I Recovered from the March Update!!!

[georgetoons]

Hi BHW fam,

So my biggest client which pays about 40% of my houses income for the past 10+ years was hit big by the March core update.

Over 300 suburb pages where hit, they went from ranking in the top 3 positions for over 10 years to being non existent, they where still indexed but none existent....

It was like Google put us in punishment until we learn our lesson.

This whole situation caused my client to think he will need to close the business due to no work for his workers (it is a removalist company). Him closing the business means my family needs to start finding some other Jobs for a bit... So would of been a big change.

But luckily that didn't need to happen... Because yesterday night like 70% of the 300 suburbs all came back, mainly in the same positions as before but most of them even better than before.

I don't know what saved it to be honest as we made so many changes over the past month to try and save the site but I will share all the different things we tried:

1. First thing we did was rewrite any AI Content to make it more helpful and original, this took a long time.
2. I added some more high quality backlinks to hopefully give it some strength
3. we removed all AI images
4. I removed all american/english spelled words and made them british/engish as the customer is based in Australia.
5. After researching competitors I also deleted lots of content and the pages went from 1200 words average to about 600-700 words.
6. About a week ago I had decided to delete all the pages as Google sees them as "Doorway Pages", but a day after trashing them all I decided to bring them all back as they are our main traffic sources for over 10 years.

And last night it recovered.

Now... was it because of something I did? no idea. Was it because Google crawled the site again and just changed its mind? maybe. I guess we will never know but very happy I was able to bring it back and I hope you all find a solution that will work.

Share your thoughts or questions below

Thank you

 

[xpesos]

Images and making AI content to the point has both helped me, so i can vouch for that, for the content part i am also adding a lot of data and facts and figures in the form of tables.

 

[boywonderseo]

Hi BHW fam,

So my biggest client which pays about 40% of my houses income for the past 10+ years was hit big by the March core update.

Over 300 suburb pages where hit, they went from ranking in the top 3 positions for over 10 years to being non existent, they where still indexed but none existent....

It was like Google put us in punishment until we learn our lesson.

This whole situation caused my client to think he will need to close the business due to no work for his workers (it is a removalist company). Him closing the business means my family needs to start finding some other Jobs for a bit... So would of been a big change.

But luckily that didn't need to happen... Because yesterday night like 70% of the 300 suburbs all came back, mainly in the same positions as before but most of them even better than before.

I don't know what saved it to be honest as we made so many changes over the past month to try and save the site but I will share all the different things we tried:

1. First thing we did was rewrite any AI Content to make it more helpful and original, this took a long time.
2. I added some more high quality backlinks to hopefully give it some strength
3. we removed all AI images
4. I removed all american/english spelled words and made them british/engish as the customer is based in Australia.
5. After researching competitors I also deleted lots of content and the pages went from 1200 words average to about 600-700 words.
6. About a week ago I had decided to delete all the pages as Google sees them as "Doorway Pages", but a day after trashing them all I decided to bring them all back as they are our main traffic sources for over 10 years.

And last night it recovered.

Now... was it because of something I did? no idea. Was it because Google crawled the site again and just changed its mind? maybe. I guess we will never know but very happy I was able to bring it back and I hope you all find a solution that will work.

Share your thoughts or questions below

Thank you

thanks

 

[itsromanorc]

That's good news unfortunately on my side even new content I add just gets indexed but doesn't rank anymore.

 

[TechEinstien]

Those two are the main culprit. AI Content and AI images.

 

[georgetoons]

Images and making AI content to the point has both helped me, so i can vouch for that, for the content part i am also adding a lot of data and facts and figures in the form of tables.

Yes I agree I also think that changing the english to british english also helped as it is an Australian site and when writing in American English it is quite obvious that it is AI written.

thanks

That's good news unfortunately on my side even new content I add just gets indexed but doesn't rank anymore.

Are you using AI?

Those two are the main culprit. AI Content and AI images.

I believe that aswell, another thought I had that maybe happened, maybe when I trashed all the pages.. Google cached the site without them and when I added them back maybe it cached the site again and saw the pages as new content and ranked them again.. but this time without the AI content.. maybe.

Another point I forgot to add is I disavowed about 200 domains that where counted as "toxic links" by semrush.

 

[Starblazer]

AI content is what they publicly say but I never trust Google. They might be having some secret recipe to deindex sites. Google might just be deindexing abandoned sites. If you quickly make some changes, their algo could reconsider rankings.

