March 31, 2025 • 19 mins
Google's recent core update completed March 27th represents a shift in how websites are ranked, potentially causing dramatic changes in traffic for sites not following best practices.
Link to the lesson mentioned during this episode:
Watch > How to use Google Search Console
In this episode, we discuss...
- Google's "Core updates" evaluate a website's general approach to SEO, not specific elements
- These larger updates happen only once or twice yearly, compared to hundreds of routine updates
- Small business owners and DIY SEO practitioners are most vulnerable to negative impacts
- Google Search Console is the only reliable tool to determine if your site has been affected
- Third-party ranking tools often get disrupted during major updates as they violate Google guidelines
- Sites creating content primarily for SEO rather than human value are most likely to be penalized
- AI-generated content is particularly vulnerable if it lacks original expertise or genuine value
- Quality content should provide original information, comprehensive coverage, and demonstrate expertise
- Content should be structured logically (like content hubs) to show comprehensive topic coverage
- Mobile optimization, trustworthiness signals, and authentic expertise are crucial ranking factors
---
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Some major , major major events in the SEO
world.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
No, not really.
Actually some big events, sowe've been away.
While we were away, google wasrolling out a core update.
So a core update.
They do this.
As you probably don't remember,google rolls out updates all
the time.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes, I do remember that.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Like dozens and maybe even hundreds of updates per
year.
A core update they typically doonce or twice a year and it's a
much bigger update.
It generally applies to not thelittle things that you're doing
on your website, like not yourtags and not even your pages,
but your general approach to SEO.
They are updating themethodology they use to rank
(00:45):
websites, so it's a much deeperupdate.
That's why there's not as manyof them, and so, as a result of
a core update, some websites aregoing to see a dramatic decline
in traffic and other websitesmight see an increase in traffic
.
Now this update just completed.
On March 27th.
(01:07):
It completed the rollout.
Oh very recent, Very recent.
So I haven't seen personallyany sites be negatively affected
by this Yet.
Yet my consultant clientsprobably will not be affected by
this.
It's very rare because they'repretty much doing the right
stuff in terms of SEO, I wouldhope.
(01:28):
Yeah, right, the types of sitesthat are going to be affected
usually are, unfortunately, likesmall business owners, people
who are doing their own SEO.
You may have gotten some badSEO advice.
You may just be approaching itwrong.
Those, in my experience, aregoing to be the sites that are
hit negatively.
So this episode, I'll go overthe guidance that Google gives
(01:51):
how to figure out if your sitehas been negatively affected.
Yeah, Because one thing thathappens during these updates and
I guess especially the buzz hashappened a lot with this last
update is tracking tools getmessed up.
So tracking tools are.
You know, there's tons of SEOtools out there to tell you
where you're ranking and do allthis stuff for you.
(02:12):
That's technically against therules, Like Google, like those
tools are going against Googleguidelines.
So often when there's an update, those tools get sort of I'm
going to say thwarted.
They just get messed up becausewhat they're doing Google's
trying to prevent what they'redoing anyway because it's
scraping data.
So when you think about it,those tools are, they're just
(02:33):
querying Google over and overand over and over and they're
going through all the pages.
That sort of thing costs Googlemoney, because Google their big
expense is probably computingpower and the more people who
are doing that running, say,thousands of searches per second
, which you can do it's going toincrease the demand on Google's
resources.
They don't want you to do that.
(02:54):
Google doesn't want you to dothat.
So when there's a big updatelike this, a lot of times these
tools get messed up, Relying onan outside tool to track your
rankings.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Other than.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Other than Google.
Yeah, you may or may not beable.
You're probably not gettingaccurate information to begin
with, but you may not be able toidentify if you have been hit
by this.
The way to identify if yourwebsite has been hit by this is
to use Google Search Console.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And that's the tool you should be using to track
your rankings.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And that's what you've been saying all along it
is the only tool you should beusing.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It is straight from the source.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So why are these other tools there?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
They make money, they make money.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Are they telling people that they have better
rankings than they do?
Yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I don't know about that?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Probably not, but this sort of thing used to be
okay.
I remember years ago and theseother tools there weren't that
many of them, which is thereason that they were kind of
considered to be okay and asthey grew, Google made a
decision we don't want this.
It's just getting out of hand.
