SEO Expert Insights: September 2023 News Round-up

In the latest installment of our SEO Expert Insights series, our co-founder James Owen takes a look at the latest Google news:

• Google’s August Core Update
• Google promoting Search Generative Experience (SGE) in traditional search engine results pages (SERPs)
• Google dropping all how-to rich results for desktop and mobile search
• Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update
• Google stating that linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. are not a top 3 rankings signal

Video Transcription

Google’s August 2023 Core Update

The latest core update started rolling out on August 22, 2023, and was completed on September 7, 2023.

Here are the main things we’ve learnt from the update so far:

• Targets all types of content
• Not a penalty, but instead promotes great web pages
• A global update affecting all regions and languages

Who Will The Update Benefit?

• The update will benefit websites that have improved SEO since the last core update.
• It will take advantage of content that Google favours over other types of content.

How To Run A Post Google Core Update Analysis

If you think the update has hit your website, you should run a full-site analysis:

• Analyse landing pages that have seen keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. ranking volatility to see how they compare to other pages on your site and your competitors.
• Look at your landing pages objectively to see if you are addressing the user’s needs.
• Check your backlink profile for links from low-quality websites.
• Look at your competitors’ pages and domain ranking (DR), referring domains, and inbound link types.
• Establish how your web page compares to other pages ranking on page 1.

How Do You Fix This?

To fix any keyword volatility that your web pages might be experiencing since the Google Core Update:

• You should first look at any pages that have not seen a drop and use this as a template.
• Look at keyword intent from a user’s perspective and ensure your content fulfils this.
• See what type of content Google shows in the SERPs and ensure yours matches this.
• Make sure your content is rich and provides in-depth answers to the user, including helpful graphs and infographics.

If your content does not currently fulfil these points, you must make changes.

Google’s Promotion of Search Generative Experience (SGE) In Traditional SERPs

Google has removed How-To rich results from the results pages and is now displaying its AI SGE results in the traditional SERPs as a banner.

This displays as an overlay within the traditional interface and gives the user the option to ‘Search with an AI-powered boost.’

Our SEO expert insight: It is expected that SGE will become a feature in more results for search queries.

Google Drops All How-To Rich Results

Now, this change affects desktop and mobile searches. It plays a big part in Google’s attempt to simplify search results for users.

The change will affect:

• Google Search Console Performance Reporting
• All organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page. through rich results

Our SEO expert insight: Why is this happening? James thinks the search engine giant has made this move to make way for more Search Generative Experience results.  

Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update

This update took place between September 14 and September 23, 2023.

The most important takeaways from this are:

• It looks at content created purely to rank well rather than help search engine users.
• Impacts Google Search and Google Discover.
• There’s been no mention of a Google Penalty, but it will feel like one to the sites that are hardest hit by the update.
• Promotes content that is helpful and will soon demote content that is not deemed so.
• A sitewide update
• It is not a core update.
• This affects all languages and is a global update.
• Online educational, entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content are expected to be impacted the most.
• To recover, you need to look at your content and see if you can improve it.
• It could take several months to recover.

As part of the update, Google has made the following changes to its helpful content advice:

• New guidance on hosting third-party content.
• What to do after a helpful content system update.
• New points about removing content or changing dates to the help page on how to create helpful, reliable, people-first content.
• It states it prefers “helpful content created for people in search results,” – suggesting that it now accepts AI-written content as long as it is helpful.

Links Are No Longer A Top Three Rankings Signal

In a Q&A session, Google Search team analyst Gary Illyes was asked about the importance of link buildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. in rankings, and he said: 

“I think they are important, but I think people overestimate the importance of links. I don’t agree it’s in the top three. It hasn’t been for some time.”

Our SEO expert insight: According to James, this isn’t new from the search engine, stressing that it has been downplaying the importance of link building for some time now.

James continued to explain that the SEO landscape has changed massively over the last 15 years and that you cannot expect your web pages to rank without building backlinks to your site.

If you build a site with high-quality content and don’t focus on link building, it will probably rank but only for low-competition keywords, which will not give you very much organic traffic or get you any closer to the hallowed page 1.

To see success in the SERPs, you need to be following SEO best practices:

• Conduct intent-based keyword researchKeyword research helps websites unearth the best keywords to drive traffic and visibility. This research is supported by a number of powerful web-based tools, the best of which we’ve listed here..
• Have helpful content on your website that will answer user’s search queries.
• Markup landing pages to help Google understand them.
• Ensure a landing page has good internal linking.
• Make sure the site’s performance is as good as it can be.
• Build high-quality and relevant backlinks to your landing pages.

Despite links no longer being considered as a top 3 rankings signal, the SEO best practices have not changed, and these include link building.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest news and updates, and visit our Knowledge Hub.