HCU Recovery Update Part II (Did my Rankings Improve?)
A week or so ago I shared a case study of 7 different posts I updated on a website that was hit with the HCU update. In pretty much all cases, there was a slight or even significant improvement in rankings and other metrics.
Today I want to cover a 28 day update on those same posts and show you what has changed/improved/didn't improve. The overall consensus is that the current template I am using appears to be working well and it's a simple one to apply.
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Vitaliy, thanks for sharing this. When you updated your post, did you change the date to make it more current than the previous post? I have some posts that were indexed and then later got de-indexed. If I were to improve it, would changing the date to make it look like it's a newer article rather than the former make any difference? I am wondering if that's how you do it.
I am not Vitaliy, but I think you should update the date as well. Because the people click on the newest article, so if your competitors have an article that is a year old, and you have a new updated article, they will most likely click on it. (I have been fooled by this as well, so I know it works, lol).
I think there should be a plugin that makes it change the date to a (last updated). And it works just as good. I don't know the name but.
Hope this helps.
Hi Jonathan, Long time no see; how is my beloved Sweden? I figured as much about the date because I've done that myself a few times and also for redirects. You can do that inside WordPress. I have a Rank Math Pro plugin. I insert the correct date and then update and request indexing. That would be on the right side, where it shows the date of the post and how many times it's been updated and revised.
I don't bother with that. The moment you update the post and let Google know about it, they'll know and look at the changes via their spiders, so that's enough. The rest I think is just for visual to the reader.
I figured that because of what you said before, allow time for the post to marinate. I updated the post with a new date as I saw Jay do that in one of his trainings. Hmmm .. I know there is an option not to have the post-dated; others strongly advocate keeping the date and updating it with the new date, so apparently, it must be each person's preference. It doesn't sound like it makes a difference for SEO. As you say, Google knows when it's updated that is true.
Oh you can, I use rank math how could I miss that, lol. Yeah, long time no see. Sweden is green and beautiful. But it has been raining a lot, Swedish weather.
I am in the north part, exploring the north part of Sweden. (the internet sucks up here). Still trying to do some work each day, a bit harder when on a vacation.
Currently, been overthinking a 301 redirect. I have a post that happened to be first of low-quality, but somehow got 47 backlinks from medium (not self-made). And well, it is also a duplicate, or not really, but the topic is almost the same. And well, the other article fulfills, search intent, people love it, engage with it (like on medium).
So, maybe because I am on a vacation, and my brain too, I have been doubting doing this. (Don't ask why, I don't know either, lol).
Tell your brain to quit doubting! It doesn't help, you know. I have some posts that got de-indexed. My first thought is to redirect them to a post that has a similar topic but is ranking. Maybe it would be better to delete that and do a redirect. I figured that because it looks so similar to the other one, that is probably why Google de-indexed it. It doesn't have a canonical tag, so it's not a duplicate. I'm only guessing. Now, you are influencing me to doubt this—quit that, Jonathan! Im not sure how effective that is for SEO.
My bad, I will quit doing it, lol. Now that you say that (if it is effective for SEO). My guess is that it would, since all the link juice, and authority passes over to my other article, and that is good for SEO. (with the other article being good quality, this should indeed be a good idea).
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Those updates look promising Vitaliy... wish I could say the same about mine!!!
Still early days though!
Enjoy your weekend my friend!
👍👍
Keep us posted Nick!
Will do my friend!