And I used to use one of thesetools called oh man, I don't
(04:02):
even remember what it was called, but it was really really good
kind of stop allowing this thattool that I was using said that
they had to make a big decision.
Everybody doing that in theindustry had to make a big
decision.
Do we keep doing what we'redoing and fight Google and try
to escape Google, or do we goalong with Google's guidelines
(04:24):
and kind of be on their team?
The website I was using decidedto go along with Google and
they said so we're no longergoing to provide ranking
information.
Lots of other companies stilldo try to do that.
Just understand you're notgoing to be getting accurate
information.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Good to know.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Or at least not as accurate as you would be getting
.
It might be pretty accurate,but better information would
come from Google Search Console.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Google it.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So that's how you determine if your website is hit
from a core update like thisand what you are looking for.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, wait, how do you do it?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So you look at the number Go to.
Google, google Search Console,and you look at your number of
impressions in Google SearchConsole.
Yeah, if you don't know how todo that, you should visit my
site, where there's a guide onhow to do that.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Can you put a link in the podcast?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I will put a link in the podcast link in the podcast.
I will put a link in thepodcast and you look at the
impressions over time and youshould look at probably the last
at least three months and youwill see a fairly dramatic
decline in the number ofimpressions.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
If you were hit?
Speaker 1 (05:24):
If you were hit starting, the earliest possible
would be mid-March.
Oh, so it's very recent, yeah,and it's possible that it won't
even be evident yet.
That's the thing.
Like this is so new that youmight not notice, okay, but it's
certainly a good idea to gocheck and also to get in the
habit of checking Google SearchConsole to see how you're doing.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
See how your website is progressing.
If it is progressing, hopefullyit is.
You're listening to this,that's right.
Okay, so what does Google sayyou should do if your website?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
is a hit by this.
What do you do?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And the guidance, unfortunately, is pretty vague
because it's not a specificthing.
They come right out and theysay there is no single action
you can take.
It is nothing, there's nothingwrong with your pages.
You might have perfecttechnical SEO with your pages.
You might have perfecttechnical SEO, but what it means
is that you are not creatingwhat Google would consider
reliable, helpful, people-basedcontent.
(06:20):
Remember helpful content?
There was an update.
They literally called helpfulcontent.
We talk about it to no end onthis podcast like making your
blog a resource, making ituseful, making it valuable to
people.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yes, that is doing SEO, and that's a place to come
home to.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Sure, if you're writing your blogs and you're
creating your content becauseyou think it's good for SEO and
you're doing it based on whatyou're guessing is good for SEO.
I will tell you that's bad SEO.
That is what Google is tryingto eliminate.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
They want it to come from the heart.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I mean, when you think about it, if you were
Google, would you want to?
And you have your customers,right?
Your customers come to you,they search for things and you
send them to websites.
You want those customers tokeep coming back.
Yes, so would you send thosecustomers to websites that are
just creating shit for SEO?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
You wouldn't.
And again, the reason why thecore updates are, I think, more
frequent is because the rise ofall these AI tools and they're
going to do everything for you,and so Google has.
We talked about this in anepisode late last year.
Google literally did hundredsof thousands of tests to
identify AI generated content,so Google is on top of this.
(07:35):
I think this is it's a prettydynamic time in SEO right now
because AI is changing a lot ofthis.
It's there's a lot of new crapout there.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah.
So what you're saying also isthat all of these blogs, slash
tools, slash sites, slashsoftware that say just plug in
these words and we'll write yourblog for you.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Pretty terrible.
Usually.
Yeah, if that's how you'recreating your blog, all you're
doing is scraping togetherlittle bits from other websites,
because that's all AI is doingit's just getting other bits
from websites on the internet.
So Google does go a little bitbeyond that.
However, google has a what theycall a quality rater guideline,
and it is what they give topeople who they hire to identify
(08:19):
what a valuable website lookslike.
So Google doesn't make thedecision.
Google doesn't necessarilydecide automatically.
This is we think this is what ahelpful website looks like.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
What they do is they hire, or have hired in the past,
tens of thousands of people andthey call them quality raters
and they give them a guideline,which is like a PDF that's, I
think, like 2000 pages long, howto evaluate websites and then,
based on the information theyget from those people, they kind
of reverse engineer theiralgorithm Google does, so that
(08:51):
they can identify what peoplereport as being good websites.
