Your insurance agency needs to stay on top of all the various Google updates. After all, Google’s search engines are a crucial part of your digital marketing strategies, especially SEO. Because of the importance of Google for your marketing, it’s smart to take a few minutes to see what happened in May 2022 and how it affected the digital marketing industry.
The Update Had an Instant Effect
One interesting thing about this core update was the speed with which it affected the landscape. Based on the pattern from this core update, Semrush’s Communication Advisor, Mordy Oberstein, sees a new pattern. The initial rollout for this update had a quick burst of rank volatility initially. This is in line with the last few core updates as well.
If you look just at the volatility of the May 2022 core update compared to the one from November 2021, it can initially seem that the recent one was less volatile. But that’s because there was already a lot of volatility before the May update. Rank Ranger and SISTRIX found similar volatility.
Semrush divided its data into various categories. There is no insurance category, but the most relevant ones include finance, health, and real estate. Across all categories, there was a 2.8% volatility change with the May 2022 update compared to 3.7% with the November 2021 update. For finance, these were 3.0% and 3.6%, respectively. For health, they were 3.7% and 5.5%. They were 5.3% and 4.5% respectively for real estate.
Semrush explained that the overall increase in rank volatility compared with the baseline volatility was 19% less for the May 2022 core update than the November 2021 one. That 19% comparison is for desktops and is 24% less for mobile.
Of the new top 20 ranked results on Google following the May core update, 17% came from past position 20.
How It Affected SEO
From an SEO perspective, the May 2022 core update is more important than the November 2021 update. This means that if you haven’t adjusted your insurance agency’s SEO strategy since the core update, you should take the time to reevaluate it.
Were You Negatively Affected by the Core Update? What to Do
Any major change to Google’s core algorithms will shake up the search engine rankings. While some companies will rise, others will see a drop. The insurance industry is no exception, but there are some things you can do if your agency was negatively impacted by this or previous updates.
First, recognize that it may not indicate that there is anything wrong with your insurance agency’s website. There may not be something to correct. While it is certainly frustrating, you may just have to wait and see if your rank goes back up. Your agency may slowly regain some of its lost ranking between core updates or the next core update may shoot it back up to its previous position.
Continue to Focus on Providing Great Content
Google’s official advice for companies that drop after a core update is to focus on providing great content. The Google algorithms try to reward high-quality, valuable content. So, if you are doing that in your blog and other parts of your website, you may not need to change anything.
Google also offered some questions you can ask yourself to make sure that you are providing the right type of content. They focus on whether:
- You provide original reporting, research, analysis, or information
- You provide a substantial description of the topic
- You provide interesting or not-obvious information
- You add value to the sources you use instead of just copying them
- Your headline and title are descriptive and helpful without being shocking or overexaggerating
- The content could be referenced by a printed source
- If you came across the page, would you bookmark or share it?
- You clearly identify your sources
- You as the writer clearly understand the topic
- The content is grammatically correct
- The content is mass-produced
- The content is easy to view on mobile devices
- You offer more value than other sources
These questions will typically apply to your blog posts or knowledge base pages. They can also apply to pages you have dedicated to specific types of insurance, especially if you try to offer comprehensive information on those. In addition to focusing on providing great content, you can also take other evergreen steps, such as making sure that your website is free from errors and provides a good user experience.
Conclusion
Google rolled out another core update in May 2022. Like the previous two updates, this one had a very immediate effect on search results. Those results were fairly volatile. This means that some insurance agencies may have noticed a drop in their rankings.
Regardless of how the core update affected your insurance agency’s marketing and website, use it as an opportunity to reevaluate your strategy and continue to improve upon it.