The Cycles of Google's Algorithm Updates: Thoughts on the March Core Update & Helpful Content Update

[@SharkPixel]

Amen on becoming a therapist. I’m a solopreneur and while I THOUGHT I knew seo back in 2009 and 2013, I’ve been in a year long battle with seo for my photography site. To the point where I actually considered quitting!!! The amount of money I’ve spent on bad seo consulting is heartbreaking. I’m still not moving in my rankings and I’ve turned over every stone, pebble , and grain of sand to try to figure out what’s holding me back. It’s super sad…

[@petardz]

Maybe I'm wrong, but after Panda, Penguin, Medic, nad similar updates.. people actually knew what was the issue. Now nobody knows what exactly is the issue, except that they're targeting content websites (hobby sites, niche websites, etc.) that are not "real" businesses.

[@danielmehari6093]

Google is saying No more money from ads 😂😂

[@willgreeny]

Because, like Lily said, soen sites have been wrongly classified as unhelpful

[@SpookySkeletons]

I mean, we know the issue as well. Google says its "low quality content" "unoriginal" and bad UX and so on. But as Lily said: Maybe the Machine Learning was just not good enough to understand the factors itself and so many websites that just looked similar to the bad players got caught in the crossfire.

[@deannaeuritt8888]

Great summary and good advice! I appreciate your insights and sincerity and look forward to your videos. My rescue dog site is showing some signs of life albeit not recovered yet. I started out doing more personalized posts then took a course and made the site more professional. Then chased long-tail KWs for a while. Did very little AI. Was riding high then got crushed. But will carry on and have been incorporating many of your points. This a passion project for me. Your Reddit comment was eye opening. Many thx for your heartfelt, honest videos!

[@irshadazeez4764]

I'm not an SEO.. Just learning about it now. Glad I found this video. Very helpful thank you.

[@simplypsychologyofficial]

This is very helpful, Lily. Your illustration of helpful personal experiences has made me consider our editorial guidelines. Can you suggest a series of checklist questions to assess the quality of personal experience within an article?

[@ben.1202]

Really good, Lily. I've had sites hit but (think) I can see the logic in a lot of it. It sucks and it hurts, but a lot of it is work we knew we had to do anyway. At the very least, these updates have lit a fire under us!

[@camallen_]

Thank you for sharing your insights

[@marcmuhammad6283]

The distinction between quality/quantiy : proper SEO and spam is something more people might need to pay attention to...

[@AquariusTraveller]

You had some really great insights and appreciate your views. I wasn't hit by the HCU but I have dropped since... the March update has been the worse. I did read the google polices and interpreted my changes needed. I've been updating my content and hopefully steering in the right direction. Fingers crossed it's sooner rather than later to recover 😊

[@artemike]

were you using ai content?

[@NancyBurgessStrategicMarketing]

Seeing the same thing. No HCU problem earlier but free-falling in March. I know some of my content is getting outdated as I focus on clients. #TheCobblersChild

[@BritneyMuller]

Thank you, Lily! 🔥🔥🔥

[@jkljemmy]

I followed your content on X. Probably since Google featured “Lily Ray” on 2019’s E-A-T post. I studied especially the 2 most recent videos. I replayed for at least 5 times and wrote a 5,000-word HCU review. (in Mandarin) Just wanted to say: awesome content and extremely helpful for the SEO community (even in another language). Question: “Focusing content creation, such as business writing, copywriting, and intent recognition, is actually one of the best ways to rank high on Google.” Would you say that’s a fair statement? Thanks a lot.

[@janeostin2022]

For me, as a newbie in SEO field it's like a handy brief in "what's and why is going on". I take a look at the update notes and Google recommendations about the content, and it's clear like a sunny day. Mb it's coz I worked in the self education, psychology content and know how you can't do to your reader or viewer. Google trying to be more healthy in the content it's offer. So the SEO itself must maintain the healthy principles and healthy approach to rank higher now. Thanks for your time and experience. I will look forward to your new videos and opinions. As well as I'll look at the older ones. Hope my eng not horrible enough. Take care and stay safe. From Vi with luv (Kyiv, Ukraine).