That's kind of how Google works.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
My scrambles, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
That's OK, it's you don't.
You don't need to remember.
Ok, that was just some funinformation for me.
So Google does give a a bunchof questions that you should ask
yourself.
Ok if you were hit by a coreupdate?
Now, this is also just good SEO, okay.
So you should be askingyourself these questions
regardless.
I'm going to read off some ofthese questions, but there's
(09:22):
literally way too many.
You can go and read that2,000-page PDF if you'd like.
It's fascinating information.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I can't even make it to page five, but there are
summaries of them differentplaces.
You could do a Google searchfor something like Google
quality rater guidelinequestions.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And rater is R-A-T-E-R.
Rater, rater, yeah Not ratersof the lost art.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Correct.
Correct, but here let's coversome of these questions.
Okay.
So Question number I'm just I'mgoing to number these, even
though I'm just doing a few ofthem.
Does the content provideoriginal information, reporting,
research or analysis?
So right there, if you're usingAI to generate your content, I
would say the answer is no.
(10:07):
Now then ask yourself are youproviding original information,
reporting or research, or areyou just regurgitating something
else you saw online?
Does the?
This is question number two.
Does the content provide asubstantial, complete or
comprehensive description of thetopic?
So this would be.
This would be like content hubs.
(10:28):
I don't know if we've reallytalked about content hubs.
I have a lesson on content hubs.
I'll link that below too.
Oh very nice.
Content hubs are a way ofstructuring your hopefully
resourceful blog informationinto topics.
So lots of blogs are justrandom, they just have all you
might have a bunch of.
You might have a topic reallywell covered on your blog, but
(10:50):
it's not structured to be a whatwe would call, in this point
here, a comprehensivedescription.
So a content hub would bestructuring it different.
So you're so it's.
That is, more of a guide on aparticular topic, like, let's
say, you have a blog on, like,the best parks in Brooklyn to
take pictures of your kids, so acomprehensive guide would
(11:11):
probably cover a bunch of thedifferent parks.
Now each blog article would bea single blog, a single article
but they'd all be under thecontent hub.
Yes, you would have parks yes,exactly that's exactly so that
that would be a what we googlejust described as a substantial,
complete or comprehensivedescription of the topic.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Okay, okay already, just those two things make me
ready to go to sleep yeah, soI'm gonna look for something
that's a little more exciting.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Okay, so those are two relating to topics.
Okay, so Google actually breaksthese questions down into the
different categories.
Those were probably the mostboring.
Oh my gosh, Okay, good we havea couple more categories I'm
going to go through.
I'm just going to read one fromeach category.
Okay, expertise questions.
Okay, so this is relating toyour expertise when you create
(12:01):
something.
Okay, expertise question numberone yeah, does the content
present information in a waythat makes you want to trust it?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
So this goes along with a whole bunch of other
stuff.
That's a big topic in itself.
But if there's something thatmakes you look more trustworthy
like a badge, an award, you canlink to any sort of credentials
or anything that would make you.
If you were looking at yoursite, what would make you think,
oh, I trust this person becauseof X, y, z, whatever that X, Y,
(12:30):
Z?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Aren't there so many badges that you just buy People?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
just buy them there are, so look for the most
trustworthy.
Oh okay, not just any badge.
I can create a dozen badges inthe next half hour, but is there
something that would make youlook more trustworthy?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Are you a member of your city's business council for
small business Right?
That would make you look prettytrustworthy.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, better bureau, business, business.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
I think their days are gone.
Oh, they keep sending me emails, exactly.
Another question is the contentwritten by an expert or
enthusiast who knows the topicwell.
So this is kind of the samething Show like not only that
you're trustworthy, but that youhave the right experience.
Okay, you can be trustworthy,but if you're a car mechanic
(13:22):
talking about photography, youdon't have the right experience.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Correct, you don't have the right expertise.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I'm sure the next section, presentation and
production questions, so howyour website is put together.
Question number one does itdisplay well for mobile devices
when viewed on them?
Okay, that's pretty important.
These days I'm going to assumemost people listening are on
Squarespace or Wix or ShowIt orwhatever and that you've got
taken care of.
