HCU Recovery - What Should You Do?

partha · 2024-07-05T15:38:46Z

Okay, in reality, I’m writing this in response to a question posed by Nat on my last forum post, which was about creating a topical map and keyword research. Nat asked whether it makes sense to do this if you’ve been hit by a Helpful Content Update (HCU), as most people who have been hit will have a sitewide classifier on their website. I other words, they have suffered an algorithmic penalty. There’s two ways to look at this, but first, it’s best to look how the majority of us create our websites. Something I’ve mentioned before, which I know that some people were slightly perturbed at because they had “never heard this before”. However, I will say that if you’ve always followed one specific training program you’re going to fall into one camp of the other. What I said was, there are those who will claim, “Content is King”, whereas others will claim, “Backlinks are King”. Realistically, you could turn round and say that from around 2018-2022, Content was indeed King. How many of you from that “era” simply did keyword research, wrote an article, and by the time you had about 100+ articles on your website you typically found that your newly published articles were indexing more-or-less immediately, and you were also ranking in the top 3 results pretty much every time? NOT HAPPENING SO OFTEN NOW, IS IT? Plus, when we look at the search results fro pretty much every single keyword going it is high authority sites that are ranking, so essentially, you could say that now, “Backlinks are King”. In truth, something you are hopefully starting to learn about this business is, DIVERSIFICATION IS KING. Basically, if you’re putting all your eggs into one basket, you may “get away” with it for a while, but it will eventually catch up to you. This is why so many people (myself included) are talking about losing 90% of their website traffic because of HCUs. Realistically, 90% of their traffic (myself included) was coming from ONE SOURCE, i.e. Google. This is why I say that there are TWO WAYS to look at HCU recovery. Firstly, we have the form of recovery that is, “Let’s do what we think that Google wants and hopefully I will eventually recover”. This would involve going through your Google Search Console stats for the ONE MONTH BEFORE YOU GOT HIT BY HCU. Then, identify ALL the articles that were either not indexed or that were indexed, but were getting hardly any traffic (less than 30 visitors per month). You would then either look to improve those articles in line with Google’s helpful content guidelines or you would simply delete those articles. The hope is that once you’ve made all these changes, Google would return your rankings and traffic and you would “recover”. This is what most people have been attempting and even what I initially suggested you do. I still stand by this, if an article wasn;t getting traffic or wasn’t indexed BEFORE you got “hit” by an HCU, Google has ALREADY identified these articles as “unhelpful”. BUT Even if you do all of the above you will NOT have diversified your traffic sources, you have simply tried to SATISFY ONE TRAFFIC SOURCE, Google. So, even if you do recover, and you get ALL your traffic back, and even more traffic, you are STILL getting 90% of your traffic from ONE SOURCE. In other words, you’re still not “safe” and you could lose all your traffic again during a later algorithm update. The second way to look at recovery is to diversify your traffic sources. Google states in their spam guidelines that you should “write for people not for search engines”. However, every single article we write we perform KEYWORD RESEARCH. Why? To RANK IN THE SEARCH ENGINES. So, we are ALL essentially breaking Google’s spam policies by “performing keyword research”, yet it is widely accepted that this is the only way to rank in Google. Now, the things that will make a difference is if the MAJORITY OF YOUR TRAFFIC (to the articles) was NOT coming from Google. So, in answer to Nat’s actual questions, YES, still create your topical authority map and yes still do keyword research to write articles. HOWEVER The aim is to get traffic to those articles without SOLELY relying in ranking in Google. As an example, and you’re about to discover just how much work this business requires, for every article that I write I will want to promote that article. So, I write an article, I then use the import tool to place it on Medium. I then rewrite it slightly and place it on Linkedin AS AN ARTICLE. I then share the article to Facebook and Twitter/X. I then create a long-form video rom the content and put this on YouTube. I then break down that video into 5 “shorts” and upload those to YouTube and TikTok. I create 5 Pinterest pins around my article and upload and link back to that article. Finally, I get some “user-generated content” onto that article by requesting comments. I do the above with EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE I EVER WRITE. The...

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Posted by: @partha

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In truth, something you are hopefully starting to learn about this business is, DIVERSIFICATION IS KING.

Slightly off topic, but I guess it's time for me to finish my article about why I believe content is, and always will be, king...

Here is my paragraph summary of the article I'll have to write now:

Content will always be king, because no matter how the industry moves or changes up the game, you will still need 'content'. Sure, you might have to package that content into specific keyword-laced banklinks, or you may have to post that content in different forms, and on different platforms to become more diversified and looking more business-like. But when boiled down, it always come to you needing to add content, and the right content, for you to be king in your industry.

What do you think? 🤣

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HCU Recovery - What Should You Do?

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