Got Hit By Google Core Update? Heres Likely What You Did Wrong and How To Fix It

SeoBacklinkGenie

SeoBacklinkGenie

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I have seen lots of top competing sites basically delisted from serps since the core updated and I was determined to find out why.

The information I have dissected has shown me that backlinks and on-page overall were not major influences.

However, how you used your backlinks were the main cause of disruption.

Most of these players who ran the serps top 1-3 spots for years have had a lot of irrelevant anchor texts from high quality backlinks pointing straight to the homepage of their moneysite.

Google does not see any relevancy in pointing these non relevant anchors to their homepage and sees it as "manipulative" and "untrustworthy".

Ecommerce Example:

Your website could be that you sell guitars.

However, You create a few backlinks with the anchors "guitar music sheets", "instruments", and "guitar lessons" pointing to your homepage.

You did not bother to create a separate subpage for "guitar music sheets". other Instruments", and "guitar lessons"

Your homepage is now artificially ranking for "guitar music sheets". other Instruments", and "guitar lessons" because of the backlinks and the anchors.

Google does not like this. Imagine you are googling "guitar music sheets" and a homepage of a website that sells guitars is #1 in the serps. This is NOT a good experience for anyone.

Google would have rewarded your website if you had a separate page with" guitar music sheets" in the URL and that page was specifically around guitar music sheets.

The Same Effect On Inner Pages and Blogs:

This is also a red flag for inner pages and blogs using the same backlinking strategy.

You have a generic blog article about the Eucalyptus plant with a well structured EDM url.

Great! However, You spammed backlinks with the anchors "is eucalyptus safe for cats" and "is eucalyptus safe for dogs" without having much or any information at all about these 2 things in your blog.

Google was tricked and still ranked you highly for "is eucalyptus safe for cats" and "is eucalyptus safe for dogs".

Until the core update.

Google saw that your article had nothing to do with eucalyptus safe for cats or dogs and is wondering why do you have backlinks with anchors when it is irrelevant.

This shows google that you have manipulated the serps to try to rank for keywords that are irrelevant to your page. Google has now penalized this specific page until the next update.

What Happens To your Pages Now?

It seems that the individual pages that are hit will mostly be purged until next update.

At that time some relevant keywords will be revived, and some of the manipulated keywords will not.

Some good news is that this update seems to hit pages individually and not sites as a whole.


How Can You fix it?

1. Try to only point naked url and branded anchors texts to your main page (with some exceptions).

2. Create lots of EDM (Exact Domain Match) URLs with relevant content that matches the EDM URL and target specific anchor texts to those pages.

3. When buying backlinks make sure to only use anchor keywords that are relevant to that page.

4. Avoid using keyword anchors that are even slightly irrelevant even if the word is low volume or kd.

5. It may be best that pages with a lot of existing irrelevant anchor texts pointing to it should be redone. Create a new EDM subpage and start over with a clean backlink and anchor history.

6. Keep link building, but do it right. Anchor text is extremely important in ranking and directing information to google's algos. Using correct anchors can avoid any further penalization.

7. Wait for the next google update. By the next update google should have cleaned up your backlink profile for your pages. Once this is done you can start backlinking those pages again.

8. Don't give up. Even if you were hit, you should see some relevant keywords bounce back on the next update. Creating new pages should avoid any penalization from the most recent core update.

Conclusion

I hope this helps the people who were hit by the March 2023 Core updates.

This may not apply to everyone and every site but based on the data I have seen and what the core update is designed for this seems to be the most viable reason why a site would be hit.

TLDR: Make plenty of EDM subpages with backlinks that have relevant anchor texts. Only use anchor texts that are relevant to that specific page. Do not spam backlinks to your homepage.
 
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so, anchor text relevancy is the key point...

Also, won't this change cancel the Penguin (or whatever its name was) update that penalized sites that use excessive exact match anchors? Because anchor relevancy sounds exactly like the opposite of not using relevant (exact / partial match) anchors :)
 
Thanks for the detailed post, this also increases user experience, and should improve authority for broader information on the main subject.
 
tazarbm said:
so, anchor text relevancy is the key point...