But do look at your website ona phone.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, it's different.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
I have experienced many, many, many, many times
when dealing with new clientsand we look at their website on
a mobile and the response islike oh shit, and just nobody
has ever looked.
I've done that myself, actually.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, if I was a client, oh dear.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah.
What is the impression that youhave if you look at somebody's
website on mobile and it's justa jumbled mess?
Do you trust that company?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
No, you think get your shit together yeah exactly
so do that.
I'm trying.
I'm not talking to you, I'mstill trying.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Okay, question number two from presentation and
production, production.
One more time Production Is thecontent mass produced or
outsourced to a large number ofcreators.
I would throw AI productioninto this category.
You got to be.
If you're using AI to generate,it's hard to harp on AI a lot,
(14:45):
but if you're using AI togenerate your content, at least
create a draft, creates the coreyourself and then use AI to
polish it and make it.
You know, flesh it out, make itlook a little better.
To polish it and make it.
You know, flesh it out, make itlook a little better, present a
little better.
Don't do the reverse.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Don't use AI to create the core concept.
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Oh, because that's what I've done.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well, what you could do is use AI to like.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Just start a first draft.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Not even start a draft, but like give you ideas,
do some brainstorming, don'tcreate the draft.
Create the draft yourself Ifyou're not creating your own.
If you're not creating thedraft, then your draft is just a
mix mash of other websites,information.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Okay, that's not what you want to do no.
And the final section.
Here.
I'm just going to take onequestion from this.
This is comparative questions,so comparing your website to
others.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
And the question that I'm going to take here is going
to sound familiar.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Christian.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Mack, Does the content seem to be serving the
genuine interests of visitors ordoes it seem to solely exist by
attempting to guess what mightrank well in search engines?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Okay, Dun, dun, dun dun.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, okay, so if I haven't drilled that point home
enough, there it is again.
I am not doing my job.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, because whenever I do use AI, it's so
cliche.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, I mean AI.
As great a tool as it is, ai isnot an experienced expert in
anything aside from collectinginformation.
Right, if you wanted to write apaper on how AI creates
responses, then I would probablyuse I would ask to do that, but
other than that, like you'rethe expert here, ok, so the, the
(16:32):
information, the content, theidea, the concept has to be
coming from you.
You are the expert.
Use AI as a tool to polish it,not the reverse.
Ok, the concept has to becoming from you.
You are the expert.
Use AI as a tool to polish it,not the reverse.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Okay, so go check Google search console.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I would say, check it now.
And because these things coreupdates are, they don't roll out
quickly, the effects might notbe seen quickly.
Check in a few weeks, in amonth, see if you've been hit.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Hope you haven't.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Hope this helps.
And again the reason that I saythere no.
And again the reason.
All right, Some major , major major events in the SEO
world.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
No, not really.
Actually some big events, sowe've been away.
While we were away, google wasrolling out a core update.
So a core update.
They do this.
As you probably don't remember,google rolls out updates all
the time.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes, I do remember that.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Like dozens and maybe even hundreds of updates per
year.
A core update they typically doonce or twice a year and it's a
much bigger update.
It generally applies to not thelittle things that you're doing
on your website, like not yourtags and not even your pages,
but your general approach to SEO.
They are updating themethodology they use to rank
(00:45):
websites, so it's a much deeperupdate.
That's why there's not as manyof them, and so, as a result of
a core update, some websites aregoing to see a dramatic decline
in traffic and other websitesmight see an increase in traffic
.
Now this update just completed.
On March 27th.
(01:07):
It completed the rollout.
Oh very recent, Very recent.
So I haven't seen personallyany sites be negatively affected
by this Yet.
Yet my consultant clientsprobably will not be affected by
this.
It's very rare because they'repretty much doing the right
stuff in terms of SEO, I wouldhope.
(01:28):
Yeah, right, the types of sitesthat are going to be affected
usually are, unfortunately, likesmall business owners, people
who are doing their own SEO.
You may have gotten some badSEO advice.
You may just be approaching itwrong.
Those, in my experience, aregoing to be the sites that are
hit negatively.
So this episode, I'll go overthe guidance that Google gives
(01:51):
how to figure out if your sitehas been negatively affected.
Yeah, Because one thing thathappens during these updates and
I guess especially the buzz hashappened a lot with this last
update is tracking tools getmessed up.
So tracking tools are.
