How a Content Audit Can Help You Avoid the Latest Round of Google Penalties

The latest Google algorithm changes have shaken the search marketing world. While the Google Spam update has finished, the Google Core update is still processing, and thousands of websites have already been removed from Google’s search index. Those affected have obviously experienced significant traffic and revenue losses.

Why Have Websites Been Deindexed?

The March 2024 Spam Update targeted low-quality content, whether AI-generated or poorly written by humans. One study conducted by Originality.ai determined that 100% of the deindexed websites in their study group showed signs of spammy, AI-generated content, and 50% of those had 90-100% of their posts generated by AI.

Now, does this mean that any websites using AI content will be deindexed? Absolutely not. The focus of the latest update is helpfulness—creating content that users find valuable. Content that was generated simply to appeal to search engines was the first to receive their Google punishments.

Has your site already suffered? If not, are you sure it won’t?

Why You Need a Content Audit During This Google Update

This crackdown on poorly written content has been a long time coming. In 2022, Google launched their “helpful content system,” with the processes evolving over time to culminate in the Helpful Content Update in the fall of 2023. If you read our weekly Coffee & SEO series, you may have seen the signs, too.

We got to work, immediately developing a content audit to grade the content on our own website. We were shocked by some of our grades, and we saw this coming! We can only imagine how many have been blindsided by their removal from the Google search index.

We’re now offering this content audit to anyone who suspects they may be removed from the Google search index after receiving a Manual Action from Google Search Console or experiencing a drop in traffic—and even those who are marginally confident their content passes muster.

The content audit examines five pages, whether service pages, blogs, product pages, or landing pages, to determine the helpfulness of the information within. Our audit covers the following:

• Helpful Content Review
  • Does the content speak to the reader?
  • Is the content user-centric?
  • Is the content answering a question or providing a solution?
  • Is it easy to read and follow?
  • Is the content unique with brand voice?

• Evaluation of On-page Elements
  • Images
  • Buttons
  • Videos
  • Headers
  • Spelling & grammar
  • Social sharing
  • Mobile responsiveness & performance
  • Internal links

When the audit is complete, you’ll receive a content audit worksheet with your grades and a full report with recommendations and suggestions for remediation efforts.

What to Look for in a Content Audit

As we reported in a recent Coffee & SEO blog, the latest update resulted in an unprecedented number of violation notices. Even more unusual is that many of these actions were manual—as in, a person reviewed each website to determine if it complied with Google policies.

That’s why a human—a very intelligent, very experienced human—reviews all five pages included in your content audit. We use Google’s tools and our smarts to interpret the results, so you’ll never wonder if a bot or AI program somewhere just made a mistake.

You may have noticed that Plan Left isn’t big on pushing a new downloadable checklist or some half-assed eBook every week. We don’t make big offers unless we feel consumers really need them. And you may very well need this content audit.

Although Google’s Spam update has been completed, Google’s Core update is still unrolling. Millions of websites have yet to be examined. If you’ve already been deindexed, we can show you why. If you haven’t, get insight into why your content isn’t ranking like you think it should. Don’t risk the billions in combined revenue loss many businesses will experience when the update is complete.