Welcome to the first SEO report from me for 2021, which, is actually reporting on December last year. This means I can say the same next month. 🙂
Lots going on this month, so, let’s get to it…
Algorithms
It’s here!!!
After talking about the Google search core algorithm update for, it seems, forever, Google has pressed the button and sent it out into the web (see our previous SEO reports to understand more about this Core Update).
3rd December they started to roll out the update and already it is looking like a big update. Early reports are showing positive or negative ranking movements of 50%.
The timing could have been better though, as it was released just before the holiday season so if a website is negatively affected it will not have time to fix.
11th December another large movement, maybe reversing some of the changes from the core update on the 3rd.
It is quite common to see large ranking changes just after a core update as the update generally takes about 2 weeks to completely rollout so can look like lots of updates are running.
Page Experience Update
You may remember last month – and indeed several months previous – I discussed this big update coming in the next few months which you should pay attention too.
This new ranking signal from Google will help websites that provide a better page experience – ie: speed the page loads. This ranking boast will only be for mobile search results only and not for desktop searches.
Ranking Update v Core Algorithm Updates
As we have just seen a major core algorithm update from Google, I thought It might be handy to explain a little but important difference between a Core Algorithm update and regular search ranking updates.
Search ranking algorithms are updated through-out the year many many times, they are generally (but not always) small changes and don’t affect whole websites but just the pages targeting the keywords.
Core Algorithm updates, however, are only run 3 times a year and are major updates, they affect the whole of the website and not just certain pages of one. This is why they are so important, they can make a huge impact to your website’s traffic.
If your website has been hit negatively after a core update, the chances are you will have to wait until the next one until you can recover. I guess it does give you time to identify the problems and fix them.
That’s it for this month, most of the news was taken up with the core update.
Thanks for reading!