How the April Core Update Impacted Our Blog And What We Did To Recover Traffic and Keywords

In April 2023, we had an important Google Core Update update, which affected the ranking of several websites, blogs, portals and e-commerces. Rock Content’s blog has also been affected, with much of our content losing position or dropping out of search engines altogether.

This update pertains to products and content that contain reviews or ratings. Therefore, if a piece of content shows products, materials and tool reviews that no longer make sense in 2023, then it has certainly been affected by this algorithm.

Google made this comment about the algorithm:

“The review system is designed to rate articles, blog posts, pages, or similar standalone content written to provide a recommendation, provide an opinion, or provide analysis.”

Therefore, Google has not only affected product reviews or general reviews, but content in general that also recommends tools, for example, or analyzes with more specific data on certain subjects.

Here at Rock Content, for example, most of the affected contents were:

• Contents that talked about trends from years prior to 2023
• Contents showing tools to use in years prior to 2023

we had 16.31% less traffic compared to March, already the worst month of the year in terms of traffic on our blog.

We can see in the graph that the month of April was quite irregular in traffic compared to March, which had much more regular lines and with natural drops on weekends.

How did the algorithm affect other sites on the web?

In forums, Google and technology professionals (developers, SEO and content professionals, mostly) have debated how this algorithm affected their websites.

Here are some views from members of these forums:

“Seeing big dips again. Our desktop traffic is way down. We have a lot less impressions and clicks on Google Search Console.”

“I’m trying to determine what happened on April 15th to cause such a huge drop in clicks for my most important term and all 4 of its semantic variants. They all disappeared very quickly at the same time”

“Google hit exactly one of the most trafficked landing pages on my site…a 92% loss in traffic despite no drop in rankings in the last three months.”

What is Rock Content doing to recover traffic and keywords after the algorithm update?

According to Google, some measures must be taken in relation to this content. In addition, of course, to the annual update of contents that contain years in their titles, the content itself must be reviewed to make sure that the data contained there still makes sense for the current moment.

Here in Rock Content, in addition to updating outdated content, another strategy used was to search for content with the most searched keywords and update them, though not as much as the full recommendation content or lists of tools that could be used that year.

An example was this content about Social Media Trends in 2022. We removed the year from the title and updated the content for 2023. The percentage of new sessions increased by 57.14% after the data was updated. Notice how the content wasn’t as popular in April and how, after its update, it got more traffic again:

So, if you think your traffic dropped in April, it’s essential to map content that dates back to 2023. After that, curate how that data can be updated more efficiently. To date, Rock has recovered 428 lost keywords, which is up 42.42% from April.

A tip is to use WriterAccess to look for freelancers with SEO expertise who can help your team and business regain rankings quickly.

Google recommendations for your content

Evaluate from the user’s perspective: Put yourself in the reader’s shoes and consider what information would be most valuable to them.

Demonstrate your experience: show that you and your team are knowledgeable about the subject and demonstrate authority.

Provide supporting evidence: use images, videos, or links to reinforce the authenticity of a review, whatever it is.

Share quantitative measurements: Discuss how the item stacks up in various performance categories, helping readers make informed decisions.

Discuss advantages and disadvantages: base analyzes on original research and/or personal experience.

Focus on key decision-making factors: prioritize the most important factors based on experiences.

Support your recommendations: when claiming something as the best, provide first-hand evidence to support your claim.

Create standalone sorted lists: make sure your sorted listings contain enough useful content to be self-contained, even if you write separate in-depth unique reviews.

These are some important recommendations for creating content or creating a product review page, for example. When Google releases a content update, we need to analyze in depth what is happening and what the possible solutions are.

We will keep an eye on updates from the world’s largest search engine and bring our perspectives so that you and your business know what to do in the face of something so important. 

What did you do when you noticed this update and how did it affect your business?

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