SEO News Weekly Recap (Oct 30 – Nov 3): November 2023 Core Update Is Live!
September and October were hectic. Huge Helpful Content Update, followed by simultaneous Core and Spam Update. But no, Google is not done. Yesterday, the third Core Update in the last two and a half months (August, October, and now this) was announced by Google:
Currently, there are no visible changes on SERPs, but we will see what the weekend is bringing us.
On top of this, there were a few other notable news from Google.
Google says old content doesn’t make it unhelpful content
For all of you who run news websites and are wondering what to do with old news articles that were once helpful but are now outdated, Google finally gave a clear answer:
Basically, if your content was helpful at the time it was published, you shouldn’t worry if it doesn’t hold any purpose now.
After seven years, mobile-first indexing has arrived
Google finally announced that mobile-first indexing is here. What does that mean?
When crawling and indexing your content, Google will now first focus on how your site looks for mobile devices instead of the desktop version.
What can you do about this? When making changes to your sites and articles, always prioritize how it looks on mobile versus desktop. Be it design, ads, font, etc.
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Google explains what keyword stuffing is
We hear the term “keyword stuffing” a lot. But Google hasn’t been that clear on what it actually is. In the latest tweet (is it called “tweet” now?).
Here is what Google said:
Keyword stuffing is actual spam and tends to be repeating a term in non-sensical patterns over and over. Not always, but people also shouldn’t be paranoid that if they use a term # times then they’ve tipped over into keyword stuffing. It doesn’t really work that way.
Instead, it just tends to be not helpful writing. “Welcome to our article about THIS THING. Many peopl wonder if THIS THING is the best of THIS THING. We’re here to explain why THIS THING is indeed the best of THIS THINGS you could get,”
That’s just not how people typically write and explain things. That’s repetition more likely because something thinks “I need to say this in full often so that Google really gets it.” No, we don’t need things that often. We have pretty good ways to analyze language and understand meaning and concepts. The best way to align with that is just write like you would for people.
There has been a lot of activity from Google on X this week. I guess it’s because of all the drama regarding the Helpful Content Update. What do you think about these? Let us know in the comments below! 👇
