Okay, so, in November 2019, there was a lot of speculation in the SEO community. People started seeing fluctuations, ups and downs with their clients, and it was suspected that a new Google update was coming out. Well, if we jump over here to SearchEngineLand.com, a new article just came out December 2nd that confirms, where it talks about Google confirming that there actually was a new update rolling out. And in this article, it shows screenshots of Google actually posting on Twitter exactly what this update is all about. And nobody really needs to freak out. We have seen these updates happen over the last 10 years, as long as we’ve been doing SEO. And two or three times a year, typically, Google will come out with these updates and things start going crazy for a couple of months then they settle back down and the good, the people that are doing everything right, rise to the top, and all the people that are doing all the scammy little short-term strategies and tricks start sinking down. So this is a good thing long-term.
Now, of course, if you’re a business and you’re doing everything right and you’ve been affected by this, I can understand it’s very stressful. And your instinct is to go in there and start making major changes and start fixing things on your website and your Google account, and I’m going to tell you right now that is absolute worse thing you can do is to make any major changes during a Google update. Believe me, guys, I’ve seen this happen over and over through the years. And those guys that go in there and start just gutting out their websites and revamping stuff. I actually had a client that was affected by this, and his idea was to delete his Google page and start fresh and de-index everything and then start fresh. Absolutely worst idea. Don’t do that. That looks really bad to Google. What you want to do is let this stuff shake out.
Now, if you are one of our clients and you have been affected by this update, I can tell you the steps that we are going to take. Number one, we’re going to do a deep dive into your Google account, your Facebook account, your Yelp business account, and the other 63 directories that Google looks at. We’re going to make sure, one by one, that every single one of those is on the up and up because they can change over time, depending on what’s going on.
We also want to make sure that an unethical competitor has not sent some spammy backlinks to your website. So we’re going to get in. We’re going to do some research using the tools that we have, to make sure that you don’t have any links coming from foreign links in foreign languages. Like we see a bunch of links coming in with Chinese language characters in there, then we know that something’s up and that we need to take care of that, that it wasn’t part of the update, that it’s something else.
There’s all kinds of little things that we’re going to do for our clients to make sure that you’re on the up and up. So after this all shakes up, your rankings go right back up to the top. And that you stay on this upward trend. That’s how you fix it. That’s the fix. You don’t go in there and delete your Google page and try to start fresh, make major changes, do anything like that. I tell you, like I’m saying, and you can even read in this article. Here’s a quote, “There are no required changes that a business needs to make as a result of this update.” Google directs businesses to the basic local ranking help document, which you can click on and read. This is the document that we use and other ethical SEO companies use, marketing agencies use to make sure that everything is done so that when these updates do come out, you have the lowest chance of actually being affected, or you have affected be in a positive way.
Because what’s going to happen is, after it all shakes out, is the companies that are doing everything right are going to start rising to the top. And all the companies that are playing all these little tricks are going to start sinking down. This happens every time. So as long as you’re doing everything right for the long-term, you can weather this storm. Okay, guys? A lot of people will not be affected by this or they’ll be affected positively by this. So this is not meant to be negative. This is mainly just for those people that are doing it right and have seen a drop in rankings. It’s going to be okay, I promise. Okay, Google will get it right. It just takes a month or two to shake out.
That being said, if you have any questions or if you have been affected by this and you want to talk to us and you want a free consultation, or if you just want to talk to us on how we’re doing SEO and how we can do it for you, give us a call at 406-493-1881 or visit BigWestMarketing.com. Once again, my name is Joe Burnich and I will talk to you soon.
