An SEO professional was concerned about a significant decrease in traffic. They did an audit and performed large-scale site changes.
They also discovered during the audit that there were likely some quality issues.
They were able to address those issues by February. By the June core update, they saw some increases, but they were not to the level that they saw before the decrease about a year ago.
So their question was: if the site quality issues were the cause, is this the level of recovery that they could expect?
John Mueller said they don’t have to fix anything. Instead, if they improve the relevance of the site, then they have a different website.
Large-scale site changes completed at once will trigger a new Google evaluation of your site. You don’t have to wait until the next core update for a recovery if the changes are large enough in scope.
John also explained that with core updates, it’s more of a relevance issue of the site overall than single things you have to fix.
This discussion happens at approximately the 18:32 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 6 18:32
Hey, John. So about a year ago, we saw some significant decrease in traffic. After the audit, we went through all the points, all the signals pointed to the site having site quality issues, we were able to address those issues by February this year.
And by June core update, we saw some increases, but it’s still not to the level where we used to be before the decrease about a year ago. So my question is, like the site quality issues, if that’s been the case, is this the recovery that we can expect? Or can we expect more recovery?
I think we’ve addressed all the issues identified. Or like, Is this it?
John 19:22
I think the tricky part here is it’s not so much that we would consider it as a situation where you have to fix something, but rather when it comes to relevance, if you work on improving the relevance of your website, then you have a different website, you have a better website.
So it’s not that we would switch back and say, Oh, it’s like the issue is fixed, and we will change it back to the previous state. But rather, you’re saying, well, this is a better website now. And we look at it and say, Oh, it’s a better website. It’s not the same as before.
So it would be kind of tricky to expect that it changes to the state it was before. But it’s a new website, it’s a better website. So that’s something where when I think especially with core updates when you’re talking about recovery, it’s not so much you’re recovering.
But rather Google is seeing that you have a better website and reacting to that.
SEO Professional 6 20:28
Understood. And when we talk about site quality issues, I think, like, from what we’ve been able to see, those were like, mostly, let’s say technical and the user experience issues and not like content quality issues.
Meaning that content-wise, I think we are very solid, but we had more ads than you should have on the page.
And that’s been addressed. And overall, the user experience has been improved, which like all the audits, and everything that we did, like pointed out that for those to be the reason.
John 21:04
Now, I think it’s kind of tricky because with the core updates, we don’t focus so much on just individual issues, but rather like the relevance of the website overall. And that can include things like the usability and the ads on a page. But it’s essentially the website overall.
And usually, that also means kind of the focus of the content, the way you’re presenting things, the way you’re making it clear to users, what’s behind the content, like what the sources are, all of these things, all of that kind of plays in.
So just going in and changing, like everything around the content, I think you can probably get some improvements there. But essentially, if you really want Google to see your website as something significantly better, you probably also need to work on the content side.
And at least from the focus point of view and think about where there might be low-quality content? Where might users be confused when they go to my website?
And is that confusion, something we can address with technical issues with UX changes? Or do we actually have to change some of the content that we present?
SEO Professional 6 22:21
Understood. And my last question would be: if that job came, not during a core update, but like a regular period of time, like, should you expect for the core updates to happen for you to see recovery? If you are addressing issues? Or should you expect recoveries to happen in a non-core update period?
John 22:44
I think if you make bigger changes on your website, regardless, you would see kind of a subtle change over time as we reprocess things and re-understand the signals. And if there was something from the core update that was significantly impacting it as well, then you would see a jump during the quarter update. But at least you should see kind of that subtotal improvement over time.
