Insights Offered by SEO Experts

I ignored semantic SEO for 15 years. Then we got crushed by Google's core update in October 2023. For most of my career, keywords, links, and engagement were where I focused my efforts. "Google indexes things, not strings"? Whatever. Knowledge graphs? Freebase / KGIDs / entity relationships / Meh. Then we lost 50% of our organic traffic overnight. When 5,500 of your 11,000+ pages get traffic and the rest are dying on the vine, Google notices. When your entity (Company / Brand) isn't clearly defined in their knowledge graph, they don't know who you are and if they don’t know who you are then they certainly can’t trust you. Here's how we learned our lesson: 🔴 Pre-Oct 2023: 11,000 pages, 50% getting zero traffic 🔴 Oct 5, 2023: Core update hits, rankings collapse 🟡 Nov 2023: Knowledge graph audit reveals the truth 🟢 Dec 2023: Content purge + entity optimization begins 🟢 Jan 2024: Finally started to recover 🟢 Aug 2024: Hallelujah we’re back baby! The recovery playbook was clear. We went on a content diet, cutting half our pages. We rebuilt our knowledge graph presence by: - Crafting a semantically-optimized company description (deployed everywhere) - Creating an entity home with schema markup - Establishing our "same as" relationships across platforms - Getting into Wikidata and building third-party mentions Within months, our knowledge panel returned. By August, our organic traffic had recovered, and our rankings were stronger than before the penalty. Still, it was pretty scary and the recovery happened after AI had shifted the search landscape forever. Here’s the lesson: Google isn't just counting links or matching phrases anymore—it's evaluating if you're a trusted entity in your space. Control your narrative or someone else will. That's not just SEO — it's survival. (And, spoiler: it’s even more important in an AI-driven search landscape). — Hey -- I'm Jason. I write about: 🔍 Semantic SEO that actually works 🤖 LLM marketing strategies for growth teams 🚀 Building visibility in the AI-first world DM or just follow along! #seo #llms #organicgrowth

I've analyzed 100+ Google updates. December's core update hits different ☠️ — THE FACTS → The update launched December 12th at 10:45am EST, just 7 days after November's update finished rolling out. Definitely quicker than normal. Early data shows three key groups seeing major changes (good and bad): • Sites previously hit by core updates were showing movement • Some sites that recovered in the November update saw those gains reversed • Sites hit by the "helpful content update" showed significant movement — WHY IT LOOKS DIFFERENT → Most core updates follow predictable patterns. They're spaced out, target similar systems, and show familiar volatility patterns. This one breaks all three norms: 1. Unprecedented timing: Google rarely release core updates this close together 2. Different systems: This update targets entirely different core systems than November's 3. Massive volatility: Tracking tools showing some of the biggest fluctuations we've seen in years Many sites that recovered in November are seeing those gains reverse. — WHAT WE'RE SEEING → Early data from tracking tools and SEO communities is painting a clear picture of widespread impact. Here's what the numbers tell us: • Rank tracking tools showing historic volatility levels • Changes affecting sites across all markets and languages • Previously stable sites experiencing significant shifts • Recovery patterns breaking from historical trends This suggests a fundamental shift in how Google evaluates content. — THE FUTURE → Google rarely telegraphs their future plans. But at their Zurich event last week, they were unusually transparent about where things are heading: • Core updates will become more frequent • Moving toward real-time ranking adjustments • Shorter wait times between changes and results The quarterly update cycle is ending. Welcome to continuous optimization. — WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU → The reactive approach a lot of us are used to is probably becoming obsolete: The old approach won't work anymore: • Waiting for updates • Reacting to changes • Quick tactical fixes What’s probably better: • Build consistently high-quality content • Focus on genuine user value • Think long-term, not quick wins — BOTTOM LINE: The gap between "optimizing for Google" and "optimizing for users" is disappearing. Focus on building something genuinely valuable. Then build good links. The rankings will follow. // Anyone in my network impacted?

