My site got hit by Google core update, should I get a new site?
Recently Google had its algorithm update (August and November) where my site got hit and tanked in Google SERPs. My site went down from 30K unique visitors to 500 unique vistiros daily. Should I switch to new website on a brand new domain OR operate the existing one and improve it?
Lots of discussion on seroundtalbe and reddit that people bought a new domain and migrated to faster web host had seen their content re-appear and rank much higher in Google SERP. I want to get suggestion if that is really possible? How can I get my site back into Google after it got hit by core update. FYI 70% of the site content is lists (listicle) and informative, daily clicks down to 500 only, and average ranking position dropped from page 1 to page 4 and 5. Should I optimize it more by adding content?
tags: #google #core #algorithm #updates #reddit #seo #optimize #tips
Hi Harsh, i would suggest you should keep adding relevant content and modify the already published content so that it can improve the chances of bouncing back in Google SERP. I read that many webmaster / bloggers had switched to new domain name and got their rankings back within a month. I also experienced that when I got a new domain, put all old content on the new domain, bought a faster web hosting package (here at The-Online.com) and implemented new UX by chaning the site theme, my 3 out of 4 sites bounced back and started ranking again. Though the traffic was 20% less than earlier (Google search core up-date of August) but slowly my new site is improving. I was first hosting with bluehost and had long page loading time, may be that was also got hit by core update, so I migrated. Now my pages load in 1.5 seconds than they used to earlier which was 5 seconds plus. So don’t discard old content completly.
Use can improve your site’s value by adding helpful content and removing those listicles or list type articles. Also add more informative content. Getting a new domain name may work, as I too came across such discussion on X/twitter. Switching to better web hosting can do wonders if your site is loading in more than 2 seconds. I’ve seen sites having 4 or 5 seconds load time got hit in Google core updates. So speed matters the most and good content which answers the queries.
Don’t target keywords in site title, meta tags, h1, paragraphs all the time. The minimum on-page SEO you’ll use the more easy the site will rank. Google started penalizing those using too much of SEO on a page. Try writing for people and not for search engines. If you users love your content it will rank well in SERP
Switching to new theme and writing more useful content, consolidating old articles, etc. can give a boost to your entire website in next Google core update or even earlier. You can also try to migrate site to new web host which provides fast web hosting than the traditional hosts using older hardware. I would suggest go with mid-size hosting company like The Online than going with big brands like ovh or go-daddy or hosting.com. Also avoid too low end hosts that are advertised on lowendtalk or such forums as they are mostly oversold servers thus resulting in slow site speeds. If you budget, get a cloud vps or cloud server.
Indeed site can boom back into Google SERP on page one if blogger or webmaster try to improve the content by avoiding A-I generated articles. AI may rank higher initially, but when Google and Bing bot crawl it and index they’ll later de-rank those pages or completely de-list them from SERP. Better write manually hand-written posts that are helpful and which solves users problems or answer their intent.
Many users on Reddit (u/SEO) are concluding that migrating to new domain works if the entire domain is penalised by Google or Bing. In my personal experience, I got new domain, new web hosting provider, and also used a new theme. No trace of old site, and re-wrote (not copy-pasted) all the articles. There were 1200 of them and my new sites is now ranking on spot 9 or 10 (first page of google), the GSC (google search console) showing daily 2300 clicks which are more than what I was prior to Google core August update and March update.
Informational sites and those blog-gers writing product reviews are now seeing increase in traffic after google november core update. My own 4 informational sites related to travel, tech, laptop comparison, etc. have bounced back in Google search on page 1 and 2. Impressions have increased two fold. Clicks are same as earlier to March update. So very good for me. I did not switched to new domain but yes, I migrated website from bigrock to The-Online.com in september itself. It took full month to gain my rankings back 50% and then by november end its 80-85%.
Well, I don’t think it is right to switch to new domain. IF your web-site is quite old, has good backlinks, trust and authority then just modify the current content and keep adding new one. A change in UX can be beneficial. I’ve read lot of comments on webmaster-world about it. But concentrate on established site than getting a new one, as it may be sandboxed!
SE-O is not dead. Just use it sparingly and never over-optimize. I’ve seen bloggers using extact match keywords all over their articles, headings like h1, h2, h3, and meta tags, and image alt tags. This will surely penalize in google core algorithm updates.
Try optimizing on-page SEO correctly. I’ve seen many clients who were penalized during March, August, November core updates bounce back when pages were optimized with right SEO, internal links, linking to reputable sources, and being elaborative. Though some say writing shore content helps but it should answer the search intent of the user. Site that copied Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) questions and created articles pasting the answers were heavily penalized in both core updates. So avoid doing that.