2022 Google Algorithm Updates and SEO: A Guide
Ranking toward the top on the Google homepage is key to getting clicks. A good SEO strategy can increase traffic to your website and drive conversions. Like many marketing strategists out there, you may find yourself wondering how to break into the top ten results or even make it to a featured snippet. But SEO tips and tricks will only get you so far. Google is constantly updating the algorithm it uses to rank search results.
In 2022, Google has made two core algorithm updates. Here, we’ll provide some background on Google’s algorithm, discuss what these updates include, and break down what they mean for your site.
What Does Google Want?
To effectively improve your website’s ranking, you need to get inside Google’s head. While the specific details of its algorithm are an intensely guarded secret, we can use what we do know about Google’s intentions to help us respond to each update.
Google makes money through selling ads. To sell more ads, Google needs more users. Google’s mission is “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” To be a successful search engine, Google curates its algorithm to rank information based on relevancy and expertise. People use Google because it’s useful and directs users on the path to relevant content. And it works! With only a few key search terms, the top few results will generally have the information you are looking for.
What Is a Core Algorithm Update?
Like all search engines, Google uses an algorithm to rank content on the web. Google wants to stay the top search engine in the world by continually making its algorithm more helpful to users. Because of this, Google updates its algorithm so the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) filters out unhelpful content and highlights the good stuff. Updates are being made throughout the year – many times numbering in the thousands. Most of these are minor tweaks that you probably won’t even notice. However, a core algorithm update creates more noticeable changes to search result ranking.
Many times, these adjustments can potentially impact your site’s performance. If your site metrics are negatively affected, it’s prudent to adjust your marketing strategy to realign with Google’s mission. That may require updating your content, evaluating your internal linking, or updating site security.
2022 Core Algorithm Updates
In 2022, Google noted two core updates in May and September. While the ongoing mysteries of Google may feel daunting as a business owner or marketing professional, you know more than you think! Why? Because no matter your profession, you are a search engine user. As a user, you know that ads with hidden close buttons are infuriating, slow load times tax your patience, and it might not feel safe to enter your credit card information on a site that’s merely HTTP.
More than ever before, Google is emphasizing the user experience on a site. All of the recent updates aim to reward sites that cater to the user.
Site Loading
First impressions are everything. That’s why Google has emphasized site load timing and quality in its recent algorithm updates. Sites that could more quickly load and stabilize their pages and links rank higher. These three “Core Web Vitals” metrics were impacted by updates starting in 2021 for mobile browsing and continuing into 2022 for desktop.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Describes the amount of time to load the primary visual elements on a page. Aim for less than 2.5 seconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): The CLS refers to the amount of shifting and jostling that happens when a site’s homepage loads. It’s distracting and makes it challenging to start absorbing the content. Higher-ranking pages will have a CLS of 0.1 or less.
First Input Delay (FID):
Ad Intrusions
Google is cracking down on the sites that have giant banners that pop up as soon as you enter the page. They’re annoying for everyone, though mobile users particularly suffer because of their small screen size. Sites with these ad pop-ups will start to see lower rankings.
Site Security
Security is important to Google because it’s important to you. The recent core algorithm updates reward sites with consistent HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol secure) pages. This extension (in contrast to HTTP) secures data that is transferred between a website and a browser. In the September update, Google released an HTTPS report to provide insight into your security performance.
Helpful Content Update
Google also released a “Helpful Content Update” in August 2022. From an SEO perspective, this change may have created some shifts in your site’s performance. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise. In order to stay aligned with Google’s mission, you’ve hopefully already been creating content that meshes with Google’s E-A-T standards (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
The gist of the update is that Google values sites that offer content created by people for people. They want to use the update to discourage “search-engine-first” content that aims to trick the algorithm for a higher rank. Unhelpful content can have a negative impact on your site as a whole. Even if you have a few pieces of helpful content, the classifier might lump your entire site into a lower ranking category based on your less helpful pieces. Therefore, it’s critical to update, improve, or delete unhelpful content.
We want to be clear, Google advises that SEO is a helpful tool to create valuable content. Just don’t have a one-track mind about it. Make sure your content offers real value by answering the following questions:
Who is your target audience?
Does your content demonstrate expertise in your field?
Do you have a clear goal or focus?
Does your site offer solutions to visitors’ needs or pain points?
Visitors are unsatisfied by content purely for the sake of SEO. The latest “Helpful Content Update” uses signals to weed out unhelpful content and prioritize content that tracks as “people first.”
What’s Being Rewarded?
Google has clarified that its recent updates are intended to reward good content. So if you noticed your ranking drop, it doesn’t mean you necessarily have bad content. You just might have been outpaced by another site. Below are some noticeable shifts on Google’s SERP that tell us a bit about what Google thinks is worthy content.
Video Content
A survey on video marketing found that 73% of people prefer watching a video to learn about a product or service over reading an article, looking at infographics, or downloading an ebook. Google has obviously noticed this demand by rewarding video content. You’ve probably noticed that you no longer have to pivot to the “video” tab on Google’s SERP to find relevant media. Often, video content is within the first five results. For example, when we search “how to make bread” or “macrame patterns,” video results make it to the top three.
Rich Results
Anything on a SERP that’s more than a blue link and meta description is a rich result. These include carousels, images, and product information. Businesses that are selling products on their site will benefit from adding structured data to each product page. This is data that is easily interpreted by machine learning. Coding information like product descriptions, dimensions, and prices into structured data allows it to appear on the SERP as a rich snippet. Users value such high transparency, and structured data will offer more clarity and accessibility for users.
What’s the Impact?
Do Google’s core updates mean changing tides and rough seas? Not for everyone! In fact, many websites won’t be affected at all and others may even have an increase in traffic. However, one way to track an update’s impact is through your visibility score. If an update occurs, and your visibility score dramatically increases or decreases, we likely have a pretty volatile update on our hands.
Neither of the core updates in 2022 seemed to have as dramatic of an impact as others in the past couple of years.