Both Marie Haynes and Glenn Gabe, two of the SEOs (and dear friends!) I trust and respect most in our industry, have each published important articles today about Google's Helpful Content Update (HCU). I'll link to both in the comments. And I'm sharing screenshots from my favorite parts of each (Glenn's, then Marie's). Glenn's article explains what it means that Google deprecated its sitewide "unhelpful content" classifier from the old Helpful Content ranking system, and has since baked that signal into multiple systems that now assess helpfulness. Glenn also describes how "multiple systems can be at odds and counterbalance each other." These points have been confusing for many site owners, so I'm glad Glenn wrote about it. Marie wrote an important article urging Google to do more to be more transparent with website owners affected by the HCU and to provide more specific, clear guidance other than "this content is not helpful," which at this point, in my opinion, feels like vague advice, given that these sites have been trying to make their content more helpful for 7 months and not a single one has seen traffic improve. Not even by a little bit. Most dropped further with the March Core Update. I haven't had time to write my own version of this article yet, but I fully agree with both of them. What I said in my recent HCU YouTube video still holds true: I really think Google went too far with the September HCU, and am pretty disappointed to see exactly ZERO sites reversing course after 7 months of hard work, for many of them. For these site owners, there currently isn't even a glimmer of hope. This impact feels disproportionate for many sites who had absolutely no idea they were doing anything wrong. I've seen too many examples of sites seeing -90% traffic losses who were writing legitimate, experience-driven content. They don't deserve to be penalized the same way Google is penalizing pure spam AI content farms. (I normally don't use the word "penalty" to describe algorithm hits, but at a -95% traffic loss, the impact is the same as a penalty.) I am also sharing two screenshots of tweets I wrote to Google this week (they did not respond to either this time). But personally, I think it says a lot when Glenn, Marie, and I are all aligned on something like this... In my opinion: a little more transparency, more clear communications or expectations around timelines for recovery, specific guidance for affected site owners (other than "have helpful content"), or maybe even a new search tab for "Perspectives" that highlight niche blogs - seeing Google do any of these things would go a long way. #SEO #helpfulcontentupdate #HCU #marchcoreupdate

Another great analysis of the Search API Leaks. This article provides a goldmine of takeaways for SEOs on topical authority, anchors, indexing & more: Andrew Ansley did his own analysis of Google's recently leaked documents. In his deep-dive he found a lot of really useful insights from leaked attributes: - "siteEmbedding" may represent a numeric representation of content for a given page/site. Google can take textual content and transform it into a numeric value. - The "siteFocusScore" attribute could be a representation of topical authority. How closely an individual site stays within the content it's a subject matter expert in. - "siteRadius" could determine how far a given page deviates from the overall site embeddings. It could be used to determine if an individual page is topically close to the overall content. - Of course, we know from the court testimony and these leaks that they potentially use NavBoost. This system might rerank results based on the click metrics going to particular pages. - Google could keep historical records of pages in it's index for ranking purposes. In fact, Google could keep up to 20 versions of a page. This makes sense as we see old title tags appearing in search even after we've changed them. - The "titlematchScore" attribute could measure how a site's title tag elements match the queries users search. - The leak also references an "EffortScore". This might be an estimation of how much effort went into content creation for a given page. Another great read for marketers looking for insights from the Search API Leaks! 

Last week, Google rolled out a massive update & it was a bloodbath for some AI-generated content. Here’s what we know and how you should respond: 👉 **40% reduction in “unhelpful” content** Google updated the core algorithm to try to target low-quality, “unhelpful” content. This means that pages that Google deems as unhelpful should be less likely to rank in the SERPs. What makes content “unhelpful”? Past Helpful Content Updates (HCU) have indicated that Google assesses helpfulness based on: - Original information, reporting, research, or analysis - Comprehensive overview of the topic - Goes “beyond the obvious” - Descriptive and helpful titles and headings - (Mostly) free of spelling and stylistic errors - Well produced and presented 👉 **Manual actions for “PURE SPAM”** In addition to algorithmic updates targeting “unhelpful” content, Google also handed out hundreds or thousands of manual actions. This means that they felt the algorithm changes alone did not sufficiently punish the worst offenders. The sites are now marked as “PURE SPAM” and mostly/totally de-indexed. 😬 👉 **Scaled content abuse** Google also targeted, “scaled content abuse.” In other words: Thin pages with programatically- and AI-generated content could be considered scaled content abuse and punished. Make sure that procedurally-generated content provides enough value to meet the “helpful content” guidelines above. 👉 **Parasite SEO** Google took a swipe at so-called “parasite SEO.” Basically, content that piggybacks off of an existing site’s authority to rank for all kinds of unrelated keywords. E.g.: A major local newspaper publishing an article or sponsored content about the “best appetite suppressants.” We can surmise that this indicates more focus on topical authority as a signal. In other words, if you’re publishing content on a wide array of different topics, it could send up red flags. 𝘚𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘶𝘱𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦? First: DON’T PANIC. Most of the sites severely impacted were egregious offenders—the “SEO goblins” flooding the internet with content to make a quick buck. *Your site was likely not impacted.* (But, feel free to DM me if it was or you’re worried about it.) Some takeaways: ✅ Use AI primarily as a drafting, outlining, or editing tool. Avoid publishing AI-generated content without human review and editing. ✅ Double down on creating “helpful content”—think, content that could not possibly be created by current AI technology. ✅ Focus your strategy. Rather than slinging topics at random, try to build a focused moat of the topics most important to your business. ✅ Assess the value of any programmatic or AI-generated content on your site. If it’s, “purely for search,” then look for ways to add value for humans. Happy to answer questions (to the best of my abilities). Good luck in the SERPs! ✌️ — If this was "helpful content": 1. Follow or connect on LinkedIn 👋 2. Share!