You know, there's tons of SEOtools out there to tell you
where you're ranking and do allthis stuff for you.
(02:12):
That's technically against therules, Like Google, like those
tools are going against Googleguidelines.
So often when there's an update, those tools get sort of I'm
going to say thwarted.
They just get messed up becausewhat they're doing Google's
trying to prevent what they'redoing anyway because it's
scraping data.
So when you think about it,those tools are, they're just
(02:33):
querying Google over and overand over and over and they're
going through all the pages.
That sort of thing costs Googlemoney, because Google their big
expense is probably computingpower and the more people who
are doing that running, say,thousands of searches per second
, which you can do it's going toincrease the demand on Google's
resources.
They don't want you to do that.
(02:54):
Google doesn't want you to dothat.
So when there's a big updatelike this, a lot of times these
tools get messed up, Relying onan outside tool to track your
rankings.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Other than.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Other than Google.
Yeah, you may or may not beable.
You're probably not gettingaccurate information to begin
with, but you may not be able toidentify if you have been hit
by this.
The way to identify if yourwebsite has been hit by this is
to use Google Search Console.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
And that's the tool you should be using to track
your rankings.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And that's what you've been saying all along it
is the only tool you should beusing.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It is straight from the source.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So why are these other tools there?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
They make money, they make money.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Are they telling people that they have better
rankings than they do?
Yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
I don't know about that?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Probably not, but this sort of thing used to be
okay.
I remember years ago and theseother tools there weren't that
many of them, which is thereason that they were kind of
considered to be okay and asthey grew, Google made a
decision we don't want this.
It's just getting out of hand.
And I used to use one of thesetools called oh man, I don't
(04:02):
even remember what it was called, but it was really really good
kind of stop allowing this thattool that I was using said that
they had to make a big decision.
Everybody doing that in theindustry had to make a big
decision.
Do we keep doing what we'redoing and fight Google and try
to escape Google, or do we goalong with Google's guidelines
(04:24):
and kind of be on their team?
The website I was using decidedto go along with Google and
they said so we're no longergoing to provide ranking
information.
Lots of other companies stilldo try to do that.
Just understand you're notgoing to be getting accurate
information.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Good to know.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Or at least not as accurate as you would be getting
.
It might be pretty accurate,but better information would
come from Google Search Console.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Google it.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So that's how you determine if your website is hit
from a core update like thisand what you are looking for.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, wait, how do you do it?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So you look at the number Go to.
Google, google Search Console,and you look at your number of
impressions in Google SearchConsole.
Yeah, if you don't know how todo that, you should visit my
site, where there's a guide onhow to do that.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Can you put a link in the podcast?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I will put a link in the podcast link in the podcast.
I will put a link in thepodcast and you look at the
impressions over time and youshould look at probably the last
at least three months and youwill see a fairly dramatic
decline in the number ofimpressions.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
If you were hit?
Speaker 1 (05:24):
If you were hit starting, the earliest possible
would be mid-March.
Oh, so it's very recent, yeah,and it's possible that it won't
even be evident yet.
That's the thing.
Like this is so new that youmight not notice, okay, but it's
certainly a good idea to gocheck and also to get in the
habit of checking Google SearchConsole to see how you're doing.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
See how your website is progressing.
If it is progressing, hopefullyit is.
You're listening to this,that's right.
Okay, so what does Google sayyou should do if your website?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
is a hit by this.
What do you do?
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And the guidance, unfortunately, is pretty vague
because it's not a specificthing.
They come right out and theysay there is no single action
you can take.
It is nothing, there's nothingwrong with your pages.
You might have perfecttechnical SEO with your pages.
You might have perfecttechnical SEO, but what it means
is that you are not creatingwhat Google would consider
reliable, helpful, people-basedcontent.
(06:20):
Remember helpful content?
There was an update.
They literally called helpfulcontent.
We talk about it to no end onthis podcast like making your
blog a resource, making ituseful, making it valuable to
people.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yes, that is doing SEO, and that's a place to come
home to.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Sure, if you're writing your blogs and you're
creating your content becauseyou think it's good for SEO and
you're doing it based on whatyou're guessing is good for SEO.
I will tell you that's bad SEO.
That is what Google is tryingto eliminate.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
They want it to come from the heart.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I mean, when you think about it, if you were
Google, would you want to?
