s content rather than implementing technical fixes.
A drop in ranking after a core update indicates that your site is losing relevance for the queries it is targeting (in Google’s opinion).
It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to increase the relevance of your website by focusing on technical fixes while ignoring on-page content.
Google’s John Mueller stated this during the Search Central SEO office-hours hangout on October 8, 2021.
Granit Doshlaku, the owner of the site, joins the session to inquire about recovering from a core update.
He claims to have resolved all technical and user experience issues, but his rankings have yet to return to the level he desires.
That’s when Mueller suggests focusing on content rather than style.
Recovering from Core Updates, According to Google’s John Mueller
Establishing Expectations
First, Mueller strives to keep recovery expectations realistic.
After improving relevance, a site impacted by a core update will not automatically regain its previous rankings.
Why?
Because Google now considers it to be a different website.
Google will not restore it to its previous position because the site is no longer comparable to its previous self.
Mueller elaborates:
“It’s not so much that we would consider it a situation where you have to fix something. But rather, when it comes to relevance, if you work on improving the relevance of your website, then you have a different website, you have a better website.
So it’s not that we would switch back and say oh, it’s like the issue is fixed, and we will change it back to the previous state.
But rather, you’re saying well this is a better website now, and we look at it and say oh it’s a better website. It’s not the same or comparable to before, so it would be kind of tricky to expect that it changes to the state it was before. But it’s a new website, it’s a better website.
I think, especially with core updates, when you’re talking about recovery, it’s not so much you’re recovering but rather Google is seeing that you have a better website and reacting to that.”
With that out of the way, Mueller dives into what it takes to improve website relevance.
Read 6 Factors That Will Affect Your SEO in 2021.
The Relationship Between Website Relevance and Content
Improving relevance, according to Mueller, is a holistic effort that cannot be accomplished by focusing on individual issues.
The best way to get Google to see your website as more relevant is to make significant changes to the content.
“With the core updates we don’t focus so much on just individual issues, but rather the relevance of the website overall.
And that can include things like the usability, and the ads on a page, but it’s essentially the website overall.
And usually that also means some kind of the focus of the content, the way you’re presenting things, the way you’re making it clear to users what’s behind the content. Like what the sources are, all of these things. All of that kind of plays in.”
Mueller adds that changing everything around the content and improving the user experience may help to some extent.
However, he emphasizes the importance of improving your content in order for Google to see your site as better than it was previously.
“So just going in and changing everything around the content— I think you can probably get some improvements there.
But essentially if you really want Google to see your website as something significantly better, you probably also need to work on the content side.
… think about where might there be low quality content, where might users be confused when they go to my website— and is that confusion something we can address with technical issues? with UX changes? Or do we actually have to change some of the content that we present?”
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