 

[georgetoons]

AI content is what they publicly say but I never trust Google. They might be having some secret recipe to deindex sites. Google might just be deindexing abandoned sites. If you quickly make some changes, their algo could reconsider rankings.

They could be trying to get more sites to spend on Google ads... But in my instance the site that was hit by the march update was very active (daily updates).

 

[roydan]

I'm very happy you got out of this, but this is also a lesson for you and your client. Putting all the eggs in one basket rarely ends well and you must diversify their traffic sources so it won't happen again.

 

[georgetoons]

I'm very happy you got out of this, but this is also a lesson for you and your client. Putting all the eggs in one basket rarely ends well and you must diversify their traffic sources so it won't happen again.

Yes agreed we also discussed this because Google could destroy the business over night as we experienced the past month

 

[Starblazer]

Yes agreed we also discussed this because Google could destroy the business over night as we experienced the past month

This is a hard lesson not to rely heavily upon search traffic. You can make a proposal to your client to retain customers through email newsletters or engage them on social media platforms. You can even create an app if the business involves recurring customers. It's better to brainstorm multiple ideas to plan in advance.

 

[georgetoons]

This is a hard lesson not to rely heavily upon search traffic. You can make a proposal to your client to retain customers through email newsletters or engage them on social media platforms. You can even create an app if the business involves recurring customers. It's better to brainstorm multiple ideas to plan in advance.

Yes will need to set up a plan because it is quite a difficult niche as it relies mainly on "new customers", it is house moving service so recurring customers would have a few years on average before coming back. Social media needs to be worked on more for sure.

 

[roydan]

Yes will need to set up a plan because it is quite a difficult niche as it relies mainly on "new customers", it is house moving service so recurring customers would have a few years on average before coming back. Social media needs to be worked on more for sure.

Paid search could be a good bottom line contributor to this sort of niches.

 

[SeoIsArt]

Great to hear that. Congratulations.

 

[yalang]

Images and making AI content to the point has both helped me, so i can vouch for that, for the content part i am also adding a lot of data and facts and figures in the form of tables.

I think @xpesos made a valid point.

The update is not about doorway pages, but getting them deleted timely is a part of the process everyone should follow as per their content audit.

Deleting AI generated content and picture is also a must!

And the quality of backlink and relevance to the niche are two factors we should never ignore.

If we do all of that I think recovering from the March 2024 is like a breeze.

We have helped more than 80% of our regular agency clients recover from the March 2024 update.

For those that did not, I think they just gave up.

 

[alonelywriter]

So Apparently it was again all about reconstructing your website from the scratch to show google that we have applied changes and are new.

 

[Like-Mike]

Interesting, but I don't think it will last long in the long run.

 

[Starblazer]

Paid search could be a good bottom line contributor to this sort of niches.

I think that's the plan of Google all along. They deindexed many sites where new customers are required. They create panic among businesses so that more people run ad campaigns instead of relying on SEO. While many people claim that they are getting rid of spam sites, I started finding more spam sites in SERPs. For example, you can search "xxxxxxx meaning in spanish" with a few social media or meme page buzz words, and you'll find adult sites within 2-3 pages. There are tens of dictionary sites replaced by adult sites after update. This is only one example among such niches. We need someone to do analysis of niches targeted by Google to understand their motives.

 

[roydan]

I think that's the plan of Google all along. They deindexed many sites where new customers are required. They create panic among businesses so that more people run ad campaigns instead of relying on SEO. While many people claim that they are getting rid of spam sites, I started finding more spam sites in SERPs. For example, you can search "xxxxxxx meaning in spanish" with a few social media or meme page buzz words, and you'll find adult sites within 2-3 pages. There are tens of dictionary sites replaced by adult sites after update. This is only one example among such niches. We need someone to do analysis of niches targeted by Google to understand their motives.

I don't think it's true because if all users get is ads and crappy results Google will end up losing marketshare.

The real problem is that since AI became so widely used, we filled the internet with crap, and then whine about Google pushing core updates every month.

Using paid search is and always was a great way to hedge against fluctuations in SERPs. If I can add my ad on top of an organic result I'm gonna do that, especially for transactional terms.

I never rely on one channel, especially if I can't fully control it. Google might ban my Google Ads account, blacklist my domain, Bing might do that as well, and no marketing effort is complete unless your traffic sources are as diverse as reasonably possible.

 

[airfield]

Interesting, I like the approach, we're doing something similar. However, it's just May, so it might not be a long-term thing. Please report back if you're still up and this whole thing works, like, in July!