Blog

We're in the middle of 2020 (yes … we can't believe it either), and there have been many unexpected changes this year. Recently, however, there was a VERY expected change: the update of the Google algorithm.

The core update of May 2020 followed the core update of January 2020. This time, Google appears to be investigating what high-quality content really is and how it can apply its algorithm to it. High quality content has been Google's mission for some time. However, some searches as Google users can show that they don't always hit the mark.

Challenge the algorithm to make mysterious changes that we'll find out in the coming months. 😅

Since we have no direct information from the Google SEO team, we will go through these core updates based on what we see in the SEO world.

Here are the 3 updates marketers need to know about SEO in the third quarter.

# 1: Your pages need to have a clear focus

If you want your pages to rank, you have to cut off the fluff. This Google Core update seems to focus on pages that are … hyper-focused. What worked really well for DigitalMarketer are articles that cover pillars like "Everything You Need to Know About Digital Advertising" and "Everything You Need to Know About Content Marketing".

These pages have a purpose for SEO bots: creating long-form content that applies to a keyword (e.g. digital marketing, content marketing). The longer the content is, the more time people spend reading, the longer our page duration and the lower the bounce rate. The Google bots are happy and we can breathe a sigh of relief.

More importantly, these pages also have a purpose for our readers. It is great to see the high page duration and the low bounce rate on these pages as this shows that our readers like what they read. We want to use these pillars to increase brand awareness, engagement and readership subscribers so website visitors go through the customer value journey.

We'll guess that's why these pillar posts are working so well for us right now. While Google's constantly changing answer to "what is great content?" We also focus on creating great content for our readers.

Win, win baby. 🎉

# 2: Quality begins to excel authority

Quality content is cool. It is even cooler when quality content surpasses similar content from an official website. This SEO update is exciting for marketers and companies looking to publish high quality content. You no longer have to be Forbes or HuffPost to get the first page ranking. All you have to do is write something really good (and get a decent amount of traffic for it).

This new update is definitely a good reason why the above pillar posts are doing so well in search results. Modest boast: they are quality content. Readers love it. Google loves that readers love them. Google arranges them.

We can surpass pages that we used to struggle with.

The May 2020 core update offers websites with a smaller audience the opportunity to rank in a way that was previously unavailable. While the site's authority definitely still exists, it seems like they are experimenting with offering smaller sites opportunities.

As long as small websites are ready to create better content than the existing ones, this update tries to improve the competitive environment in order to connect readers with the best content for their search.

# 3: High quality backlinks continue to rule

One strategy that seems to have survived SEO updates after updates is backlinking. In the core update of May 2020, we still see backlinks that hold their weight.

This is probably why your inbox is still pinging backlinks with new requests and this is definitely one of the main reasons why HEY's new email platform has found such a passionate audience. 😂

Backlinks create a strong link profile. This is an SEO conversation for any links on other websites that point to your website. A strong link profile contains links from websites with high authority. A weak link profile doesn't have many backlinks.

These backlinks are similar to the customer testimonials you read before you bought your fancy coffee maker a few weeks after you found that we weren't going to be back in the office that quickly. It was a 10/10 purchase (because of caffeine …) and a big part of the reason you bought it was because of the great reviews.

If Google finds that YOU have many "reviews" (also known as backlinks) from other websites to your websites, they will trust you. If other websites talk about you, and especially if websites with high authority call you out, Google can be sure that you are familiar with your things.

While backlinks are certainly not a new strategy in search engine optimization, it's interesting to see that they still hold their weight after all these years.

We wish we could say this is exactly what Google did in its core May 2020 updates, but we still haven't figured out how to spend a spy flight into their SEO office … yet (yet) we joke google, we swear !!).

We're just lucky to have Google tell us about these changes so we can prepare for whatever they offer us.

We are pleased that you are taking SEO measures with us.