How Google’s March 2024 Update Transforms SEO?

This analysis details the Update’s potential impact on SEO and the critical points to which SEO experts should pay attention.

As an ever-evolving powerhouse in search engine optimization (SEO), Google successfully transformed SEO strategies with its core update in March 2024. This Update further deepens Google’s focus on “useful content” while presenting new challenges and opportunities for content creators and SEO experts. So, how is this Update transforming SEO, and how should web admins adapt to these changes?

Google announced this week that it has launched the March 2024 core algorithm update.

This Update is expected to be more comprehensive than a regular update and will last around a month. Simultaneously, the SPAM update was also released. If you haven’t been involved in harmful activities, Google has told you not to do so; it would be best to wait calmly.

Let’s analyze this Update in detail together.

The essence of the Update:

With this Update, Google aims to reduce “unhelpful” content in search results by 40%. To achieve this, the algorithm will penalize sites with low-quality, inauthentic, and spam content and reward sites with valuable, high-quality, and original content.

• You must wait at least two weeks to fully understand the effects of the Update. Therefore, take a deep breath, wait calmly, and do not immediately press the panic button.
• If you think your site is affected, analyze data such as crawl activity, visibility scores, traffic, and search volume.
• Focus on creating high-quality and original content to protect against future updates.

Update Details:

The Update includes significant changes in the following areas:

1. Changes in Link Signal:

• SPAM links: Google will detect SPAM links better and reduce their impact on rankings.
• Natural links: Google will pay more attention to natural and organic links.
• Diversity of links: Google will pay more attention to links from different sources.

2. Changes in Content Quality:

• Non-useful content: Google will better detect “unhelpful” content and push it back in the rankings.
• High-quality content: Google will highlight original, informative, and helpful content to the user.
• EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Competence, and Reliability): Google will pay more attention to EEAT factors and highlight content from expert, competent, and reliable sources.

3. Changes to SPAM Policies:

• Scaled content exploitation: Google will prevent sites from generating content using automated or semi-automatic methods to manipulate search results.
• Site reputation abuse: Google will prevent sites from gaining a reputation through fraudulent or misleading means.
• Expired domains: Google will block attempts to manipulate search results using expired domains.

Sectors and Sites Expected to be affected by the Update:

• E-Commerce: E-commerce sites containing fake products, misleading information, and SPAM content are among the sites that will be most affected by the Update.
• Finance: The Update may also negatively affect websites that offer illegal financial products and services or contain false information.
• Health: Websites that provide medical advice or sell health products will likely experience ranking losses after the Update.
• Sites with Completely Artificial Intelligence Content: Sites whose entire content is automatically produced with artificial intelligence. There is already news that many such sites have started to be removed from the Google index.

To elaborate on the last point, Google is not allergic to helpful content produced by artificial intelligence and inspected and edited by humans. Sites that try to perform on Google by producing thousands of SEO-focused pages with the help of artificial intelligence described here. Most of this information is false and inaccurate because an expert in the field has not reviewed it. We can say that these site owners have incurred the wrath of Google because they exposed themselves on Social Media.

A New Era in SEO:

This Update is the beginning of a new era in SEO. Just doing keyword optimization will no longer be enough. Your site’s content will be much more critical, as will its natural and diverse link profile. Additionally, it will be much more vital that your site’s content is original, informative, and valuable to the user.

My Recommendations to My Newsletter Readers:

• Review your site’s content: Make sure your content is original, informative, and helpful to the user.
• Examine your link profile: Get rid of SPAM links and try to get natural links.
• Focus on EAT factors: Increase your site’s perception of expertise, competence, and trustworthiness.
• Comply with Google’s SPAM policies: Do not engage in any activity that violates Google’s SPAM policies.

Google’s March 2024 Core Algorithm Update marks a significant change in SEO. With this Update, Google aims to reduce unhelpful content in search results and highlight valuable, high-quality, original content. Therefore, aligning your SEO strategy with this new Update is crucial.