Google has just released one of its ‘core updates’ (May 2022). You probably had no idea but its kind of a big deal because it can affect your website ranking and you may see odd things going on in your analytics!

In this blog I’ll talk you through what it means for your website, how it may affect your analytics and what to do to boost your website traffic.

What are Google ‘core updates’ anyway?

Several times a year, Google make updates to their algorithm and they are called ‘core updates’. These core updates are designed to better serve web users with more relevant search results and provide a better web experience. Google recently released their May 2022 core update.

The last time there was a major core update was November 2021 and it caused a bit of instability to people’s website rankings. This had an impact on ecommerce sites especially (and in the run up to Christmas, drops in website traffic wasn’t ideal!)

How this update could affect your website

If you have a website that you haven’t updated in a while or it has been left ‘dormant’ for a few months. Now is the time to add new content.

I get it… Building your own website/or having it built is a big project ticked off your list giving you time to work on something else in your business that is now demanding your attention. If that is the case, I encourage you to go into your website and update it, add a blog, add some new content because websites that have remained dormant for any amount of time are likely to see a drop in rankings after this core update.

Google are currently reassessing other websites with yours and they will rank sites highly that have more relevant or up to date content.

Don’t let your rankings suffer

So to not lose out to your competitors, I would highly suggest adding regular, relevant content to you site – and an easy way to do that is of course blogging. OK, I see you rolling your eyes “But I don’t have time for that?!” But honestly, if you are not keeping your site up to date with relevant content your rankings could suffer.

We all want more organic listings and traffic to our websites, and creating blogs and fresh content on a regular basis is going to help with that. People are turning away from paid ads as they become more expensive and are putting more emphasis on growing their traffic organically.

Fresh content will go hand in hand with other areas of your website from an SEO perspective – Working hard on your title tags, keywords, meta and image descriptions will all pay big dividends after this update.

After this update, you may see blogs that haven’t faired well in the past may suddenly have a spike in rankings and you may experience high traffic to these particular blog posts.

If you have been blogging, what has been reported is people who have been updating their previously well ranked blogs ( or Cornerstone content as its also known as) in the last month, are reaching an all-time high with traffic on these posts, now that the core update has been fully rolled out!

What to do to increase traffic to your website

What this means is blogging is going to be really powerful for your website. So I highly recommend you start blogging if you are not blogging yet.

As an example, if you have 20 blogs on your website and 4 of them are performing better than the other 16, then update those 4. Really focus your energy on making sure they are well optimised, up to date and relevant to your business right now. They could have a huge impact on your website growth and when you are ranking, you are moving up the search engines listings, moving from page three to page two and suddenly you are in the top 20 search results for your keywords and this will have a huge, huge impact on your website traffic!

The power of blogging

Not convinced yet? Here is even more good reasons to start blogging:

1. It helps drive traffic to your website.

2. You can repurpose blog content for social media (people will share your blog too!)

3. It helps convert traffic into leads

4. It drives long-term results

5. Blogging helps with link building, which in turn builds domain authority

6. It helps you build trust and credibility

7. It helps you share company news

To find out more about each of these blogging benefits, read this great article by Hubspot called ‘Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing’.

Summing-up

Focus on your wins, take a look at Google Analytics (or Squarespace Analytics) and prioritise putting your energy into updating and optimising blogs that are popular. Also utilise these ‘Cornerstone content’ blogs with links to similar blogs, keep people interested and on your website!

Even if you post a blog once a month, in a years’ time you are going to have 12 new blogs on your website and you will be able to see the effect of this in your analytics, which ones are really working for you and how regular blogging and fresh content has affected your traffic and the overall growth of your website.

I challenge you to write a blog once a month for the next 12 months. I am going to! Will you join me? Comment below.

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