Google’s November 2024 Core Update is Rolling Out: What Will It Mean?

It’s happening again. On November 11, 2024, Google announced its third broad core algorithm update of the year. It follows the March and August 2024 core updates and aims to carry on the search engine’s work to improve the quality of search results, ensuring that only the best content that genuinely helps users gets featured. This latest update is expected to continue to demote low-quality content or over-optimised content that has been created with the sole purpose of increasing rankings. When sharing the news of the update with the world, Google estimated the rollout would take approximately 2 weeks to complete, but at the time of writing, it still hasn’t confirmed that the update is done and dusted.

When core updates happen, they’re big news because they have the power to reshape search rankings and traffic, which can have a big impact on your website’s visibility, traffic, and overall performance in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Seeing some search ranking fluctuations is not uncommon when a core update is rolled out. Naturally, you’ll want to know the wider impact of the November 2024 Google core update and what it means for your SEO strategy. That’s why we’ve put together this helpful guide on everything you need to know about it and how to recover from a Google core update for rankings success.

What Are Core Updates?

Core updates are designed to boost the quality and relevance of search results. Their main purpose is to show users better results by assessing website content. They reward content that is helpful to the user and downgrade the stuff written with search engine manipulation in mind. There are a few core updates each year, and any fluctuations in your rankings could spell problems with your content, so it’s important to have an SEO strategy for Google updates firmly in mind.

Timeline Of Google Algorithm Updates In 2024

Each Google core update gives digital marketers and website owners an insight into how the search engine prioritises content. Length, depth, relevance, and freshness of content are trends that are becoming more important with each update.

To put the November 2024 update into perspective, here is a timeline of the most recent algorithmic changes:

• August 2024 Core Update: Rolled out from August 15 to September 3.
• March 2024 Core Update: Rolled out from March 5 to April 19.
• November 2023 Core Update: Rolled out from November 2 to 28.
• October 2023 Core Update: Rolled out from October 5 to October 19.
• August 2023 Core Update: Rolled out from August 22 to September 7.
• March 2023 Core Update: Rolled out from March 15 to March 28.

Learn about these in more detail in our Google Algorithm & History of Updates guide.

What Does The November 2024 Google Core Update Focus On?

Much like its predecessors, the November 2024 Google core update wants to improve search results for its users. This means that websites that offer value will be rewarded with higher rankings, and those that don’t will see a drop in their rankings.

Google doubled down on this in its announcement post across its social media channels, saying:

“This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”

Why Is The Update Important?

The November 2024 core update is important because it highlights Google’s commitment to making its search results even more helpful for the user. It’s a big signal to website owners and digital marketers that getting the basics right, like improving E-E-A-T for SEO with quality, well-researched content, is what the search engine values above anything else.

Steps To Take If Your Website Takes A Hit

As the update hasn’t been completed yet, it’s difficult to know exactly its impact. However, it’s not unusual for some sites to experience Google search ranking volatility during this time. Google hasn’t released any fresh advice on how to navigate the latest core update, but it has previously said:

“There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading our creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help page.”

With this in mind, we’ve put together a quick rundown of the best practices for SEO after Google updates to help you stabilise and improve your rankings:

• Put User-Focused Content First

If you want your website to stay on top of any current or future core updates, you need to make sure that your content is aligned with search intent. To be successful and stand a chance of increasing your visibility in the SERPs, your content needs to follow SEO best practices and be user-focused. In other words, it needs to answer the user’s questions and help them.

When planning your content, you need to consider the type of content that currently ranks highly for the keywords you are targeting. Knowing this can inform the approach you should take. If you discover that FAQ-style blogs are appearing at the top of the SERPs, there would be little point in you writing wildly different content, as this is not what users want to see.

Want to know more about optimising your content? Take a look at our blog.

• Produce Quality, Authentic Content

We seem to repeat it a lot, but it’s because it’s true! If you want to appease Google, you need to produce top-quality content. Well-written content that holds value will only do good things for your rankings. If you’ve experienced a drop, assess your current content and make improvements to it. For best results, you should produce quality content consistently, as this will help signal to search engines and users that you are an authority in your industry.

Quality content is obviously important, but so is authenticity. If your content is keyword-stuffed to manipulate the SERPs, you’ll likely see a dip in rankings. Producing generative AI content is not against Google’s rules but it’s best to put your own twist on it to really portray your authentic niche experience and be helpful to the user.

• Focus on E-E-A-T

Google uses E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) to measure the overall value of a website’s content. So, ensuring your content meets these criteria is a surefire way to maintain or improve your position in the SERPs. To do this, you should focus on substance in your content, include elements that signal your experience in a particular area, and show that users and search engines can trust you. Google’s content self-assessment checklist can help you judge your content’s search engine power.

• White-hat Link BuildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs.

Link building is not just a numbers game. It’s all about how many quality linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. you acquire. The March 2024 core update switched things up, confirming that only high-quality links will help improve your backlink profile and rankings. This isn’t set to change with November’s update so you need to be building backlinks from authoritative websites within your niche if you want to prove your relevance and credibility in the SERPs.

Read more in our guide titled, 5 Modern Ways To Get Backlinks To Boost Your SEO Profile.

We’ve Got You

If you’re wondering why did my rankings drop after Google’s core update?, our team of helpful SEO experts is here to help you bounce back and put steps in place to maintain your rankings. Our full-service digital marketing agency has the means to get you back in the SEO game. We can help you with SEO-optimised content services, managed SEO campaigns, blogger outreach, white label link building, and more. If this sounds like something you’d like to take advantage of, arrange a meeting with us today, and we will discuss your options.

Schedule a free consultation worth £1,000 today!