Also, won't this change cancel the Penguin (or whatever its name was) update that penalized sites that use excessive exact match anchors? Because anchor relevancy sounds exactly like the opposite of not using relevant (exact / partial match) anchors :)
Click to expand...

Penguin is old.

Google has been stressing relevancy of anchors texts alot recently. Also there is a big difference between spamming exact match on a non relevant home page compared to a EDM url with pure relevancy. Partial match keywords are also important as long as it's relevant.
 
Interesting, so pages that are hit, if you resolve whatever the cause was that made the ranks drop for that page and continue to build links and add content to your website.

It will take until the next core update until google "reverses" the soft penalty for that page?

I thought when a site is hit with a algorithmic penalty (and not manual action), given the fact it's a calculation, it will jump out and restore position once the offending issue is rectified within days/weeks once the site and relevant pages have been re-crawled?
 
myk33 said:
Interesting, so pages that are hit, if you resolve whatever the cause was that made the ranks drop for that page and continue to build links and add content to your website.

It will take until the next core update until google "reverses" the soft penalty for that page?

I thought when a site is hit with a algorithmic penalty (and not manual action), given the fact it's a calculation, it will jump out and restore position once the offending issue is rectified within days/weeks once the site and relevant pages have been re-crawled?
Click to expand...

Sure, it's possible, however most disavowing will take 3-6 months anyways which in the end is roughly when a new update will be updated. Google is essentially doing the disavowing work already for you during this penalization period, this is better for you so that way you don't accidently disavow good links.
 
SeoBacklinkGenie said:
Sure, it's possible, however most disavowing will take 3-6 months anyways which in the end is roughly when a new update will be updated. Google is essentially doing the disavowing work already for you during this penalization period, this is better for you so that way you don't accidently disavow good links.
Click to expand...

Thanks for putting in the research and writing it so eloquently here.
 
SeoBacklinkGenie said:
I have seen lots of top competing sites basically delisted from serps since the core updated and I was determined to find out why.

The information I have dissected has shown me that backlinks and on-page overall were not major influences.

However, how you used your backlinks were the main cause of disruption.

Most of these players who ran the serps top 1-3 spots for years have had a lot of irrelevant anchor texts from high quality backlinks pointing straight to the homepage of their moneysite.

Google does not see any relevancy in pointing these non relevant anchors to their homepage and sees it as "manipulative" and "untrustworthy".

Ecommerce Example:

Your website could be that you sell guitars.

However, You create a few backlinks with the anchors "guitar music sheets", "instruments", and "guitar lessons" pointing to your homepage.

You did not bother to create a separate subpage for "guitar music sheets". other Instruments", and "guitar lessons"

Your homepage is now artificially ranking for "guitar music sheets". other Instruments", and "guitar lessons" because of the backlinks and the anchors.

Google does not like this. Imagine you are googling "guitar music sheets" and a homepage of a website that sells guitars is #1 in the serps. This is NOT a good experience for anyone.

Google would have rewarded your website if you had a separate page with" guitar music sheets" in the URL and that page was specifically around guitar music sheets.

The Same Effect On Inner Pages and Blogs:

This is also a red flag for inner pages and blogs using the same backlinking strategy.

You have a generic blog article about the Eucalyptus plant with a well structured EDM url.

Great! However, You spammed backlinks with the anchors "is eucalyptus safe for cats" and "is eucalyptus safe for dogs" without having much or any information at all about these 2 things in your blog.

Google was tricked and still ranked you highly for "is eucalyptus safe for cats" and "is eucalyptus safe for dogs".

Until the core update.

Google saw that your article had nothing to do with eucalyptus safe for cats or dogs and is wondering why do you have backlinks with anchors when it is irrelevant.

This shows google that you have manipulated the serps to try to rank for keywords that are irrelevant to your page. Google has now penalized this specific page until the next update.

What Happens To your Pages Now?

It seems that the individual pages that are hit will mostly be purged until next update.

At that time some relevant keywords will be revived, and some of the manipulated keywords will not.

Some good news is that this update seems to hit pages individually and not sites as a whole.


How Can You fix it?

