Another day, another dolla

Another day, another update.

I haven’t talked much about Google updates here because quite frankly, they don’t impact me that much.

Google appears to be after niche sites, and since I work with eCom brands, I’m safe — Google continues to reward these types of sites.

And if you work in local or B2B SEO, you should be safe too.

Regardless, I wouldn’t be doing my job as an SEO if I didn’t keep up to date on the changes in Google search. So today, I’m going to walk through the changes of the March update and how (if at all) I’m changing my approach.

ICYMI, Google started their rollout of the March 2024 core update yesterday.

Here are the highlights; they want to:

• Reduce low-quality, unoriginal results, which they describe as a scaled version of the HCU in late 2023

• Keep more spam out of your results

• Combat scaled content abuse, specifically low-quality content

• Cut down on site reputation abuse, their attempt at eliminating Parasite SEO (though I bet Forbes will continue to be rewarded)

• Nerf the expired domain to 301 setup that many SEOs (including myself) leverage to instantly inject strong backlink profiles into our sites

So what does this change for me? Truthfully, not a whole lot.

Like I said, the eCom space is relatively well protected as long as you write high quality content and build natural-looking links, which we do.

That being said, we are going to spend an extra 45-60 minutes on each piece of content we create in the future to ensure that the content for our brand’s is better than any of their competitors. We’ll add more expert commentary, relevant anecdotes, and upgrade the visual experience of the content with photos & videos.

On the other hand, I will still use a combination of AI & human-edited content, I will continue to leverage parasite SEO until they stop it, and I’ll likely continue to search for expired domains.

Why? Because just because Google says they’re going to do something doesn’t mean that they will. They’ve said buying links is bad, yet I’ve been doing it for years with no penalty.

However, I’m using all of these more aggressive tactics on my personal sites. I don’t run live tests on my client sites.

But what does this mean for you? Well, if you’re doing what I’m doing, you’re good. If you’re mass publishing AI content, I applaud you for your great run but it may be coming to an end shortly.

Google seems determined to wipe niche sites off the map for good. Case in point, the update specifically mentions that it will devalue content that exists solely for the reason of targeting a specific query.

So if you were writing a blog to answer every single People Also Ask or Ask the Public question, you may be in for a traffic drop in the future.

We’ll see how the next few weeks play out, may the odds be in your favor.

See you on Friday.

Kai