While Google tweaks and updates its search algorithm on a regular basis without ever saying as much, there are other times the search engine giant publicly confirms a larger-scale algorithm update has or will occur.
Over the last 90+ days, Google has offered several public confirmations of these larger-scale algorithm updates. This makes it an even more important time to be monitoring your keyword rankings and SEO reports to understand if your website has been impacted either positively or negatively by these recent algorithm changes.
If you wait to review monthly or quarterly organic revenue numbers to determine whether your website has been impacted adversely, it might be too late. The goal right now should be to know where you stand in terms of search queries or keyword rankings on a regular basis. This will put your team in a position to optimize your site in response to these algorithm updates if needed.
Let’s take a look at the most recent updates from Google.
At the beginning of June, the June core update was rolled out.
By mid-June, the highly anticipated and preemptively announced Page Experience Update began rolling out as well. According to Google, this page experience update will roll out through the end of August, so expect to feel its impact by September at the latest.
Additionally, there were two spam updates in late June.
At the beginning of this month, the July core update began rolling out as well.
If you experience a measurable change in organic activity over the next 2-3 months, this could be attributed to some mix of the recent algorithm updates from Google.
This impact could refer to a decrease in keyword rankings, organic traffic or organic conversions. The first place you should look for an impact from the algorithm updates is through your search query or keyword rankings on Google. This will give you a chance to optimize in response to these updates if necessary.
SEMrush is an SEO tool that helps you monitor keyword rankings by setting up projects within the paid version of the tool. In each project, we add the search queries we are initially tracking to measure their rankings before we start on the website and then track their history as we grow and improve those rankings.
You can also use the organic research tool in SEMrush however those rankings are not real-time (they have a date associated with them), where the position tracking in the paid project feature is as current as possible.
Some other keyword ranking tools that could help you identify if your website has been impacted by a Google Algorithm Update include BrightEdge, Ahrefs, Moz, and Google Search Console.
If you don’t currently have a strategy in place to identify the most up-to-date trends in your SEO keyword rankings, now is the time to start. After the rollout of all of these algorithm updates, it’s more important than ever that you are aware of how your marketing content is ranking.
Wondering if your website has been impacted by the recent Google Algorithm Update? Request a free mini website audit.
