Recovering from core updates takes a while because while they won't stop new growth they certainly limit you until the next one rolls out.

Fortunately, you get months to make the changes you need to make to have a successful recovery next time. However, you need to work on the right things.

I'm going to share some steps with you that seem to work time and again.

First, you should know that I've never had a site seriously affected by a core update. I've had lots of updates where nothing much seems to happen. Most of my experience recovering sites comes from performing at least a dozen audits a year for the past 5+ years.

When I got started doing audits they were technical audits only because that was where I got people the best results.

Over time, word got around.

Unfortunately.

People got the idea that underlying technical issues were the main problem. So my little word-of-mouth audit service became a go-to for people that got hit by Google Updates.

It wasn't the reputation that I wanted because I knew that technical factors alone weren't enough to fix those problems in almost all cases.

It meant that I started turning people away and for the last couple of years I've done significantly fewer audits because of it. I've probably turned down a low 6-figures worth of work, and I couldn't be happier about it.

On the few occasions that I accepted recovery audits, they became a lot more holistic in nature. It was both the technical fixes and the content ones.

It's almost always content...

Generally speaking, we know that core updates might focus on hundreds of factors. They almost probably definitely do!

So why is it that we focus so much on technical factors, links, and EAT? It seems strange when there are far more ranking factors that deal with our content than anything else.

The people that are able to understand that content is usually the problem are usually the ones that recover.

That's why I work with them.

These folks are obsessed with improvement, like me, because they understand that they are, in fact, not that great at all. So they understand that way they've approached their content too, might be as mediocre and average as they acknowledge they are, as I too acknowledge that I am.

The more you embrace this idea the easier it is to improve.

How to fix your shit content: step by step.

I'm not being mean, I'm really not. I'm not even talking about the quality of your information or the writing itself.

The algorithm doesn't always care about that. There's a lot more to content than the words on the page.

Adding in a table of contents can result in an improvement, as can adding an extra image, or a bulleted list.

You have to accept that the search engine doesn't like your content.

Step 1: Find low-performing content.

The stuff that wasn't doing well even before the update. You can use Google Search Console to check impressions.

Most content you have should get a decent number of impressions even if it doesn't rank in the top 10.

It's easy to see content that isn't performing as expected. Make a list of those ones because you need to work on those throughout your recovery to lift the quality score for the site. It'll improve the quality score for a category. It'll build your relevance and expertise. It's the EAT that people don't think about.

Step 2: Find content that bombed in the update.

There's going to be some or even a lot of content that performed fine before that no longer does. You should make a list of that content and start looking for commonalities.

Again, you can do it with Google Search Console. Use clicks, impressions, etc. You can also use Ahrefs or Google Analytics too.

The easiest way to do it is to run a comparison period with the dates filter.

Step 3: If the entire site tanked find the worst-performing categories or clusters.

This can actually be a good additional step to take regardless but is more important on sites that have been affected across the board.

You can even filter by query and intent, e.g. 'best' keywords, 'how' keywords. It's important to understand what is doing the worst because it'll give you an idea of how to proceed.

Step 4: Make a plan.

Your plan should consist of more analysis on a regular basis because things will change and you want to lift the entire site quality prior to a core update. That's something you should do even if you haven't been hit!

The rest of your plan should focus on how you're going to improve your losing content.

This is where external help goes a long way because you might not see the issues as clearly as you think, otherwise, you'd not be in this situation.

In many cases, the best recoveries involve a set of standard operating procedures for updating content after a couple of successful tests. You can perform these tests on content that is STILL performing. It's usually better to do it that way because you need traffic and rankings to validate any hypothesis.

• Attempt 1: General improvement (grammar, density, adding content, removing content)
• Attempt 2: Adding elements
• Attempt 3: SOP involvement (more traditional on-page)

You should see something on most articles following these three steps and further attempts seem to usually result in diminishing returns.

Quite often these articles will show new life, I'm not saying they'll recover immediately because you need another update to do that in most cases.

They can show you the signs that an update will recover them. That's the difference.

If you see absolutely nothing, you can either remove the article from the site or choose to sit and wait it out. You know what I'd advise, screw sunk-cost bias.

With the categories, etc, sometimes it is better to remove them or scale them back. It might be that your future success comes from a more focused site that builds on what you're doing that Google is actually liking.

All of this constant improving, removing, combining. All this hard work... It shouldn't surprise you that it's what recovers most sites come to the next update.

All of my best recoveries follow these methods, the same methods I'm now implementing on existing sites as a daily process of improvement.

The exact details of how we did it might be different, but the steps are the same.

Fix the foundational issues, those technical things people put their money on and then seem to stop there. Don't stop there. Improve all low-performing pieces of content and keep doing that.

Of course, you can look at competitors and the pages that have done well on your site to give you better ideas for what to change.

Just don't get caught up in these fantastical ideas and theories about updates. Don't get involved in the blame game. Just focus on what you can control. Take action, improve, repeat, and be patient.

It's the love of the process that creates the long-term winners. It's humility. It's the content itself.

You could do a lot worse than listen to my advice about accepting our own inherent shitness and inability to know what we don't know.

Just my .02 cents.