[0:00]Google just launched the March 2026 spam update and today, I'm going to be showing you what actions you need to take. So, the first action you need to take is actually nothing. Okay, so that is the very first thing whenever there is any core update, whenever there's a spam update, any update from Google, just take a breather, don't act on anything. You have to let the dust settle. Sometimes these updates can take a few days, sometimes they can take a few weeks. A lot of the time, you'll start to see some action from these updates even before it's announced. So, what you want to do is just let the dust settle, once it's settled, then we can start to target maybe the specific items that maybe could have caused maybe a decrease in traffic, decrease in rankings, whatever it may be. So, first things first, is you can see this directly on Google's documentation, they'll actually show you exactly what these updates do, okay? They're pretty vague for the most part, that's why I'm going to show you, we're going to dig into some of the like key things that I commonly see that affect websites in a negative way, so we're going to dig into that. So, the first one here is this very specific passage is important to understand. So, sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies, which I'm going to be showing you very specific spam policies, we'll be talking about here. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Based on what I've seen auditing hundreds of penalized websites over the last decade of doing this, if you completely disappear from the search results, that's a that's usually a manual action. Very rarely is an algorithmic change going to completely wipe you out and completely de-index you from the serps. You got to be doing something pretty radical for that to ha to happen and usually it's going to be a manual action that you'll see inside of Google search console. Usually with most algorithm updates, you're going to see a huge dip in rankings and also organic search traffic. So that's much more likely in this particular scenario. So then they say making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies. So let's talk about the specific, so when you go into the spam policies, it's very long, there's lots of different sections, okay? But I want to get you focused on a few sections because honestly, most of the stuff that's in the spam policy section is really for the real nasty stuff. Guys that are intentionally doing Black hat SEO, like they're just pushing the limits and pushing these algorithms like to the fullest extent. Most regular websites, regular businesses are not going to this level, so you don't really need to be concerned about that. But there are some ones where you may be playing a dangerous game and you don't realize it. Okay, so the first one is doorway abuse. And this one is really common on the local level, you'll see this all the time where basically, a local business creates a whole group of pages that are specifically targeting a one core service and one city and then basically replicating that across many different cities. Without actually making the content unique. So, basically just swapping out the city and then just building out tons of these pages. So, here's an example what this might look like, right? You've got car accident lawyer in Chesterfield, Missouri, then it's you just swap out in Ballwin, then you swap in Clayton, and that's basically what a doorway page is. Like they're basically just designed purely to rank in Google. Which there's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. This is not the right way, okay? You don't want to just basically create a bunch of duplicate content, just swap out the city, that's not a good idea, especially in this day and age where you can use AI, there's no good reason to be this lazy. AI can immediately make the content unique because whenever you create content with AI, it's non-deterministic. So, it's very rare that if you were to run the same exact query, so car accident lawyer in Chesterfield, Missouri, versus car accident lawyer in Ballwin, and you had two different AIs write content for those particular keywords or phrases, it's going to give you different content every time. Yes, it will be similar. Yes, it will talk about similar topics and different and similar entities, but the actual structure of the content's going to be different. But I would actually recommend a better strategy. So, my strategy these days is first of all, focus on wherever your core location is. So, if Chesterfield is where you serve and that's where your physical location is, the site should be structured around Chesterfield. That means all the core service pages that appear in the navigation should be for Chesterfield, okay, because that is your core location. Yes, it is attractive to want to go after the big metro, which in this case would be St. Louis City. But I see this time and time again where you have a lawyer or a local business that has a physical location in a city that's outside of the metro, but they try to win in the metro. It's very hard to do that, especially in the local pack. You basically have no chance in the local pack. You've got a little bit of a better chance in traditional organic, but in the local pack, it's game over if you don't have an address in the metro. Like it's you're just not going to win. So, a better strategy is win where you already have leverage. Don't expand to additional cities when you haven't even dominated the one city where you actually have an address. So, start