And you have your customers,right?
Your customers come to you,they search for things and you
send them to websites.
You want those customers tokeep coming back.
Yes, so would you send thosecustomers to websites that are
just creating shit for SEO?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
You wouldn't.
And again, the reason why thecore updates are, I think, more
frequent is because the rise ofall these AI tools and they're
going to do everything for you,and so Google has.
We talked about this in anepisode late last year.
Google literally did hundredsof thousands of tests to
identify AI generated content,so Google is on top of this.
(07:35):
I think this is it's a prettydynamic time in SEO right now
because AI is changing a lot ofthis.
It's there's a lot of new crapout there.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah.
So what you're saying also isthat all of these blogs, slash
tools, slash sites, slashsoftware that say just plug in
these words and we'll write yourblog for you.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Pretty terrible.
Usually.
Yeah, if that's how you'recreating your blog, all you're
doing is scraping togetherlittle bits from other websites,
because that's all AI is doingit's just getting other bits
from websites on the internet.
So Google does go a little bitbeyond that.
However, google has a what theycall a quality rater guideline,
and it is what they give topeople who they hire to identify
(08:19):
what a valuable website lookslike.
So Google doesn't make thedecision.
Google doesn't necessarilydecide automatically.
This is we think this is what ahelpful website looks like.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
What they do is they hire, or have hired in the past,
tens of thousands of people andthey call them quality raters
and they give them a guideline,which is like a PDF that's, I
think, like 2000 pages long, howto evaluate websites and then,
based on the information theyget from those people, they kind
of reverse engineer theiralgorithm Google does, so that
(08:51):
they can identify what peoplereport as being good websites.
That's kind of how Google works.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
My scrambles, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
That's OK, it's you don't.
You don't need to remember.
Ok, that was just some funinformation for me.
So Google does give a a bunchof questions that you should ask
yourself.
Ok if you were hit by a coreupdate?
Now, this is also just good SEO, okay.
So you should be askingyourself these questions
regardless.
I'm going to read off some ofthese questions, but there's
(09:22):
literally way too many.
You can go and read that2,000-page PDF if you'd like.
It's fascinating information.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I can't even make it to page five, but there are
summaries of them differentplaces.
You could do a Google searchfor something like Google
quality rater guidelinequestions.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And rater is R-A-T-E-R.
Rater, rater, yeah Not ratersof the lost art.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Correct.
Correct, but here let's coversome of these questions.
Okay.
So Question number I'm just I'mgoing to number these, even
though I'm just doing a few ofthem.
Does the content provideoriginal information, reporting,
research or analysis?
So right there, if you're usingAI to generate your content, I
would say the answer is no.
(10:07):
Now then ask yourself are youproviding original information,
reporting or research, or areyou just regurgitating something
else you saw online?
Does the?
This is question number two.
Does the content provide asubstantial, complete or
comprehensive description of thetopic?
So this would be.
This would be like content hubs.
(10:28):
I don't know if we've reallytalked about content hubs.
I have a lesson on content hubs.
I'll link that below too.
Oh very nice.
Content hubs are a way ofstructuring your hopefully
resourceful blog informationinto topics.
So lots of blogs are justrandom, they just have all you
might have a bunch of.
You might have a topic reallywell covered on your blog, but
(10:50):
it's not structured to be a whatwe would call, in this point
here, a comprehensivedescription.
So a content hub would bestructuring it different.
So you're so it's.
That is, more of a guide on aparticular topic, like, let's
say, you have a blog on, like,the best parks in Brooklyn to
take pictures of your kids, so acomprehensive guide would
(11:11):
probably cover a bunch of thedifferent parks.
Now each blog article would bea single blog, a single article
but they'd all be under thecontent hub.
Yes, you would have parks yes,exactly that's exactly so that
that would be a what we googlejust described as a substantial,
complete or comprehensivedescription of the topic.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Okay, okay already, just those two things make me
ready to go to sleep yeah, soI'm gonna look for something
that's a little more exciting.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Okay, so those are two relating to topics.
Okay, so Google actually breaksthese questions down into the
different categories.
Those were probably the mostboring.
Oh my gosh, Okay, good we havea couple more categories I'm
going to go through.
I'm just going to read one fromeach category.
