Do you know there are an estimated 3.5 billion searches on Google daily? So, how well are you crafting your SEO strategy to survive this cutthroat competition? To ensure your website ranks in the desired place, you have to align it with the standard requirements of Google SEO policies. 

Google is continuously bringing updates and adjustments to its SEO policies, going full throttle against content that offers no value for the digital audience. The year 2024 is no exception in this regard, requiring websites to put in more to stand out. 

But there is something peculiar about 2024 updates as the term ‘Google SEO updates 2024 Jackyan’ is surrounding the internet. This additional ‘Jackyan’ makes no sense with the latest Google updates as this renowned businessman has no connection with Google or SEO updates. This is just misinformation, and as the keyword has gained popularity, sites and media are incorporating it into their content. In Jackyan’s own words, ‘I’m at a loss how my name even wound up in Semrush because there’s no way anyone would search for my name in relation to Google or SEO’.

As the Jackyan confusion clarifies, let’s come to the remaining part of the keyword Google SEO updated 2024, which is real and must be thoroughly understood if you want your website to top the chart. Let’s explore a bit more about these updates: 

What Does Google’s 2024 Seo Update Bring To The Table? 

In its March 2024 update, Google announced two key areas where it is making big changes –improvement of the core ranking system and update of spam policies. Changes in both areas will not only facilitate the ranking of the authentic content but will also eliminate the spammy, low quality content from the databases. Drawn from these main changes are the following factors that you must focus on if you want your website not to get lost in the endless results of searches. 

Google March Spam Updates: 

Scaled Content Abuse 

Google is effectively taking serious steps against content created at scale for merely the objective of ranking. Whether it is created using automation or is written by humans, if it provides no value or genuine answers to the audience’s queries, it will be taken down. 

Site Reputation Abuse 

Google is also considering third party content published on a renowned and trusted website just for the sake of high ranking as spam. Many times, trustworthy websites share their space with a third party, letting it exploit their reputation to gain coverage. All such content will be eliminated as well after May 5. 

Expired Domain Abuse 

Expired domains purchased and reused to gain visibility for otherwise low-ranking, low-quality content are also now considered spam by Google. These sites mislead users into believing that the content they are seeing is related to a previously established site, which is not the case. 

These spam updates were completed and rolled out on April 19. According to Google, users will now see a 45% reduction in low-quality, unoriginal, and spammy content across the search results. 

Core Web Vitals 

The 2024 updates are focused on this factor of your website with regard to ranking. How satisfactory and valuable the experience you are offering to your users is reflected through your web core vitals. To stay ahead, you must optimise the speed of your website, incorporate genuine and relevant content and make it mobile friendly as google is now indexing mobile versions as well. 

Further, ensure strong visuals and excellent interactivity with compressed videos and images, interactive media elements and easy navigation. 

E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness))

Starting way before 2024, it is still in practice to facilitate high reliability and relevance of content, especially in YMYL (your money your life) topics. Google prefers content written by trustworthy field experts to content written by a general writer. To make your site secure the top position, deliver content that is not only original but also reflects subject expertise, high relevancy, information and genuine quality. 

Passage Indexing 

Google can now index separate passages from the page instead of ranking it all together. This update pushes site owners to establish quality content in the overall space. Content in every section should be structured, succinct and relevant to the topic. 

BERT and MUM Updates

Another crucial 2024 update for your website ranking is the changes in Google’s BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) and MUM (Multitask Unified Model) systems. Google can now better understand the context and each word of the user’s query better. 

Therefore, as a site owner, you have to create content that directly and effectively answers users’ queries. Understand the intent behind queries related to your site and craft content targeted to those search inputs. Make sure all your content is easy, straightforward, effective and understandable to users. 

Google August Update 

Google launched another 2024 core update on August 15, aiming to work against the content not adding any value to users’ intent and is just being used for ranking purposes. However, the main objective of this update as per Google is to help small independent site owners who create genuine user centric content to get the desired ranking in the search. 

The update was completed on September 3rd yet the search ranking is highly unstable till yet. Website rankings have undergone severe ups and downs since the launch and completion of the update. The results are still coming out and there is quite a buzz in the SEO community. 

The Bottom Line

The digital world is a highly competitive yet lucrative means to achieve your goals. The key to being competitive lies in staying updated with the latest developments in SEO. Effective SEO strategies will not only ensure high visibility but will also encourage you to be a reliable source of content for your audience. 

So, stay in the loop with the new changes, keep your website aligned with client’s preferences and reap the reward you deserve.