there, dominate your core location first, build out all the proper service pages that would be in this structure. If you want to expand to adjacent cities, there's a way to do this that's not spammy. Now, it will depend on the tolerance of the business that you're working with. So, the way we've reframe this is instead of just building another basically doorway page, we'll build a li a lical on the blog that'll be like top 10 best car accident lawyers in Ballwin, Missouri, okay? And then we're able to target that keyword in a natural way that's not going to cause a bunch of thin content and kind of this doorway environment. There's a lot of kind of discussion on lis, right? And whether they're a good idea, whether or not a bad idea, but the truth is, they work, okay? They just work and they're really powerful in the local level. The only issue is when you're working with local businesses, they don't like to talk about their competitors. That's there's workarounds for this. For example, you can go and publish that content on other websites, not your own blog that already have authority, okay, so you can do that as well. Okay, expired domain abuse. This is one that's been around forever. I'll even show you an example of this. I actually started talking about the merger technique in 2015. It was heavily expired domains, right? You would find expired domains that were relevant and you would three and one redirect them to your website. And the end outcome of that is you get those the link equity flowing to that site. And anyone that says that this doesn't work has never truly done this the right way because it works and it works incredibly well, but with one caveat, I don't recommend using expired domains really anymore. That's that is definitely the old school way to do it. I would highly recommend trying to find an existing asset that's already alive and then merging that with your website. So, there's a lot of different examples of this. You can find some blog in your industry that's just gone dormant and is no longer active and you can send an acquisition offer. You can find a little micro tool in your industry that maybe just been sitting there for a long time but it's actually accumulated a bunch of links and then you can send an acquisition offer to that. So, there's lots of different ways to do this, but I highly recommend just like thinking about this more as like you're Warren Buffet and you're trying to acquire a business. Do your due diligence and make sure that if you're going to do this, you're acquiring a relevant asset in your industry that it has a relevant link profile to what you do. If you do that, you're going to be in good shape. And if you want to see an example of this, I 3 and one redirected Gotcha SEO dot com to rankability.com and you'll be able to see the amount of strength that rankability has now because of that redirect. And like I said, I've done this technique across multiple verticals, multiple niches. It has worked every time because it's really about being very intentional about the type of domain that you're going to actually merge. I would be very careful though not to do this too much. I would say use the whole punch card method that Warren Buffet talks about, which is if you could only had, you could only make 10 investments in your entire life, you you'd be very deliberate about those investments that you would make. It's the same thing with this. If you could only pick five domains to ever three and one redirect to your website, your client's website, you'd be a lot more deliberate about that process, right? So, do the due diligence. Okay, keyword stuffing, this is this goes on even to this day, all the time.
[8:26]Constant focus on keyword injection, keyword stuffing, keyword density, all that stuff does not really work at all and it is in fact totally a useless practice at this point because of AI, LLMs and NLP. So, we know that the Google is starting to use more LLM technology even in its process of trying to understand the web. So that means AI is involved here. And there's one thing, you can say what you want about AI and LLMs, but one thing it's really good at is understanding words. That is its number one most effective skill that is unmatched as far as the speed. So, you do not need to be stuffing the same keyword multiple times into a piece of content for the AI to understand what that's about. And you can even just practice this. Like I throw some of the most poorly formatted, misspelled prompts, horrible grammar into the AI all the time and it just is able to figure it all out and know what I'm talking about. So, you don't need to be just hitting it over the head with the same stuff. There's a better way to do this. So, what you really want to focus more on is topic coverage, okay? So, this example you're looking at here, you can see there's two kind of key things you want to be thinking about when it comes, let's just say keywords that you're using on one page, okay? Number one is keyword placement, okay? This matters a lot. So, putting your primary keyword in the most important spots. So, in this case, you know, URL, it's not showing URL here, but URL, title tag, H1, first 100 words, meta description, and early somewhere in the H two. Just getting that right can do a lot for you, but it's not enough to take you to the next level, especially when you're competing with in really competitive verticals, that won't be enough. To go to the next level, you got to focus on topic coverage, okay? So, what we've done is we've taken our core seed keyword, we've