Okay, expertise questions.
Okay, so this is relating toyour expertise when you create
(12:01):
something.
Okay, expertise question numberone yeah, does the content
present information in a waythat makes you want to trust it?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
So this goes along with a whole bunch of other
stuff.
That's a big topic in itself.
But if there's something thatmakes you look more trustworthy
like a badge, an award, you canlink to any sort of credentials
or anything that would make you.
If you were looking at yoursite, what would make you think,
oh, I trust this person becauseof X, y, z, whatever that X, Y,
(12:30):
Z?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Aren't there so many badges that you just buy People?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
just buy them there are, so look for the most
trustworthy.
Oh okay, not just any badge.
I can create a dozen badges inthe next half hour, but is there
something that would make youlook more trustworthy?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Are you a member of your city's business council for
small business Right?
That would make you look prettytrustworthy.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, better bureau, business, business.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
I think their days are gone.
Oh, they keep sending me emails, exactly.
Another question is the contentwritten by an expert or
enthusiast who knows the topicwell.
So this is kind of the samething Show like not only that
you're trustworthy, but that youhave the right experience.
Okay, you can be trustworthy,but if you're a car mechanic
(13:22):
talking about photography, youdon't have the right experience.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Correct, you don't have the right expertise.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I'm sure the next section, presentation and
production questions, so howyour website is put together.
Question number one does itdisplay well for mobile devices
when viewed on them?
Okay, that's pretty important.
These days I'm going to assumemost people listening are on
Squarespace or Wix or ShowIt orwhatever and that you've got
taken care of.
But do look at your website ona phone.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, it's different.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
I have experienced many, many, many, many times
when dealing with new clientsand we look at their website on
a mobile and the response islike oh shit, and just nobody
has ever looked.
I've done that myself, actually.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, if I was a client, oh dear.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah.
What is the impression that youhave if you look at somebody's
website on mobile and it's justa jumbled mess?
Do you trust that company?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
No, you think get your shit together yeah exactly
so do that.
I'm trying.
I'm not talking to you, I'mstill trying.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Okay, question number two from presentation and
production, production.
One more time Production Is thecontent mass produced or
outsourced to a large number ofcreators.
I would throw AI productioninto this category.
You got to be.
If you're using AI to generate,it's hard to harp on AI a lot,
(14:45):
but if you're using AI togenerate your content, at least
create a draft, creates the coreyourself and then use AI to
polish it and make it.
You know, flesh it out, make itlook a little better.
To polish it and make it.
You know, flesh it out, make itlook a little better, present a
little better.
Don't do the reverse.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Don't use AI to create the core concept.
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Oh, because that's what I've done.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well, what you could do is use AI to like.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Just start a first draft.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Not even start a draft, but like give you ideas,
do some brainstorming, don'tcreate the draft.
Create the draft yourself Ifyou're not creating your own.
If you're not creating thedraft, then your draft is just a
mix mash of other websites,information.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Okay, that's not what you want to do no.
And the final section.
Here.
I'm just going to take onequestion from this.
This is comparative questions,so comparing your website to
others.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
And the question that I'm going to take here is going
to sound familiar.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Christian.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Mack, Does the content seem to be serving the
genuine interests of visitors ordoes it seem to solely exist by
attempting to guess what mightrank well in search engines?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Okay, Dun, dun, dun dun.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, okay, so if I haven't drilled that point home
enough, there it is again.
I am not doing my job.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, because whenever I do use AI, it's so
cliche.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, I mean AI.
As great a tool as it is, ai isnot an experienced expert in
anything aside from collectinginformation.
Right, if you wanted to write apaper on how AI creates
responses, then I would probablyuse I would ask to do that, but
other than that, like you'rethe expert here, ok, so the, the
(16:32):
information, the content, theidea, the concept has to be
coming from you.
You are the expert.
Use AI as a tool to polish it,not the reverse.
Ok, the concept has to becoming from you.
You are the expert.
Use AI as a tool to polish it,not the reverse.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Okay, so go check Google search console.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I would say, check it now.
And because these things coreupdates are, they don't roll out
quickly, the effects might notbe seen quickly.
Check in a few weeks, in amonth, see if you've been hit.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Hope you haven't.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Hope this helps.
And again the reason that I saythere no.
And again the reason.
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