Starting in May, 2022, the Google has launched it’s core update that has penalized almost 80% of websites in a positive or negative manner. However, we’ve seen a trend of positive ratings for high-quality content and Google has penalized commercial written content with poor structure.
The new rules are simple: if your website is boring, irrelevant, or low-quality content, it won’t be able to outrank on Google search results pages. But don’t worry if your website has been penalized or has reduced the rankings.
I myself has been blogging and doing SEO for almost 13 years and my 2 websites were severely hit by this Google core update 2022. But I’ve never let my self down.
We’ve found some 7 ingenious ways to recover from this hit of Google in May 2022 and almost 2 months later I’ve managed to regain all of my traffic and that’s not all. The pages are gaining ranks and continuing the trend.
So, here’ one of my first full Google May Core update recoveries. The site regained all it’s traffic and is still climbing. Here’s what we did:
Recover from Google Core Update 2022
What we know about Google May Core update 2022
Suffering from an algorithmic penalty due to Google’s constant algorithm updates can be a very difficult thing to overcome, especially when you don’t know where to begin.
Google’s Core update as in May 2022 in particular can cause serious problems for your website and your business if you’re not prepared for it.
This guide will walk you through 7 ways to recover from this type of penalty in the best way possible, so that you can get back on track and working towards growing your business again!
In May of 2022, Google issued an algorithmic penalty to thousands of websites around the world that were using black hat SEO techniques to push their sites to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).
The majority of those affected were using low-quality links and content scraped from other websites, which caused their rankings to plummet overnight.
Improve existing thin content
If you get hit by an algorithmic penalty, one of your first tasks is going to be identifying and fixing any content quality issues. Of course you’ll want to fix issues that have caused other penalties too, but generally speaking it’s easier to recover when your content quality is strong.
First make sure every page on your site has value: lots of helpful content on each page along with clear calls-to-action (CTAs). Then remove filler keywords or synonyms that don’t provide any value: they’ll drag down your overall average word count and may push you into keyword cannibalization territory.
We identified and updated all the thin and improperly formatted content on the site. (We considered any article less than 400 words to be thin). We removed useless posts and added content to the good-but-not-complete posts.
Create non-commercial content for topical relevancy
This is by far one of the easiest ways to recover from an algorithmic penalty. If you’re following basic on-page SEO best practices (including avoiding things like duplicate title tags) and still have been hit with a penalty, focus on building links naturally and relevantly.
This may include: Inviting your site’s audience to link back using social media Participating in social media conversations relevant to your brand (but don’t be pushy!)
Finding more natural opportunities for earning press mentions Being more thoughtful about guest blogging Keep doing everything right now: All of these suggestions also assume that you are already following all existing webmaster guidelines.
We created 30 new topically related articles to support our ‘money pages’. These new articles have no affiliate links, no commercial intent and are geared exclusively towards helping the user (While keeping our users longer on the site).
Google Core Update May 2022
Create new articles and add internal backlinks
If you are hit by an algorithmic penalty, do what you can to ensure that your pages show up for any terms for which they are relevant.
This means writing content about important topics and then making sure that your pages get linked to. The faster you can create links back to your site (even if they aren’t from authoritative sites), and eventually build new pages that fill out your topical authority, the faster you can recover after penalties.
We built internal links from the new 30 articles pointing to the pre-existing ‘money’ pages on the site. We heavily emphasized internal navigation and topical relevance (ie: pages linked to other pages on the same topic). We created 128 new internal links.
Add original imagery and remove stocks
Stock images are cheap and effective—but they can’t always tell your story. If you’re looking for credibility, take time to find an image that is compelling and speaks to your audience.
However, keep in mind that free stock photos aren’t always free—there may be hidden costs associated with using copyrighted images. Make sure you know what you are allowed to use before uploading any stock photos into your website.
We removed all the stock imagery from our content and replaced it with new original imagery. This was long but improved user retention as all the images are now exclusive to the site.
Remove indexing errors
We went into the search console, identified pages that were “found but not indexed” and improved all of them. We resolved all the issues we could find in the search console.
Get new backlinks
We built 10 new links pointing promoting the new, non-commercial, topical content that we published (the 30 articles).
Result
And that’s it. 2 weeks later the site surged back to life, regaining all it’s rankings, traffic and profitability. Woo! I acknowledge that Google is still performing updates so this might have been positively impacted by a post-May-Core recent update.
If you love being on the cutting edge of SEO as much as I do, then join me this Wednesday June 22nd at 2:00pm EST for some breakthroughs in SEO that I’m going to share
The bottom line
When it comes to SEO optimization, one thing you need is better-quality content. But that’s often easier said than done. While more content generally means more SEO power, too much of a good thing can hurt your site’s performance.
The key is balance: When you post new content—from short blogs posts to long-form articles—make sure it’s actually useful and relevant for your users.
That way they’ll value it more (and be more likely to link back), and Google will reward you for producing higher-quality material.