Hey, Reader.

How's your blog doing after the latest "helpful" update from Google?

The latest round started rolling out in March (it's not done yet), and the only absolute takeaway is that it has been anything BUT helpful for many, many niche sites.

Niche sites have been hit hard, and it's not clear what the path forward should be if you find yourself on the losing end.

We consider ourselves lucky because our traffic has held steady, but we are still keeping a watchful eye on our analytics - and we have set up some analytics tracking for other search engines, like Bing.

Last week in the PetBiz Collaborative, we talked about diversifying traffic - both in the kinds of traffic (emails, social, search, referrals, etc.) and where your organic search comes from.

We are looking into sites like Flipboard and submissions like Yahoo News!

What steps are you taking to help either get back what you lost or to hold onto what you already have?

One Piece of Advice

Do not pay anyone to try to "fix" your site if you've been hit hard by the HCU. They may be able to read and interpret what Google says about the update, but we are seeing that not even Google is getting it right.

In other words, no one knows the right things to do right now.

Google is a beast. That has not changed. There is a reason we say, "Google it" and not "Bing it."

Google still owns the majority of search traffic.

But as many niche bloggers and site owners are finding out, Google is running amok. We're not sure they even know what the heck they are doing.

To be clear, we are not saying throw in the towel. We have always said creating quality content with the search intent of your reader in mind is foundational. That has not changed.

We don't believe you, Reader, create the kind of content that Google is attempting to keep out of SERPs.

What we do know is that we are all waiting and watching to see how all this plays out and hoping for as little lasting damage as possible.

And keep your money in your pocket while we all see how this plays out over the next few months. There is not an easy fix - other than to keep doing what you are doing and create content that is for your readers.

Hit reply and let us know what your thoughts are on the HCU. We're always curious.

The BlogPaws Team

​