GUESTS & RESOURCES
- Jordan Koene: Website // LinkedIn
- The Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // Twitter
- Benjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // Twitter
Episode Overview:
Join host Ben as he speaks with Searchmetrics’ SEO Strategist and Advisor Jordan Koene about the latest, and final, Google core algorithm update of 2020.
Google announced the final update of 2020 on Dec. 3, and indicates a continued trend of focusing on content quality throughout the year. The update caused fluctuation in stack results, where sites that appear twice with the same domain, or same ownership, in search results one after the other. Google aims to remove duplicate content, or similar content, from appearing in SERPs to diversify rankings, provide a better user experience and allow for more competition in ranking stacks.
The update caused volatility in health and wellness categories and directory-type websites. Many of the sites affected demonstrated habits of recycling content or redundant pages that reiterated content from other pages.
Companies can avoid penalties by evaluating their content and removing low quality and duplicate content. The next best thing companies can do is review how their content surfaces in SERPs and re-evalute titles and descriptions. Combining these methods are the best way to understand how your content appears and works in Google’s system.