Join us as we explore winning strategies which have been well responded to by the end-of-year Google core updates. We’ll kick off with a little introduction into why now, more than ever, a thorough understanding of Google’s core updates is key to business success. Then, we’ll delve into the specific tasks which have benefitted three of our clients over this most volatile of times – hopefully providing you with some inspiration for your own approach to digital success. In a week or two, we’ll share part 2, another 3 campaigns with positive post-algorithm ranking shifts.

Contents:

A (Very) Small History of Core Updates

Google’s Core Updates have been increasing in frequency since 2015. Where that year and the following two saw two core updates, the next three years (2018, 2019, & 2020) saw three per year.

Then, the brains over at Google HQ absolutely ramped up the engines in their reach for even more global dominance. 2023 had a whopping five core updates. 2024 had one less but included numerous substantial other algorithmic changes, too. These ranged from updates on site reputation abuse and explicit fake content to numerous spam updates. It’s safe to say it’s been a volatile couple of years.

So, to see search success and continue to grow your business, your brand will have to stay on top of these ever-increasingly-frequent changes. In short, it’s about keeping an ear to the ground on how the world’s most prominent search engine judges what makes a website worthy of putting in front of its 5 billion daily users.

To help, we thought we’d look at the most recent updates and changes. Namely, the two core updates landed within a month of each other at the tail end of 2024, and the spam update nestled in between.

But to bring something different to the conversation, we thought we’d showcase three of our client’s websites, which have responded positively to the site and the recent work we’ve done to achieve the favour of the gods of Google.

Core Update Winner 1: Wide-Ranging Optimisations for A Market Dominating B2B Water Dispenser Provider

We’ve worked on this website since 2021, bagging a UK Search Award and several other award nominations along the way. However, the site’s visibility continues to go from strength to strength. After the recent core updates, we’ve seen greater visibility increases than ever before.

While we expected performance to continue in a positive direction, the increase was beyond our original forecasts due to the goals we set and the actions we then implemented. But that’s the beauty of optimising with a human-first, user-centric approach. More often than not, algorithmic updates become something to look forward to.

We’ll kick off with the results and then showcase with full transparency the exact tasks our sprint teams had backlogged and then put into sprint, to be completed and actioned by the client.

Here, you can see how the December core algorithm kicked off with positive shifts to the site’s visibility. This means higher rankings across the set of keywords we track.

(On visibility, you’ll see higher overall visibility increases by improved rank on high-volume terms than you would on smaller terms. In short, this metric is weighted to the terms people search most.)

 

 

So, what have we done recently?

Here’s a list of tasks we’ve completed during our last few sprints. In the next paragraph, we’ll summarise the more strategic vision.

Service Page Optimisation
Amend paragraph: Water Dispensers & Office Water Dispensers PLP Optimisations
Review New Article: How to Change Your Water Dispenser Filter
New Article – How long can water be stored?
Sub-heading recommendations
Brand content performance analysis & next steps
Improve Sparkling Water Dispensers PLP
Mains-fed Water Dispensers Review: Questions & Prepositions / FAQs / Benefits
Refresh: /well-being-at-work
Quote Request Process Audit
Update to focus on dispenser keywords
Recommendations for improving water dispenser pages
Establish blog seasonality to influence content refreshes
Speed Internal Linking: The Costly Mistakes Draining Your Business’s Energy Budget

 

Water dispenser anchor text review
Improve the quality of leads from /water-dispenser page, clarify B2B signals
Review industries strategy post-live
Amendments to Warranty article based on client information

 

 

As you can see, we’ve applied various tactics to help the client increase lead generation.

With single-paragraph amendments, individual product-listing page (PLP) optimisations (including everything from meta signals to on-page CTA placement) and broader strategies looking at groups of pages as a whole, we’ve been able to tap into the part of Google’s algorithms which judge sites on their overall quality.

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Other parts of this campaign have included the deepening of topical networks around products and services, maximising the quality and helpfulness of internal links and anchor text, and improving how intuitive and easy-to-use the final parts of a customer’s buying journey.

The key takeaway
Search engines somewhat judge the rank-worthiness of a single page by the quality of pages on either side of the one in question. And those secondary pages are judged with the same approach too. Therefore, if you’re struggling to rank well or see improvements on a specific page, consider the network of pages and ask from a customer’s POV whether each page is helpful. If not, get to work! It’s worth prioritising those pages, too – the number of sessions of users isn’t a bad start (high to low). Another good approach is prioritising how many internal links your pages have. If your website often links to a specific page, yet it’s not the best possible version of itself, Google will likely turn up their nose.

Core Update Winner 2: Category-Focused Strategy For a Mid-Market Sofa Retailer


While the previous observation on algorithm-proof strategy showcased how a wide-ranging, holistic approach can reap benefits, this success story on the right side of the core update is a little different.

When this client came on board in August 2024, the whole site visibility was around 9%. Fast-forward six months, and we’re just shy of doubling visibility (a 100% increase, some agencies would sneakily call it!) to a high of 15.7%.

It is worth stating here, though, that the general consensus in SEO is that a site which is barely visible on search engines will take a long time (12 months minimum) of optimisation before it starts to rank well.

We’re here to tell you differently (and show you what we did!).

Our strategy for this website took the existing, albeit small, green shoots of specific categories and built on those. We’ll focus on the more obvious win first before delving into a tale of two updates with the second category of choice.

