Google’s May Algo Updates — Jordan Koene // Previsible

Jordan Koene, PreVisible CEO and Co-Founder, discusses breaking SEO news. Recently, we’ve seen Google shift its approach to the release of updates. Whereas older updates would have taken place within the same week, the spring and summer updates indicated that Google is committing to gradually implementing smaller updates, over longer periods of time. Today, Jordan talks about Google's May algorithm updates.
About the speaker

Jordan Koene

Previsible.io

is a little camera shy

Jordan is Co-Founder & CEO at Previsible

Show Notes

  • 02:07
    Google algorithm updates in May
    Many news and media sites saw a large decrease in traffic in early May. Mid-May onwards saw fluctuations in relation to E-A-T factors.
  • 03:44
    Changing trends in Googles implementation of updates
    Historically, Google would have released all of its updates in a short time span. But, theyve shifted into gradual implementation to avoid massive downturns in traffic for affected websites.
  • 05:39
    Spring and summer updates impact on social media and video
    Twitter, Youtube, and Wikipedia have had significant drops-offs in visibility. Similarly, media sites like WSJ have lost over 30% of their search visibility in just a short period of time.
  • 07:19
    Changes in sitelinks and the SERP layout
    Changes in the SERP layout have led to a lot of volatility regarding sitelinks. Websites with well structured taxonomy benefited from the change in sitelinks and theyre seeing more traffic.
  • 09:16
    Cleaning up your website
    Websites with too many ads, irrelevant content, etc, have seen a major reduction in SEO traffic. Clean up webpage URLs, remove dead pages, etc to mitigate the impact of Google updates.
  • 11:04
    How to handle cleaning up your website
    GSC provides a lot of information about the health of your pages and where cleaning efforts should focus. Also, ensure that elements are used appropriately within your pages

Quotes

  • "We're seeing a different trend in how Google releases updates. A few years ago, these changes would've all occurred within the same week. Now, Google gradually makes these implementations." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "Over the last month, weve seen a big shift in how Google is surfacing social media and video-based content. we've seen some big drop-offs for Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "Wall Street Journal, Reuters.com, and other news media sites have significant drop-offs. We're talking over 30% of their search visibility in a very short period of time." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "The big takeaway from this spring into summer set of updates is that we are seeing s a dozen rather significant changes all happening in this two month period." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "Because of the change in sitelinks, we've seen some sites that have really good structured taxonomy start to see more traffic than less." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "When there's a lot of site links on the SERP, it gives you users a way to use Google as a navigating tool. That is a prominent purpose of having site links on the SERP." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "There have been two publications on the Google webmaster blog in the last two months about housekeeping and cleaning up your site. And I don't think it's a coincidence." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "A lot of the sites struggling today to generate traffic gross from SEO are ones with a ton of page debt in the index." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "Soft 404s are an ecosystem by which Google tells us that either this page is useless or it shouldn't exist."-Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

  • "Be mindful of how a page is created and what elements are on it. Do I need 16 reviews on a page? Maybe three is good enough." -Jordan Koene, CEO & Co-Founder, PreVisible

About the speaker

Jordan Koene

Previsible.io

is a little camera shy

Jordan is Co-Founder & CEO at Previsible

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