Algorithm Rolled Out: May 2015
Google’s Quality Update has been in practice since 2015. The term best defines exactly what it does. The search engine giant is very much careful about its user experience. The quality update aims to effectively demote low-quality content that diverts users and makes them feel unsatisfied.
Overview: Google’s Quality Update
This update has no official name. But it has become a matter of fear for web admins, digital marketers, and SEO professionals, especially those trying to continue with low-quality content. It’s quite a common scenario that after every update, some websites enjoy a win-win situation, and some lose their rankings.
History of Quality Update
Search engine marketers have started calling it the ‘Quality Update’ because of its working manner. It simply focuses on the quality of the content available on a website. It directly impacts the part of the algorithm that measures the quality of a site’s content and ranks it accordingly. We can see that Google releases this type of update often. And it started with Panda in 2011.
- Winners & losers
After the release of this update, a lot of websites that were running with similar content have faced a drastic organic traffic decrease.
Sites with thing content & clickbait articles
If the site has thin content, automatically, the provided information will be short, and that may not satisfy the requirements of the visitor. The quality update has affected this type of site and pages. Apart from this, clickbait articles are quite similar. Their attractive titles increase clicks, but visitors remain non-satisfied. Visitors have nothing big to do with the headline. These sites and pages are frustrating for readers, and automatically they hit the back button within a glimpse.
Pages with lots of advertising
Visiting a page with lots of ads feels like someone is constantly there to stop us from getting the required information quickly. Visitors feel irritated to stay on these pages. Google is concerned about its users’ experience. And that’s why its quality update has also included this fact in consideration. Pages with too many ads were highly affected via Quality Update.
Content farm articles & ‘How-To’ pages
Many content farm articles only provide what the search engine needs instead of focusing on what the page visitor wants to get. They focus on maximizing page views and earning more revenue via on-page advertising. Apart from this, on these sites, we do not get quality content. Articles, blogs, etc., are just poorly-written and rehashed.
Sites and pages with quality content were not affected by this Google algorithm update. If a site can make its visitors stay for a longer span of time, it won’t be affected by the Quality Update algorithm.
How to recover from an algorithm hit?
Leading sites like Search Engine Land, Moz, Content Marketing Institute, etc., suggest some basic steps to follow if your sites and pages are impacted by Quality Update or any similar algorithm released by Google.
Do not wait for long to let the rank increase automatically.
Measure the reasons and start working on sitewide improvements.
Conduct an immediate audit of your entire website.
Try to think from a user’s perspective.
Analyze the elements on your site that can annoy your users
Pay special attention to thin content, content-integrated advertising, deceptive links, and unhelpful content
Create original content for every page and optimize them accordingly.
Realtime Implementation:
These are some basic techniques to follow if your sites and pages impacted due to the Google algorithm release. It’s true that just with basic processes, recovering everything or getting the dream rank is not possible. For better ranking, more visitors, and increased revenue, you must seek help from professional SEO experts.