Dec. Core Update Complete (Year End)
Recap of critical compontents I've seen significantly help owners recover and grow long-term. And the typical requirement to achieve meaningful results.
While this applies to Google, owners see meaningful growth across all traffic channels.
New Spam Update, Dec. 19th, 2024
For most bloggers, the recent December 2024 spam update does not apply. This update is meant to identify web content that's designed to deceive users or manipulate search systems in order to rank highly.
On average the majority of traffic to your business is new. When new users click a link in Google, Youtube, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. and land on your blog, and they’re primary focus is not content, but your overall business (1) and site quality (2), and then content.
You users know what they like and more importantly what they dislike.
Growth Best Practices
business, brand and purpose are aligned with defined audience (90/100)
site quality perfected, no excuses today (90/100)
content quality and consistency (90/100)
external authority (90/100)
audience engagement (90/100)
owner effort and consistency (90/100)
Most owners learn that the process of improving quality, for people, never ends. But this only comes after a mindset shift from, trying to rank in Google. And instead optimizing for people, which resonates everywhere.
Internal (out)
Resonates with all traffic channels, and users everywhere (long-term). A single piece of content thrives on all platforms and reinforces the quality of your business, brand and overall user retention. Example:
vs
External (in)
Gaming a traffic source, ex: google, pinterest, facebook (short-term) by trying to specifically optimize for that traffic source. And just because this works short-term, it does not mean it’s good. And it’s also the reason so many blogs suffer significant delines down the road.
Some sites certainly had success, with high-volume, low quality content. So again, just because it works, doesn’t mean it’s good or will last long-term.
Business, brand and purpose are aligned with defined audience.
Business
recognized by Google, Bing, even ChatGPT - are you known
do people search for your business - brand searches
Brand
do you have a high quality, original logo
does your logo resonate with your business
Purpose
Who you are, what you do, and why your doing it
Which implies your purpose is aligned with your audience
Without this, nothing will work. Which is why some blogs invest years into everything outlined below, and have zero success.
Site Quality
Infrastructure and Hosting
A+ performance
A+ security
TTFB sub 100ms
Improved User Experience
Improved Core Web Vitals
Improved Crawling
I’m the Founder and CEO
We priortize owners, not investors
$20 - $1,000/mo plans
Software - WordPress, Theme, Plugins (all modern)
Latest WordPress, within reason, avoid zero releases.
Kadence, top contender, used by 9 out of 10 owners today
Latest PHP, boost performance by 10-15%
Latest MySQL, boost performance by 10-15%
Lastest Linux OS, Kernel, and drivers, powers everything
Crave WordPress Management, $150/mo
Header/Branding/Navigation - extremely important
accessible on every single page site-wide
Content, About, Sales, Subscribe
Footer/Branding/Navigation - extremely important
accessible on every single page site-wide
Brand, Resource Pages, possibly top content or seasonal content
Categories - proper structure significantly increases relevance
easy for users/crawlers to find content
reinforces your purpose and overall site focus
Post/Pages - content quality starts with key site quality compontents
breadcrumbs, typically: Home > Category > Subcategory (easy for users/crawlers to find relevant content)
byline with Author’s full name, and link to full author profile
quality introduction, reinforcing what this is, who it’s for, how you’ll help
original featured image, quickly reinforcing effort/quality
table of contents, when appropriate, but common on high effort, high quality content
About Brand - comprehensive brand profile
reinforces the business and purpose
proper breadcrumbs linking to Home
typically third person
About Author - comprehensive author profile
reinforces the creator/author for content
proper breadcrumbs linking to Brand Profile
typically first person
Advertising Balance
no ads above the fold, priortize users
if table of contents is present, ads start after, not before
optimize settings, you can typically achieve 90% plus increase in user experience with only 2-3% decline in revenue
Raptive’s Cloudflare workers, when applicable
Avoid/limit Intrusive Call to Actions
popups specifically, if you have to force people to subscribe versus want to subscribe, perhaps this article will help, quality sites generally have a means to subscribe in the header, making it accessible on every page
in-content, priortize one meaningful call to action, and keep in mind you already have display ads, and it’s easy to go overboard.
Accessibilty, at least make an effort
Focus on Constrat and readability.
Audience Retention and Growth
continuously work to improve all of the above
site quality improvements on average, boost engagement, user retention, and brand loyalty.
If the above are done, you’re ahead of most owners. At this point you have a foundation for publishing content.
