There are many who proclaim that SEO is dead and there is enough circumstantial evidence for them to back up this claim. The rise of video content, particularly short from video, has drastically changed the way people consume knowledge on the internet. So while people may have searched for something they had a question about on Google first, these days you might find them searching on YouTube or even TikTok first. 

There’s no denying that the way people consume knowledge on the internet has changed but that certainly doesn’t mean that SEO is dead. If that were true, Google still wouldn't be the most visited website on the planet. It's visited nearly 90 billion times every month. As of January 2022, Google accounts for a staggering 92% of the search engine market. If anything, these stats show that SEO is certainly here to stay. As long as Google continues to receive the kind of traffic it does, there will always be an opportunity to optimize content for higher rankings in search results. 

Google operates a variety of online services but search continues to be one of its most important and lucrative services. No wonder, then, that the company is known for not resting on its laurels for the search engine. Google often releases both minor and major updates for its search algorithm. 

These updates are meant to improve the user experience for the billions of people that rely on Google every single day. However, it can often be tricky for publishers to navigate these updates, since they can often result in significant traffic drops. Google released its most recent significant update in August.

August 2022 brought Google's 'Helpful Content' update

The Helpful Content updates that Google periodically releases have the sole purpose of improving the quality of content that surfaces in response to a query. Unfortunately, a lot of publishers still try to game the system by writing content for the express purpose of ranking in search results. 

This content is usually light on the information that the visitor actually requires and thus they need to visit several pages before they can find what they're looking for. In Google's own words, the August 2022 update was meant to "help make sure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn't rank highly in Search." 

All content is written with the aim of getting it to rank in Google search. However, this update won’t affect those who are creating quality content that matches the user intent of the people searching on Google. Publishers who are only creating low quality content that’s stuffed with keywords and doesn’t provide the visitor with value will likely see their rankings being hit following this update. 

How to prevent a traffic drop after Google’s latest update

1. Keep your site focused

Google's release notes for the update have implied that it's important for websites to have a niche. Websites that have a primary purpose or focus are essentially deemed to be of a higher quality compared to those that seem to cover content without any focus. This is obviously going to be unhelpful for visitors. 

For example, someone searching for tips on how to improve their credit score would be surprised to see tips on woodworking on that same site. This also presents a problem for Google's crawlers to properly understand the site and thus index the pages that are to be ranked. The website could end up being flagged as low quality by the algorithm since it may presume that a lot of content is being produced on different topics simply in the hopes of ranking on Google.