put it in the most prominent places that tend to get a lot of attention with these algorithms and in retrieval. And then what we're going to do is we're going to branch out from that core seed keyword and we're going to start to attack other related topics, right? So, the goal here is not to think about how many times have I mentioned this one keyword in the content. Just totally disconnect from that idea. What we have found is that even if you just mention a topic one time in that content, it will be enough. Just one time. So, naturally, if you write naturally and you do this the right way, you're just naturally going to include these topics, probably more than once. It's just going to happen, but just let it be natural. The key here is just to cover the topics. Try to cover the topics as much as possible and then you're going to have a very relevant page. One of the things that is absolutely proven to be effective is building a relevant page. That building a relevant page is one of the key pillars of effective SEO and not just ranking well in traditional search, but ranking as a core retrieval source as well. So, it doesn't matter whether you're doing AI SEO or traditional SEO, it is the same. Building relevant pages is a core fundamental that you have to do. And this is not just for pages that you're publishing on your website. This is also the case for any type of asset you're building across any platform. For example, let's say you want to get more views on YouTube, building more relevant videos in your vertical is going to help you get more visibility on the platform, right? Same thing on TikTok, same thing on LinkedIn. It's all the same because these platforms are driven by the interest graph. When you go on YouTube, it's trying to show you whatever is most relevant to you, whatever you care about the most. And it's using obviously, how you engage with certain types of pieces of content, but it starts to give you these different pieces of content that it knows you're interested in and how does it do that initially? If you're a channel that continually creates content about the same topic, then you're going to that's going to give you a lift compared to another channel that basically just creates a bunch of random stuff, right? So, you're training the algorithm. There's multiple ways to do this, but the key is like, no matter whether it's your website or YouTube or LinkedIn or X, you're focused on one core subject matter expertise 80% of the time. And for every asset you build, try to cover the topics to the full extent and those supporting topics, okay? Next one here is with link spam, okay? So, we covered some of the other bigger elements more on the content side, but link spam is probably the biggest one. And if you go into Google spam policies, you're going to see that the link spam section is the longest section. Now, why is that? It's because links work and they work very well. Good links, like doing things the right way, works well, but also doing things in a sketchy way, also works as well. And that's why they have this entire section basically saying that this stuff works, so you shouldn't do it, okay? And now it's very dangerous, right? This is like very dangerous stuff, you, I would not recommend it personally, but we cannot deny it's effectiveness at least in the short term and certainly can work, just not my style, okay? So, a couple of things is like whenever, whenever these spam updates come and maybe you see a little decrease in traffic or rankings, just go and look at your link profile. Dig in, start looking for sketchy links, start looking for links that are irrelevant. Okay? So, there's a couple of kind of key things you can look at as far as the characteristics of a quality back link, okay? Number one is relevance. Going back to top content relevance, we know that's really important, but so is the relevance of your link profile. And relevance can be broken down in kind of two different buckets. So, if you're on the local level, localized relevance is really important. So, it is actually beneficial. If you're a personal injury lawyer and you get a link because you donated to the local softball league, that is actually a good link. So, this is one of those weird situations where like, you don't need subject matter relevance, you can actually just have localized relevance and it can still be effective. Now, why is that? Most people say that softball league website only has a DR of 10 or whatever. This is why you don't want to focus on third-party metrics because that is not how you should assess the quality of a link. You should assess the quality of a link based on the links that it has. So, a lot of the times when you look at a softball league or a local theater, on the surface, it may look weak, quote unquote. But when you dig in and you look at that link profile, a lot of the times you'll find it has links from the local government, it's got links from the local news, it's got links from like really trusted powerful entities. So, that is what you want to be focusing on is looking at the quality of the link profile, not just looking at, hey, does it have a good third-party metric on the surface? Now third-party metrics are good for initial kind of filtering, but when you've got to dig in, you don't make that your core reason why you don't go after a link opportunity because you're probably missing out on some good ones, okay? So, that's on the local level. Then also on the niche level, so for example, we have a software company and it's an SEO software company. So, us