Although Google algorithm updates are common and can impact your site’s visibility, the March Core update was fairly different. In what was one of Google’s largest updates yet, the algorithm underwent massive changes and had an enormous impact on the rankings of millions of websites online.
Unlike other updates, the March Update targeted low-quality, repetitive, and unoriginal content that often cluttered search results. This clean-up operation had far-reaching implications for website owners and the quality of search results.
This article will explore the March 2024 Core update, its impact, and five ways to improve your SEO in the aftermath.
Table of Contents
A Primer on Google’s March 2024 Core Update
On March 5th, 2024, Google rolled out an update to its core ranking system, and they completed it 45 days later on April 26th. These updates are part of Google’s overall core updates aimed at removing and reducing unhelpful and unoriginal content from its search engine.
Unlike past core updates, this iteration was more complex and altered multiple core systems, leading to massive volatility in traffic to many websites.
This update had two key goals: to reduce low-quality, unoriginal results and to keep spam out of your search results. Google aims to use this update to identify unhelpful web pages, sites with poor user experience, and content created for search engines instead of people.
Google also aims to keep spam out of your results in three ways:
- It has strengthened its policy against scaled content abuse. It enables Google to take action on content produced at scale using automation to manipulate search results.
- It also prevents websites with strong domain authority and outstanding content from site reputation abuse. It prevents them from hosting low-quality content from spammy third parties and empowers site owners to have oversight over content posted on their platforms.
- It also prevents people from buying, repurposing, and abusing expired domains to boost search rankings with low-quality, spammy content.
How to Boost Your SEO Strategy Post Update
With the March 2024 update already complete, Google search results now display 45% less low-quality content. That likely already has a significant impact on your traffic and search engine rankings. The good news? You can capitalize on the gap created by mass content removal and boost your website SEO. Here’s how:
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Focus on Quality Over Quantity
Google wants you to produce more original, high-quality, and helpful content for its users. To make the opportunity more lucrative, Google has removed the spammy and unoriginal content. To boost SEO, focus on producing reliable, helpful, and user-oriented content.
There are multiple ways to do this. For instance, you can:
- Enlist the services of a growth marketing agency to produce high-quality content
- Do comprehensive research and produce unique and valuable content
- Provide original information or explore new insights and perspectives
- Use a goal-oriented approach to produce content that meets user intent
You can also mix these approaches. As a thought leader, providing a unique perspective, you can also take a goal-oriented approach or partner with an agency to be more strategic when producing content.
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Continuously Review and Improve Your Content
As time goes on, information and ideas change. Reviewing your website and keeping content up-to-date can positively impact your SEO. It helps you align your content with the latest SEO practices, keeping you compliant with Google’s policy.
You can conduct regular audits to update, remove, or change outdated information. You can also enhance content quality by adding media, optimizing for keywords, and improving internal linking. Additionally, you can monitor user comments and engagement, using customer feedback to improve your website.
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Produce More User-Oriented Content at Scale
With less noise on the search engine results page thanks to Google’s update, your content can now reach the people who need it the most. You can also scale your content production to cover more topics and ideas within your domain. This way, your high-quality, human-written content will improve user experience and bring much-needed visibility to your website, business, and brand.
For example, if you’re in the health and wellness niche, you could scale your content production by creating detailed guides on various aspects of fitness, nutrition, mental health, and lifestyle choices. By addressing diverse topics comprehensively, you enhance user experience and establish authority.
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Remove Low-Quality Content From Your Website
To benefit from this update, you’ll also have to audit your website for potential SEO issues. Remove dead backlinks, links to low-quality websites, and duplicate content. It’s also important to reduce instances of keyword stuffing, which hasn’t been a best practice for quite some time.
If you have any inaccurate or irrelevant content, remove that from your website as well. Taking these steps improves the health of your website. Over time, it will also improve user experience and website authority.
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Stay Updated on All Google Core Updates
Google often delivers core updates to its search engine several times a year. As you already know, these updates usually make sweeping changes to Search, which can affect your website performance on SERPs.
By staying updated on all upcoming updates, you can respond to ranking changes effectively, enhance user experience, capitalize on ranking opportunities, and increase your traffic and revenue.
One easy way to stay updated is to follow Google’s official channels on social media. You can also attend SEO events, engage with SEO communities, or use SEO tools like Ahrefs and Moz.
Closing Thoughts
Your ability to adapt to change is how you conquer the effects of the March 2024 core update. As Google continues to roll out changes to its search engine, your core focus should still be producing high-quality content that focuses on solving the user’s pain points.
With the five tips above, you can keep your website relevant and alive, free from the hard work of recovering from a major SEO hit for non-compliance. It also keeps you competitive in an ever-changing world that values insightful and helpful content.
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