Hello Reader,

It's that time again. Deep breaths.

On March 13th, Google announced that it's rolling out its latest core update.

As you probably know, Core Updates can be very unpredictable.

Sometimes they pass with little fanfare. Other times, like in two years ago this very night 👻, they can throw the entire world of SEO into upheaval.

It's way too early to know how this latest update will affect your site. It's still in the process of rolling out, and Google estimates it will take about two weeks for it to finish up.

As usual, Google is quite cagey about what this update is all about. All they've said is:

That's a statemen vague enough to make any politician proud.

While I'd like to be optimistic about the "content from creators" bit, I am not going to jump to conclusions.

It would be great if this meant Google is working hard to restore some of the traffic creators lost in the wake of the March '22 update and AIO rollout. But I'll believe it when I see it.

So what should we do in the meantime, to make sure your website is able to weather whatever comes our way in two weeks?

The first step is to not panic. We don't have enough information right now to know what's going to happen, and anyone claiming to know more than what I'm sharing with you in this email is a liar (unless they actually work for Google, in which case they aren't lying but they are definitely breaching their contract).

The next step is to take some time to analyze your site metrics, so that you have some benchmarks to compare them to in two weeks, when this is all done and dusted.

Using Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and your fave SEO tool (I use Semrush), here's some information I would jot down:

• Average organic traffic figures over the last few weeks/months
• Top performing content pieces
• Spread across traffic sources (organic, social, referral, etc.)
• Top keywords pulling in traffic and their ranking positions
• Technical SEO ratings (always good to run a report before and after the rollout!)

Check in every few days over the next few weeks, and look for any major changes. This will help you know how you will or won't be affected by this update.

👆🏻 If you need help tracking down this information, just reply to this email. I'm always happy to help. 😉

In about three weeks, once it's done rolling out and we have time for the dust to settle, we'll know a lot more about what Google's intention was with this update.

I'll definitely send more emails on this topic, once we have more information. So if you know someone who would find these kinds of updates helpful, why not forward them this email? They can subscribe right here.

More soon. For now, stay calm and keep moving ahead with your SEO strategy!

- Liam