A Guide to Google SGE and Google Core Updates

Audience Development
Written By Jiji Ugboma

Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) now appears on the first page of Google SERP for a large percentage of keyword searches. This means, amongst other things, that there is smaller first-page prime real estate to compete for among publishers and the launch of SGE will likely lead to an industry-wide change in organic traffic trends.

However, publishers can still optimize their content to rank for SGE as well as Featured Snippets and People Also Ask sections. 

How to Rank for SGE and Featured Snippets 

  • On-page SEO — Now more than ever, your on-page SEO should be top-notch and properly optimized. Write and update meta descriptions to be properly descriptive and informative and make sure your articles have schema markup with sufficient and descriptive  H2 and H3 subheadings.

  • Use FAQs and descriptive subheadings — Speaking of subheadings, having FAQs in your articles increases the chance of ranking in an SGE or People Also Ask results to keyword queries. When you create FAQs, make the questions H2/H3 and write direct, comprehensive, and informative answers to each question.

  • Personalized and detailed answers/info in your articles —  comprehensive and informative answers are not just for your FAQ sections. The entire article should be helpful as it pertains to Google’s standards of helpful content. It should be current and informative. 

  • Improve your site architecture:

    • Internal linking - Include internal links to contextually relevant and recent articles.

    • Category and Tag pages - Clean up and/or consolidate category and tag pages that have no new content or haven’t been updated in a while. Every major category and tag page should be frequently updated with quality.  

  • Get rid of repetitive content — Avoid repetition in pages and in your content. There’s a difference between covering a topic area comprehensively and producing content that is so similar it passes for repetition. Make sure every article on your site is unique. 

How to Finetune Your Content Strategy for 2024 SEO 

If you see a rapid traffic decline in your organic traffic, there are a few possible reasons, however the most likely is that your content is being affected by one of Google’s updates. This means you need to make your content fresh and relevant. Read more on possible reasons for significant traffic drop.

Rethink Content Topics: A massive drop in traffic for certain content areas or verticals could mean that content topic is overdone on the web for SEO and traffic gains. When a content niche has been flooded with content created specifically to rank on Google, that whole topic could get flagged by Google. This doesn’t mean you should abandon a content topic, especially when it is an area you are passionate about and/or adequately qualified to write on. You can rethink how you write on these topics, and make your content stand out with unique perspectives and authentic takes. 

Cohesive Website and Topical Relevance - Make sure your website is cohesive and has a running theme and topic. If you write about Food, let that be clear from your categories, tags, and content. The topics you write on should be relevant to the keywords you seek to rank for. The more high-quality content you have on these topics the more relevant your site will be in your audience and to search engines. We’ve discussed this extensively in the Helpful Content Update article and our monthly webinars. 

Build Strong Author Bios and About Page — Given the proliferation of AI and spam content on the web, search engines are on a mission to differentiate human-generated content from the rest. A robust About Page sends strong brand signals that back up your content quality. You can already see these changes being made by industry-leading publications. Many publications now have enhanced Author bios showing the expertise and qualifications of their writers and contributors and The New York Times recently redesigned their Byline pages making them more enhanced to bolster trust in readers.

E-E-A-T  and Unique Human Perspective — Following Google’s E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) standards, your content should contain unique information and add value to an existing topic. Your content should show the expertise, experience, and authority you have in that space. Search engines want to know that the content is created by humans and provides valuable and unique human perspectives.

Google March 2024 Core Update

Google carried out another update which launched March 5th and was completed in April. This was a global core update impacting all regions, all sites, and all types of content. Google has stated that there would be more updates and ‘refreshes’ to come and likely won’t be announced. 

This update tackled spam and low-quality content on Search with the goal of reducing content created for search engines. Google says since the update, which also affects Google Discover and Featured Snippets, there is now 45% less low-quality and unoriginal content on search results, and plans to continue to work to reduce low-quality and unoriginal content in Search. 

Jiji Ugboma
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