As you can see above, not long after the core update finished rolling out on the 19th of December, we saw very substantial improvements from what was basically 0% visibility and rankings. Below, you can see the same view at the keyword level:

We’ve seen similar success in the Chesterfields category:

However, across the broader set of Chesterfield keywords, that success has been short-lived. Note in the below how we reached heights of nearly 80% (top of the market for this category’s keywords!) in mid-November but dropped back down after December’s algorithm:

While we’re still majorly up YOY, and in relation to what we started with in June, we’ll need to dig into the category and figure out how we can achieve at least 60% visibility with some quick and clever optimisation.

Remember that core updates which happen within weeks of another are usually released to pull back on extreme and unfair changes from the first. So, if you see unexpected or unrealistic success, don’t shower yourselves in praise too fast!

 

Either way, given the success of the recliner category and the Chesterfield category before the December algorithm, there’s value in exploring the tasks we’ve recently completed to see how you can be inspired for your own campaign, particularly given the improvement to the overall site visibility:

How did we achieve this?

Here’s a list of recent tasks, summarised in the next paragraph:

 

Internal Linking Review Part 1
Mega Nav UX Review
Update homepage Trending products
Signpost 1-year manufacturing warranty on PLPs
Signpost Assembly Service
Create a Search Console Domain Property
Transparency of colour sofa names
Optimise: https://lovesofas.co.uk/collections/recliners
Improve Filters on PLPs
Homepage Optimise Language for Users
Manual and Electric Recliner Deep Dive
Write Copy for /collections/sofas PLP targeting fabric sofas
Make reviews in the USP bar accurate
Yellow Vs Gold
Out-of-stock strategy
Trust: Google Knowledge Panel Recommendations
Review offerings and product naming of 2 seater sofas vs. loveseats
Mobile UX Review
Brief: The Recliner Sofa Buying Guide
Brief: Corner sofa buying guide
How Can We Link Sofa Sets Better?
Brief: How to Ensure Your Sofa Will Fit in Your Space
Update Chesterfield Sofas Copy and Title Tag

 

Despite this section being titled “category expansion,” you’ll have noticed, no doubt, that few of these tasks are specific to recliners or Chesterfields! However, after spending time on the website and analysing these categories, our SEO team decided some groundwork was required to allow both product sets to see improvements.

In short, our focus was to make users’ lives as easy as possible by streamlining navigation, increasing trust signals, making on-page links more helpful, and fixing the number of out-of-stock products presented in PLPs.

However, we did put some light touches on the categories in question, such as PLP optimisations and the creation of supporting content.

We’ve still got some way to go, but as you can see from the results, this human-first approach, focused on users’ experience, has paid dividends.

 

Core Update Winner 3: Fixing What’s Under The Hood for a Luxury Cruise Provider

Similarly to the above, this client came on board in the summer of 2024, and the groundwork we’ve laid has been responded to extremely well by the many end-of-year algorithms.

Interestingly, when the client first contacted us asking for support, first impressions were on-point: consistent branding, user-focused messaging and imagery, and slick, speedy experiences. However, looking under the hood, we recognised there was plenty to do.

Fast-forward 5 months, and we’re seeing notable gains which have turned into leads, client-side. These are off the back of improved rankings such as:

So, what did we do?

We’ll summarise the approach in the next paragraph, but as promised, here’s a list of our most recent tasks:

Optimise USA Escorted Tours Page
Optimisations for Existing Travel Guides
Editorial Plan for Travel Guide Expansion (Existing Destinations)
Worldwide Destinations Review
Proofing & Collab
Indexation Audit
Worldwide Travel Guides Editorial Strategy & Architecture
Proof
Nepal Destination Setup
Destinations Review
South Korea Destination Setup
Escorted Tours Landing Page Optimisation
Danube River Cruises Landing Page Review
River Cruises LP Copy & Supporting Content Requirements
River Cruises Landing Page Wireframe
Determine Meganav Structure

 

 

As you can see above, our approach focused on expanding the site’s footprint to ensure it matched the destinations they serviced.

We also applied some fundamentals, including a rejig for the meganav to provide weight to important pages and a slight finesse of landing page experiences to ensure internal links supported users’ most likely requirements.

Most importantly, though, and likely what’s driven the quick-fire success, was the indexation audit we completed. In short, all these tasks ensured Google could find each page in the first place and then rank them accordingly.

We also prepped an editorial plan and briefs for the client’s copywriting team to get cracking. While not all of these have yet been implemented, it’s clear that search engines require clean, easy-to-crawl websites. If your setup is at all messy, it’s unlikely algorithm updates will be friendly.

 

Our Summary of Findings

We’ll be posting part two of our algorithm review in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned to LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter to get the link straight to your inbox. For now, let’s summarise the findings from the first three campaigns.

In short, there are no real surprises here. Three key SEO approaches have proved not only safe from algorithmic changes but also beneficial:

  • A good technical setup – ensure Google can access all your pages, make sure internal links are helpful, relevant and descriptive, and get your groundwork set before you start painting the walls.
  • Relevant, human-first content – topical authority is a key driver of digital success. To ensure algorithm changes do not affect your site’s visibility, be as selfless as possible, both in terms of the time you spend producing articles and the level of value you provide your audience.
  • Optimise the whole for the specific – search engines increasingly judge websites on their overall quality. They particularly judge pages on the quality of the pages within their network. It may sound surprising to hear this, given how obvious it sounds, but spend time on your website. Investigate all potential journeys and make sure no linked page is low quality. You’d be surprised at how many faux pas you come across.

Alas, until next week and three more campaigns that saw positive shifts. In the meantime, if you fancy a conversation about your digital strategy, no strings attached, drop me an email at [email protected] or reach out to me via LinkedIn.

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