Tech SEO will not solve most algorithmic issues
But most people will still try to use this as a fix for their traffic woes.
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There’s a mistaken belief that if your site has been hit by a recent algorithmic update, especially a helpful content update, you can recover traffic by doing technical SEO or creating more content.
This is wrong, but many will squander time and money chasing this as a fix.
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From my experience, content tweaking efforts are akin to dumping fuel on a fire. If the content has caused the issue, creating more content will certainly not return traffic. It could hurt.
Technical SEO likely won’t hurt, but it also doesn’t help. Of course, rearchitecting pages or improving linking are all good things, but they are unlikely to recover traffic if these were not the primary issues that caused the decrease in traffic.
Expectations from tech SEO
I am not suggesting that technical SEO not be a focus, as there are many instances where technical SEO gaps hold a site back from reaching its full potential. Issues like client-side rendering, poor internal linking, duplicate content, and similar issues will fall into this category. Fixing these issues should, in many cases, significantly boost Google's crawling and understanding of a site.
However, regarding an algorithmic demotion, the site's visibility included any of these technical SEO flaws, and still, the site was visible. Once that demotion happens (assuming nothing changed on the demoted pages), it can be assumed that it was something outside of technical flaws. Therefore, while the tech SEO flaws can and should be addressed, there should be no expectation that anything will improve with just tech SEO changes.
Many technical SEO changes that might be recommended could be worthless. For example, it’s a best practice to have a single h1 on the top of the page. Not having any H1s might hurt slightly, and adding one might not help you get more traffic.
What to do
The first step in recovering traffic is to acknowledge that the traffic is likely gone forever. Suppose a particular page was visible for a specific keyword in your vertical, and a recent update pushed your site down from that keyword. In that case, no new content or internal linking improvement will bring that position back.
That drop means that Google has assessed your site compared to others and determined it is not the best fit. Improving the content or linking to it better will not change that particular assessment. (Links are a different solution, which I will discuss later.) Acknowledging that this keyword ranking will not bounce back is essential for growing a site’s traffic. The traffic growth on the site can go elsewhere, but not here.
Solving the traffic
If a helpful content update has hit a site, the algorithm has deemed too much of its content unhelpful. Solving this means improving the ratio of unhelpful content to “helpful” content. The best solution I have seen is to delete duplicative or thin content, not just bulk it up to suddenly make unhelpful content helpful.
Years ago, when the Google Panda update hit my company, we recovered our traffic by deleting 80% of our content. It took months, but eventually, we hit 125% of our Pre-panda update traffic levels. The same brutal approach is required for any content update today. (I believe Helpful Content to be a 2023/2024 version of Panda). Trying to save content dead weight will only delay the inevitable and keep the site from growing.
SEO strategy
The natural way to grow traffic is to implement an SEO strategy aligned with the user base from the start. Having a definitive outline of who the users are and what they require is the best way to stay on track and avoid creating the types of thin content that cause issues.
Content written for users and not duplicated in many different ways is, by its nature, “Helpful.”
Google’s recommendations
Google’s guide to the type of content worth creating refers to the best content as people first. The questions they ask are designed to define whether a site is truly people first:
Does your content demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise gained from using a product or service or visiting a place)?
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience?
Surprisingly, most websites I meet likely do not have answers to most of these questions, which, in my opinion, indicates how low-quality content there is. Many still think they benefit the Internet just by putting words on pages.
Links
If you have been reading my newsletter for a while or have read my book, you know that I am not a big believer in backlinks being a silver bullet for SEO. However, they are very important in an SEO strategy, as search engines use links to understand relevance and authority.
Having excellent links does not guarantee that a website will be visible; just like not having links does not mean that a website can’t be visible, a website with untapped link opportunities has a lever worth using.
This is worth trying if your site is underlinked and you have visibility issues. It could very well be the difference between suboptimal visibility and the visibility you desire.
Don’t delay
The last thing I want to emphasize is that helpful content updates are iterative algorithm updates, and if you have seen traffic decline in one update, you will likely see declines in subsequent updates. Don’t delay; address these issues with content fixes since once an algorithm update affects you, you will see sitewide traffic issues.
As I said earlier, refusing to amputate content you know is bad does you no favors. A brutal decrease requires an aggressive approach. Putting off action will only delay the inevitable.
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