1. Try to only point naked url and branded anchors texts to your main page (with some exceptions).

2. Create lots of EDM (Exact Domain Match) URLs with relevant content that matches the EDM URL and target specific anchor texts to those pages.

3. When buying backlinks make sure to only use anchor keywords that are relevant to that page.

4. Avoid using keyword anchors that are even slightly irrelevant even if the word is low volume or kd.

5. It may be best that pages with a lot of existing irrelevant anchor texts pointing to it should be redone. Create a new EDM subpage and start over with a clean backlink and anchor history.

6. Keep link building, but do it right. Anchor text is extremely important in ranking and directing information to google's algos. Using correct anchors can avoid any further penalization.

7. Wait for the next google update. By the next update google should have cleaned up your backlink profile for your pages. Once this is done you can start backlinking those pages again.

8. Don't give up. Even if you were hit, you should see some relevant keywords bounce back on the next update. Creating new pages should avoid any penalization from the most recent core update.

Conclusion

I hope this helps the people who were hit by the March 2023 Core updates.

This may not apply to everyone and every site but based on the data I have seen and what the core update is designed for this seems to be the most viable reason why a site would be hit.

TLDR: Make plenty of EDM subpages with backlinks that have relevant anchor texts. Only use anchor texts that are relevant to that specific page. Do not spam backlinks to your homepage.
Click to expand...
This is an interesting position on this update. Did you check multiple sites to come to this conclusion?
 
Interesting and I appreciate your kindness in sharing with us.
Well, I prefer to create a topical map before starting any website. This will help us to assign and target the keywords for their respective pages.
However, I feel the recent core update hit a lot of sites with poor content or maybe sites with AI content.
 
Rmiller said:
However, I feel the recent core update hit a lot of sites with poor content or maybe sites with AI content.
Click to expand...
Poor content is hit with every update, that's a given. I have not seen anything to suggest AI content specifically was hit though.
 
myk33 said:
Interesting, so pages that are hit, if you resolve whatever the cause was that made the ranks drop for that page and continue to build links and add content to your website.

It will take until the next core update until google "reverses" the soft penalty for that page?

I thought when a site is hit with a algorithmic penalty (and not manual action), given the fact it's a calculation, it will jump out and restore position once the offending issue is rectified within days/weeks once the site and relevant pages have been re-crawled?
Click to expand...
Since in a sense google does disavowing for you (they stop considering backlinks you had) the rank will be going all over the place a bit, but usually many people will experience rank return as all their competitors would get the same kind of links devalued aswell and you all start resettling into the new spots the algo thinks is most relevant. Other sites that shoot to the top above you may also produce weaker ux signals which even things back out.
I work on a lot of white hat sites with medium to little backlink building over time (or only built from other real non-spammy sites, but at the end of the day that is still link building).

It is not uncommon to see this happen to the website after an update ( This is the average rank tracked of the top 125 traffic-driving keywords for a site, each keyword is a singular main keyword for an article so in a sense it is 125 articles).

This site has never done link building, but it does get random spam links just for existing (50 k visits a month) . Sometimes the full ranking of some pages will never return but across the whole domain you get a drop then a reversal. Many times a reversal does not mean google changed its mind, it just means your site algo value is recalculated after the hit to be roughly where it was before.

1679977690810.png

You can see average dropped down to position 5 with the downturn exactly starting on the update day, without an update all ranks will be relatively stable as its an average of over a hundred keywords.

What did I do to recover the site?
nothing, as of 2 days ago, only 5 articles of the 125 haven't gone back to roughly where they were before.
Not that those particular ones were ranked extremely highly before, but ranking 5-10 on higher volume keywords can still generate traffic( 2 for example)
1679978082161.png

A number one ranking dropping then coming back
1679978642524.png

Showing that as I cant expand them all, but just know all of them dropped then came back in a similar way.
1679978682967.png
but keeping good record of your top keywords allows you to properly send your efforts after updates.

Site has a decent amount of posts, updating them all or re-optimizing them all is barely an option in the budget, but link building to posts that used to be great rankers might not be a lost cause.

