How to Recover from Google Algorithms Updates
Few things in the digital world are as anticipated - and feared - as Google algorithms updates. Google updates can have significant implications for businesses and agencies that rely heavily on organic traffic, paid advertising, and SEO strategies. As such, the slightest change can disrupt the entire digital marketing landscape, causing companies to rethink their advertising approach.
As a real estate investor, it is important to be aware of Google’s ongoing updates and how they impact your website, advertising initiatives, and your presence on other platforms such as social media. Fortunately, you can discuss these changes with your marketing team, both onsight and outsourced, to determine how best to move forward with each update.
Common Google Algorithm Updates
Google claims to update its search algorithm several thousand times per year. While these updates seem grand in scale, only a handful of core updates should get your attention.
1. Passage Ranking
Google now uses artificial intelligence to index web pages and the content within each page (paragraphs, sentences). This means that specific passages can show up as the featured snippet. This update allows readers to quickly find answers to questions instead of combing through an entire web page to find it.
2. The ‘About This Result’ Box
Google provides additional context to individual search results - i.e., the ‘About This Result’ box - so that users can determine which results would be most helpful to them. You can now provide more information to help your business stand out and find more qualified leads.
3. 100% Mobile-First Indexing
If your website is not optimized for mobile responsiveness, now is the time to update your site. Google now places the most importance on mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in 2015. Google crawls—and therefore ranks—your website pages according to the mobile version of that content above the desktop version.
4. Company Reviews
The goal of Google’s 2021 reviews update was to encourage reviews that provide in-depth research, insightful analysis, and original content. Google recommends that you provide expert knowledge of the real estate industry, share unique content, and help motivated sellers make wise selling decisions.
5. User Experience (UE)
In addition to indexing the mobile version of websites, Google has also introduced a specific set of metrics through the page experience update called Core Web Vitals. These are not new metrics but rather newly prioritized factors to quantify a person’s experience once they land on your real estate investment website.
How to Handle Google’s Core Updates
A key thing to remember about core updates is that they usually take a couple of weeks to roll out and can lead to many wild but temporary changes in rankings. A lot of these early changes in rankings may not be permanent. If you’re lucky, you may find your traffic levels have actually reverted to their original levels or even improved within a couple of weeks. So do not panic when Google rolls out another wave of updates.
Review and Assess Your Content
Once the new algorithms are in place, it’s time to identify the content on your website that the updates have affected. If you use an SEO tool like Semrush, you may already have a position tracking set up that can help you spot rankings that have taken a hit (along with the associated content). Google’s Search Console and Google Analytics can also help you identify pages that have suffered significant traffic drops.
Update Your Website Pages and Posts
Has it been a while since you have added any new content to your REI website? A Google Core update can present the perfect opportunity. Now is the time to add new main pages, problem pages, location pages, or blogs. Make sure your content is fresh, unique, and relevant to your seller persona.
Cover All Topics in Depth
If you are writing short, generic pages to save time or money, you will likely not see the traffic on your website that you desire. Content that performs well in Google search results covers topics in-depth — ‘long form’ blog posts, which drill down into a topic in-depth, perform better than ‘thin’ content. Ideally, you want pages that are a minimum of 800 to 1,000 words. In addition, make sure the information is comprehensive, covering all the topic items the reader is looking for.
Make Your Content ‘Human’
There is no question that good SEO is the most important element on your web page. However, SEO is useless if nobody wants to read your content. Sure, add all the SEO elements to optimize the page. Just make sure that your content is engaging, relevant, and easy to read. Also, make sure that you answer the reader’s search query in the content. If you don’t, they’ll go elsewhere for the answers.
Contact Magnyfi for Your Digital Marketing Solutions
Magnyfi can help you get more qualified leads through Spark, our fully customizable lead generation tool. Learn more about how we can help you implement the Motivated Seller Prospects Marketing Program in your area.
To check the availability of your market, fill out our application form or contact us at 877-399-2259, and we will walk you through the process. We work with a limited number of real estate investors per market, so claim my market today.