Business, Brand, Purpose + Site Quality
Content Quality
As you likely already know, the internet is spammed with low-quality, generic content ever minute. If you rely on tools like RankIQ, to tell you what to create, because it’s easy (often fake, it’s not easy), and it’s generic by default (trying to game search), this is not the way. And again, just because it worked, does not mean it’s good.
Expanding on the above, avoid surface level intent. And by this I mean, do not create content that can be answered in one paragraph or less, and write a 2,000 word article.
Intent is critical, if search intent can be answered in one paragraph, the user will never leave search, never leave socials, etc.
example:
how long is a marathon - answered by Google
how to reheat a potato - not adding value/generic
Successful Bloggers create truly meaningful content that resonates their audience.
High effort
High originality
First hand experience
Personal perspective
First person singular
Ability to answer Why
Aligned with brand purpose
Less is more, an article I wrote in Oct. outlines why 300 articles that match the list above are significantly better than 1,300 average articles.
And for obvious reasons, if you have that much low quality content, you’ll have to take care of it. A rough example of of site with 1,300 posts.
Bottom 50% consists of 650 posts.
Bottom Half - 25% consists of 325 posts, likely the lowest quality
- delete 410, or redirect to highly relevant, typicall quick
Next 25% - consists of 325 posts, not worth deleting, relevant
- require significant improvement, time consuming
- could take 525 hours or 13 weeks full-time
I generally recommend all bloggers review the bottom 50% as this
- delete/prune, quickly raises overall site quality
- significantly improve week over week, consistently improve site quality
Once done the bottom 50%, continue the process until you’re satisfied with the overall quality of your content and site.
Business, Brand, Purpose + Site Quality + Content Quality
External Authority
I have general rule when it comes to external authority. This is pointless unless ALL of the above is done and as close to perfect as possible. Owners who invest in this before completing the above are giving away money and never generate an ROI.
External authority is an amplifier, and if you have nothing worth amplifying, it’ll be nearly impossilbe to generate a return on investment.
Worse yet, Digital PR agencies are highly talented in marketing and sales, and know exactly what to say to close the sale, collect payment, and repeat.
If and when this applies!
Blogs on average lack internal post authority, not domain authority.
Internal post authority means that the post itself has meaningful, relevant, high-quality backlinks. This is a great example:
Pizza Dough
~212 ref. domains to rank in top 10
> this is only the top 10, not top 5, not 3, etc.
> top 3 average 430
> top 5 average 390
> page 2 averages about 100
In cases like this, external authority is an amplifier of internal quality.
I recommend building external backlinks based on data, to the top 3% of content on average. This typcially means you’re done everything and you’re stuck in position 8-12, often in a competitive topic.
Here you can see how this plays out across display revenue. Of course the average of the six highest revenue posts have 92 RD, followed by the next six with 85 RD.
And this is also a key component of return on investment. If you have a post making $258 per month in position 9, you can see how this scales and revenue increases as you rank higher.
Even a small increase from pos 9 to pos 5, yields a 3x in monthly revenue. And over the course of one year this adds up fast.
These are ROI positive!
And once again, less is more.
Audience Engagement
This affects every single algorithim today and is often overlooked. On average, people do not realize how advanced fine-tuned AI algorithims are today.
Quick Example
GPT4 is 10x more powerful than GPT3.5, and this is a LLM that covers every topic.
AI used by Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. is fine-tuned for it’s exact purpose. All of which factor in user engagement and reinforced learning.
In essence, the “query loop” concept is about leveraging continuous, aggregate feedback from real-world user interactions to refine search rankings over time. This feedback loop improves alignment with actual user intent, ensuring that the search experience continually evolves and improves as Google’s understanding of user satisfaction deepens.In my work with algorithms, I find the 75th percentile (p75) invaluable for understanding and optimizing the behavior of the majority, free from the distortion of extreme outliers—like those who think they can manipulate data.
This metric is common in algorithms evaluating user behavior and can help explain algorithmic penalties, shadow bans, and spam flags.
If you’ve lost traffic from any source, I’d start at the top of this list and work your way down, with the intent of improving quality.
This often takes time, and due to past historical references, and increasing quality takes months on average. It’s unlikely your going to trick algorithims into an instant recovery today.
Owner Effort and Consistency
Having audited more than 500 sites over the past five years, this one really stands out.
You get out of your business what you put into it.
I’ve met owners who invest 5 hours a week, and owners that invest 60 hours per week. And the outcome, success or otherwise, is overwhelmingly the owner’s commitment to their business.
Year End
With just a week until Christmas, it’s time to enjoy the spirit of the season. Wishing you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday filled with warmth, happiness, and special moments. Here’s to a Merry Christmas and a great start to the New Year!