SeoBacklinkGenie said:
TLDR: Make plenty of EDM subpages with backlinks that have relevant anchor texts. Only use anchor texts that are relevant to that specific page. Do not spam backlinks to your homepage.
Click to expand...


Thanks for sharing your findings, they are mostly accurate to what I see myself (or at least just in my niche as I haven't looked around in a broad sense).
 
dexterseo said:
This is not true, i lost some articles without backlinks and in others i have the same positions but less impressions

Also a website who makes 301 redirects and lot of spam is still ranking 1
Click to expand...
Spam links are not the problem. Quality of backlinks is not the issue. It's how you implement the backlinks.

Also naturally pages will fluctuate especially ones without backlinks. I think your confusing the core update with normal fluctuations of seo.

Sounds like you weren't hit by the update so your comment is kind of irrelevant because your site wasn't effected.

4440 said:
If your theory is true, wouldn't it be easy to attack your competitors by buying irrelevant links pointing to them?
Click to expand...

This is possible. If you really want to waste your time temp boosting your competitor hoping it will backfire at some point.

Some sites I reviewed were ranking top 1-3 for a couple years before these sites were hit. It doesnt seem to be a streamlined process that hits everyone at once. Looks like it only penalizes a few sites at a time per niche per update. Mostly ones manipulating anchor texts ranking consistently in the top 3 of serps.

It also matters the % of overall bad linked anchors. If you have 1 million backlinks a couple bad links won't do anything.

Also Google would likely just remove the links you spammed and purge the page for a couple months so technically you would be wasting your time.

By "purging" meaning the page may still fluctuate but any new backlinks during this time will have little effect on the page until the purge is over which it may retro act the backlinks during the purge phase (unsure if itll retro act the backlinks during the purge phase or not).

Jaordas said:
Since in a sense google does disavowing for you (they stop considering backlinks you had) the rank will be going all over the place a bit, but usually many people will experience rank return as all their competitors would get the same kind of links devalued aswell and you all start resettling into the new spots the algo thinks is most relevant. Other sites that shoot to the top above you may also produce weaker ux signals which even things back out.
I work on a lot of white hat sites with medium to little backlink building over time (or only built from other real non-spammy sites, but at the end of the day that is still link building).

It is not uncommon to see this happen to the website after an update ( This is the average rank tracked of the top 125 traffic-driving keywords for a site, each keyword is a singular main keyword for an article so in a sense it is 125 articles).

This site has never done link building, but it does get random spam links just for existing (50 k visits a month) . Sometimes the full ranking of some pages will never return but across the whole domain you get a drop then a reversal. Many times a reversal does not mean google changed its mind, it just means your site algo value is recalculated after the hit to be roughly where it was before.

View attachment 248429

You can see average dropped down to position 5 with the downturn exactly starting on the update day, without an update all ranks will be relatively stable as its an average of over a hundred keywords.

What did I do to recover the site?
nothing, as of 2 days ago, only 5 articles of the 125 haven't gone back to roughly where they were before.
Not that those particular ones were ranked extremely highly before, but ranking 5-10 on higher volume keywords can still generate traffic( 2 for example)
View attachment 248430

A number one ranking dropping then coming back
View attachment 248433

Showing that as I cant expand them all, but just know all of them dropped then came back in a similar way.
View attachment 248434
but keeping good record of your top keywords allows you to properly send your efforts after updates.

Site has a decent amount of posts, updating them all or re-optimizing them all is barely an option in the budget, but link building to posts that used to be great rankers might not be a lost cause.




Thanks for sharing your findings, they are mostly accurate to what I see myself (or at least just in my niche as I haven't looked around in a broad sense).
Click to expand...


Your site was definetly not hit by the google core update so this data is mostly irrelevant. You have normal fluctuations.
 
Last edited:
Jaordas said:
total traffic was down 50%
Click to expand...
Your chart shows average position dropped from 3-5 and you only have 125 articles. It's irrelevant unless you have more information not provided. People hit by core update lost hundreds of keywords completely in rankings. 50% traffic drop doesn't mean much by it self. If you have 2 impressions and it dropped to 1 that's %50 loss. It needs more context.
 
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