getting links from other SEO based websites is a good thing, okay? So, you just do that. You focus on relevant opportunities. That's going to take care of a lot for you, okay? Aside from that, I already mentioned the importance of back link relevance. So, what we're talking about here is more about the topical relevance of that entity, but also here is the relevance of that entity's link profile. And then back link quality, okay? Back link quality, in my opinion, is it's from a trusted website. It's from a well-known entity and generally it's relevant. That's what I would consider back link quality and that's pretty easy to assess, right? If you see junk in your link profile, it's pretty obvious usually. And then the last piece here is back link placement, so is that link in a sidebar, is that link in a footer, or is it in the actual meat of that content? Usually, the most effective links are actually in the body of a content asset and it's using an anchor text that based on your current anchor text profile is using an anchor text that's pretty descriptive but not overly aggressive. So, speaking of anchor text, when we look at this, in any update or any situation where you get hit by an algorithm, go to your anchor text profile. It's very important. So, when you look at the distribution, you really want to see the large majority of your anchor text is branded, right? Branded, URL, naked, generic. This is your in the safe zone over here. You're not going to run into too many problems as long as this's the large majority. So, this particular website that ranks really well for anything related to St. Louis SEO or St. Louis SEO consultant, you can see very minimal keyword rich anchor text. Like only about 1%, maybe we'll call it 3%, give or take for the whole domain, okay, this is not just one page. But you really want to be thinking out for the entire domain, what is that kind of core anchor text. You don't want to see your primary keyword just being slammed over and over, it creates a very dangerous environment. So, if you are going to use keyword rich anchor text, I like to treat it as like my back pocket kind of highest leverage move that I won't usually use until I really need it. I'll see how far we can push that page and then let's say it stagnates at like number two or three and like I just can't get it to move up even though I keep hitting it with more good quality links, then I'm going to hit it with a really good link with the really strong anchor text, okay? And that usually can be can give it a nice lift to get it to where it needs to go. But I would say just reserve it for the best of the best links and only reserve it for when you really need it, okay? That's really important. And then the next one here is about scaled content abuse in the age of using generative AI tools, you can see they've mentioned that very specifically. It's easy to create content now. So, people are just pumping content out all the time and not adding anything unique to it. This is a mistake. It's really easy to make your content unique. You don't have to make the entire asset unique. You have to just add elements of uniqueness in it. So, if you're going to use AI, add some expert level insights in there. Add a couple blocks that are human written. Add some unique data, some first party data, like add some testimonials. Like just figure out a way to make it unique in some way, instead of just pumping out the same stuff that anyone else can do using any LLM. Parasite SEO is the process of finding a very strong website in typically, you try to find your industry but it technically doesn't need to be in your industry, could also just be a strong site in general. And then you build a keyword targeted asset on that website to rank that asset because you're going to leverage that site's authority. Now, there's a reason why Google puts this here in the spam policies is because it works. It works really well. So, there's a good way to do it and there's a bad way to do it. Obviously, a lot of people that doing engage in parasite SEO are more in a kind of a churn and burn strategy. But you can actually do this in a really safe and long-term kind of stable way, which is basically just going and being a contributor on your most important websites in any particular vertical. And then you build keyword driven content and of course, you promote your brand, okay? So that's like the that's the clean way to do it. One thing I would highly recommend doing as far as like your overall SEO strategy and kind of offsite strategy, just build a list of your top 100 websites in any industry that you're working in. Top 100. And then work, like literally just have a list and say, do we have a link on these? Because if you work through that list and you get 25% of that top 100, it's almost impossible not to see performance gains. Now, many different ways you can find these, you can just use AI to do the prospect list, but the point is, build that list of 100 and then focus on trying to get brand placement there. When it comes to AI, you don't actually even need to get a link by the way. Like getting just your brand mentioned on entities that are used a lot in retrieval, that can do it as far as influencing the AI answers. We just are starting to release a lot of lessons for the local SEO and AI search playbook. So, there's a bunch of new lessons in here. We're get approaching 20 new lessons that have just been put into the platform. So, if you're interested of a link below the video and once again, thank you so much for watching.
