March 2019 Core Update: what SEO upheavals followed Florida 2?

The update to the core of Google’s algorithm that landed on March 12, and was immediately confirmed by Google, did not go unnoticed in the world of SEO. While the algorithm that governs how the search engine works is constantly being updated on minor details, that does not mean changes are felt in the SEO performance of sites.

When it comes to the March 2019 Core Update, the same can hardly be said: this update can clearly be considered a major one. The SEO agency Semji invites you to take stock of the changes brought about by this now-famous March 2019 Core Update and to look at a client case to better understand the nature of its repercussions.

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This week, we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see these tweets for more about that: https://t.co/uPlEdSLHoX https://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 13, 2019

March 2019 Core Update: what is it?

Dubbed Florida 2 by the SEO community, this update stands out above all for its major impact. And for good reason: it affects EVERY site, because it truly concerns the core of the algorithm and not just a single component of SEO.

We saw that the Medic Update had essentially impacted sites in so-called “ Your Money Your Life “ topics. The Panda, Penguin and Fred updates, for their part, respectively targeted low-quality content, bad backlinks and intrusive advertising. On the whole, updates like the March 2019 Core Update that visibly impact every site are rare enough to be worth highlighting, and they set themselves apart from “ classic “ Google penalties. And the scale of the movements observed on the SERP matches its magnitude.

The SEO impact of the March 2019 Core Update

As always with a major Google update, there are winners… And losers!

With a few weeks of hindsight, Semji’s SEO experts can now put forward two theories about the consequences of this update:

• a penalty on a site’s overall over-optimization: it seems that over-optimized sites, particularly at the level of title tags, Hn tags and URLs, were strongly affected by this update. Google seems increasingly determined to give no quarter to sites that rely on “ old “ SEO techniques based on keyword stuffing and the like. Sites that offer content designed and built for users, and not for robots, are being strongly rewarded.
• a fix following the Medic Update: this now-famous March 2019 Core Update gives the strong impression of being linked to the Medic Update. The reason? The negative effects observed on certain sites during the Medic Update seem to have eased. Some sites that had seen their visibility drop – unfairly – are regaining their lost positions, without any action on their part. The criteria the Medic Update was based on appear to have been refined, and content quality is placed front and center, well ahead of HTTPS, backlinks and UX.

Case study: la Clinique de la Vision

To back up these theories with concrete figures, let’s take a look at the case of one of our clients: la Clinique de la Vision.

Positioned in the medical sector and specializing in refractive surgery procedures, the website of la Clinique de la Vision has seen numerous new keywords rank in Google’s Top 100, with others moving onto the first page since the update.

Normally, the keywords that rank in the Top 3 come from the Top 4-10, and those that reach the Top 4-10 come from positions 11-50. Generally, the more keywords a site has in the Top 10, the fewer it has in positions 11-50. Here, the site is simply acquiring more new keywords, at every level! An impressive performance.

Here are a few examples of the keywords that saw the strongest progression. We can see that every day, new keywords are taking over the top positions:

These 4 keywords went from a “ not ranked “ status – indicated by the little green dot – to Google’s first page!

Following this now-famous March 2019 Core Update, we also observe on Ahrefs very substantial position gains for this client, and on a daily basis:

Best of all, and probably one of the finest wins for this client: a keyword going from unranked to the coveted position zero on the keyword “ vitamin for the eyes “:

For this client case, which is telling to say the least, our conclusions are as follows:

• the highly expert, in-depth content written by Dr. Dan-Alexandre Lebuisson is extremely valued and appreciated by Google. What’s more, this content is expanded and updated on a weekly basis, which guarantees a certain freshness of information, itself also rewarded.
• following the Medic Update that had strongly impacted this site, it seems that Google is capable of fixing its own mistakes and reversing a blow of the sword that sometimes falls blindly. In a sense, the March 2019 Core Update restores certain rankings lost to the Medic Update.

Think about the user before thinking about Google’s robots

This update once again demonstrates the importance placed on content quality. There’s no point in over-optimizing your pages to please the engine: giving Googlebots what they’re looking for is not necessarily synonymous with quality in the eyes of users, and the American giant has clearly understood this.

More than ever, Google makes a point of prioritizing the satisfaction of its users. What is the main reason we use Google? We have questions, and we count on the search engine to bring us the answers, hence the gradual transition toward an answer engine. More and more, Google is becoming uncompromising on the quality and relevance of the answers offered according to search intent.

Beyond good on-site optimization and solid link building, it is truly optimized, fresh, expert and user-focused content that makes it possible to stand out.

Every day, our Content Marketing and SEO team studies dozens of pieces of content and closely monitors performance, notably via the Semji AI platform.

Today, the real challenge in SEO is no longer so much about pleasing Google at a given moment, but about viewing the Search Experience with a pragmatic eye in order to calmly anticipate tomorrow’s developments… And not to tremble with every new update!

March really does seem to be a favorable month for major updates at Google, which is starting a little “ spring cleaning “ of its SERPs… Stay vigilant as next spring approaches!