[@4WDG]

Thanks, Lily - I found this truly eye-opening, honest, and helpful. Lots of food for thought and it made me realize that I NEED to start thinking outside the box. #lilyrayisthebestseointheworld

[@mohamedmustafa6111]

it was very helpful. thank you Lily

[@SpookySkeletons]

Our current website is 3 years old. We have about 6,000 Posts. We already deleted about 1000 from years prior (we merged our two websites to one, because it was very similar content) and we reworked about 200 more from the ground up. Also improved some UX, made sure, people see we are real humans and so on. We have a community of over 30k on Facebook, 1,500 on Discord and a few hundred on Instagram. Also we always had about 10 to 15 % direct traffic (When getting 80k views per day) Do you think it could also take years for this website to recover? I thought that years to recover is only for those sites who are around for 10 + years and have 10s of thousands of posts. Let me know!! And thanks for the insight!

[@markusv3000]

Thank you for sharing.

[@matt16matt]

First person experience doesn't make a content useful, you also have to understand what visitors are looking for. Also it's sad that lots of small good websites where hit and leave space for bad content made by big websites. Not the same rules for everyone. A sitewide algorithm isn't a good one. Thanks for all the information and your time. If you find a travel website that have recovered from that it will be great.

[@StefanMertes-Screen-Printing]

Thank you for your opinion!

[@AlexHawker761]

This was super helpful, thanks.

[@Jacob-ev7zk]

Thank you for this content update 😉

[@circeus]

What I'm deducing from cross-referencing your comments with a lot of the HCU complaining (which honestly feels like whining at this point, but admittedly our agency deals solely in Google Maps SEO so I'm biased) is: The "common wisdom" (argued by John Muller) that Core-linked declined take months to recover because you have to wait for a next core update do not apply to negative classifiers like HCU. Negative classifiers take over a year to recover at a minimum, if you're lucky (something which john explicitly alluded to himself). HCU "recoveries" in march are more likely to be recoveries related to earlier impacts like review updates.

[@iamjoshkoop]

Except there was none in March… Google is more interested in pushing Reddit and their AI data acquisitions.

[@user-pq6jd4qm1h]

Only 50 words of the forum site page are ranking in the top SERP of Google, and I am not talking about one forum, there are many such forums which are taking top positions, Apart from forums, I have seen that more than one page of TikTok and KZbin is getting ranked on one search query. Does Google consider this as helpful content? If a blogger posts a blog in 50 words, will it consider it helpful and give it ranking in the top SERP?

[@robphelps1291]

One of our small sized clients has gone from 4k to 7k daily visitors. Medical niche. It’s possible to do well on Google even if the business is relatively small still.

[@SamuelLavoie]

Good insights. Thank you for connecting the dots with past updates. I’ve been through Panda and Penguin, and it baffles me how often people forget. Read the tea leaves, folks!

[@andrewsiemon]

Google traffic is never coming back. I'm focusing on other ways to drive traffic.

[@nikolaradojcin8723]

Ever since I saw Verge's PC building video I can't take anything they do seriously. I have no respect for them

[@iamjoshkoop]

Man love how “search was getting bad” yet Forbes and all the shit “authorities” continue to publish very not “first hand experience” and have no penalties

[@discovermetaldetecting]

Hi Lily, do you still think that it's possible for a site to recover to some extent if people are still somehow finding your site, staying on site, interacting and reading multiple content? Will Google still tracks certain metrics that might improve a sites rankings? Gaz.

[@anelramadanovic7176]

Thank you for sharing this valuable insight

[@jeremychrist]

Thanks Lily, that was very helpful! It’s crazy to know that some brands can’t survive 1 or 2 years waiting for the traffic to recovery. In general what advice can you provide while Google is catching up? Authentic Social trust building and PPC? I’m sure Google would love the additional revenue 😊

[@happythec1am]

love the video thank you!

[@JesusLeadershipTraining]

thanks lily

[@paulotheurbanfarmer5982]

Hey happy Sunday 😃

[@thepremiumbirdsabbottabad1032]

do yuo think that a newbee should enter in blogging or not? please i need a comphrenive reply as after this update apparantely things seem diffcult

[@MarcP5267]

If you were hit by this update and you think you followed Google guidelines 110%, is it possible that there could have been some stuff that you didn’t follow like a gray area and as a result your site got hit? I know a small publisher that swears he followed Google 110%. But he said he has some HARO links, hmmm.