If you’re a digital marketer trying to improve your brand’s SEO and are planning for 2022, understanding algorithm updates is an integral part of the process. Major   Google updates make the news in the digital marketing world, often met with panic. What did the update focus on? Did I lose rankings? Why? The truth is, Google performs updates all the time: 4,500 in 2020 alone. Those without a strong SEO foundation may experience site performance issues if unprepared for algorithm updates. Moreover, preparing for algorithm updates should be part of your SEO strategy for 2022 and beyond.  Let’s dive into why Google performs these updates, and what you can do to be ready and maintain strong SEO performance.

Why is Google performing so many updates?

Google has a simple and transparent goal when it comes to search results: “[The] goal is always to provide you the most useful and relevant information.” That means Google wants searchers to find what they’re looking for, and all of Google’s continuous updates revolve around that mission. You might think most Google searches already meet this goal, but Google is constantly testing ways to make it even better. Just as your brand likely performs website tests about which images get more engagement and which CTAs get more clicks, Google constantly optimizes. Unlocking the mystery of what Google is looking for can inform your website strategy to meet those expectations and demonstrate how “useful and relevant” your website’s information is to potential visitors.

You may have heard of major Google updates in the past like Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird. These updates had far-reaching consequences for websites with spammy links, poor quality content, page speed issues or those without a good mobile version of their site. Most big brands weren’t significantly affected, and the brands that have had a clear path to fixing issues. Many smaller brands experienced SEO performance declines.

Today, the concern is keeping up with the evolution of Google’s understanding of your website. Google continuously gets smarter about how useful and relevant content is to a searcher and they’re incorporating that understanding into search results. How? It actually starts with humans. Google Search might seem like an autonomous machine, but Google works with human Search Quality Raters who assess the quality of search results including:

Many marketers are tasked with explaining internally how their brand is aligned with Google’s goals and how their content and tech teams can help prepare for known updates. iCrossing recently helped a major hospitality group whose executives heard about the page speed update known widely as Core Web Vitals and were concerned about their site’s page speed performance. We helped prepare their site for this technical update but also developed an internal framework for the executive team outlining what the update entailed, what it meant for them, and what technical changes were necessary.

•    Does the website give people what they are looking for?
•    Is the content high quality and useful?
•    Is the website a trustworthy source of the information?

Google doesn’t use those results directly in its algorithm, but it helps establish guidelines for how search results should perform. Armed with that information, Google can look for engagement factors in search results including:

•    What do people click on?
•    How many different searches were performed before clicking a result?
•    How long did it take for a searcher to click on a result?
•    Did the searcher leave without clicking on anything?

Google performs these tests on a small percentage of search results until they have enough data to decide to turn that test into an update. 

Now that you know what Google is looking for, what can you do about it?

When it comes to content-related algorithm updates, Google doesn’t usually announce them ahead of time. Thus, you’ll need to futureproof your site by aligning with Google’s quality goals on an ongoing basis. If your brand has been doing SEO for a while, you probably have the basics down: you’re following Google’s website guidelines, your pages have content and they’ve been optimized with keywords in mind. If you are in the process of building out an SEO strategy, you can work on algorithm readiness in parallel.

With those SEO basics done, the next step is to look at the questions the quality raters are looking for: is your content useful? Does it deliver what a searcher wants? Are you an authoritative source for this content? You can answer those questions with your own analytics and optimize accordingly.

If your content is useful, that means you’re converting visitors. That doesn’t always mean they’re buying something or filling out a lead gen form. It could be watching a video, clicking through to deeper content pages, or even creating an account. If your conversion rate on pages is low, you should be testing things to improve the rate.

Being an authoritative source on a topic is generally easier for big brands who are already known for their expertise, but the weight of your brand alone isn’t enough. Proving you know what you are talking about can easily be backed up with sources on your website. If your site has medical content, has it been reviewed by a medical professional? Does that medical professional have a bio that users can check to verify their expertise? Perhaps your site has content with wealth management tips. Who in your organization can vet that information, and have you included those credentials within the content? Google is looking for signs of authority so it can trust your website to appear in its search results.

What’s the bottom line to prepare for 2022 updates?

The bottom line for futureproofing to maintain organic performance despite algorithm updates is to make sure your site content aligns with Google’s mission by doing the following:

1. Ensure your content is useful and relevant to what a visitor is looking for
2. Test your own web pages to see how they can perform better, just like Google does
3. Watch for technical updates from Google as these are more likely to be communicated as an upcoming algorithm change, giving you time to make necessary changes 
4. Communicate and evangelize SEO goals within your company and how those goals need to align with Google’s mission

If you need help assessing your site’s readiness for algorithm updates or want to augment your in-house SEO team’s ability to address the four steps above, iCrossing can help. Contact us to work with our SEO team for a consultation and to define a roadmap for SEO success.