Google’s January 2020 update- was your business affected?
Introduction
Google rolls out a lot of algorithm updates every single year- that’s to say Google is constantly working on improving it’s algorithm.
However, as many business owners have heard of the “Google Panda updates”, and the “Google Penguin updates” many businesses have now grown fearful of these updates, thinking that when Google rolls out these algorithm updates, a lot of businesses will move down the ranks, or some businesses may well be totally removed?
However, here’s the thing, Google only rewards quality
And what do we mean by this?
Well, this is simple, if a marketing agency or your business implements high-quality SEO work, which is sometimes referred to as “white hat” SEO, then your business is less likely to be hit by a penalty.
It’s the businesses that have cut corners, or the mass of agencies that have offered low-quality services, and also made promises that cant be delivered that will often get hit by a penalty.
And what do we mean by that?
Well, there’s now so many marketing agencies out there, so some will tell a new customer what they want to hear, such as “we can get you on the first page of Google within weeks”- yet this is often not possible.
Or sometimes it might be that the other respected SEO companies have stated that it may take between 6 and 12 months for the business to get onto the first page of Google- yet, one business then promises to do the same, but in under 3 months, and some businesses will not have a clue about SEO, so they go with the agency that makes false promises?
And what do we mean by false promises?
Well, if white hat work is to be delivered, and this means quality work, well, this will often take many days of work every single month, so naturally some businesses will try and cut corners, and these are often the businesses that get penalised when an algorithm update gets rolled out.
But here’s the thing, we think, and so do so many other companies, that the January 2020 update that Google rolled out wasn’t a penalty, that’s to say it wasn’t like the Google Penguin update that penalised websites that had rubbish quality backlinks.
No, we think that the new algorithm updates are now focusing more on quality, i.e the work may not be deemed as though it needs a penalty, such as the Penguin updates, but it may still be low-quality that its not very useful, so therefore it needs to be lowered in terms of where the business ranks.
And what do we mean by this?
Well, let’s say your business sells waxes, and paint repair kits to owners of classic cars, so these owners of these cars will obviously want a high-quality product.
Now, one business may have hired a marketing agency that’s not that good at what they do, so they have written content marketing, its okay, it doesn’t offer much useful information, and then the marketing company has put “classic car wax” and also “paint repair kits for classic cars” in places like the meta titles, meta descriptions, all pretty standard SEO.
However, business number two has instead opted for a well-known, and much respected seo company, rather like us.
And they have pulled out all the stops, the business has generated content marketing that could be considered better than what all the other businesses have invested in.
There’s detailed blog posts which explain how to repair paint chips, cracking of the paint and even how to remove dents from door panels on the car.
The work receives many readers to the company’s blog, the work is mentioned on classic car websites, many links are earnt.
Now, which business do you think would be less likely to be impacted by the January 2020 update?
Well, that’s really obvious, obviously the business that has invested in top quality seo will be less likely to be impacted.
So, what’s our recommendation?
Well, only invest in quality seo.
January 13th
If you were wondering when the date was when a lot of businesses reported that their rankings had changed, well, it was on January 13th, that’s according to Moz’s MozCast.
So do these algorithm changes happen a lot?
Well, yes, they do, however some are more important than others, for example there have been hundreds if not thousands of algorithm changes, however some stick out as being much more important than others, such as the Google Panda update, and the Google Hummingbird update.
Why you should use Google Search Console, formerly called “Web Master Tools”
Is your business currently using WebMaster Tools? Or Search Console as it’s now known?
Nope?
Well, why on earth not, its free and it offers some great data that you should find very useful, for example, with Google Search Console you can set a date, say yesterday and see where your website ranked, this is called “average position”.
So for example, after a major update, such as the January 2020 update, you may wish to check if your website moved up or down?