Blogging Report (August 2018) – Core Google Algorithm Update Hit In August

Blogging Report (August 2018)

In August, there was a Core Google Algorithm Update that affected a large amount of people and shook up their traffic/rankings quite a bit.

Now Google does these core updates throughout the year, but this particular one that rolled out around August 1, 2018 seemed to have more of an impact than others.

With that being said, as with all Google algorithm updates, it’s good to keep them on your radar but not to panic.

Google even said that there is no “fix” to this one if you were affected.

So keep producing quality content, building quality backlinks and ensuring your website is user/mobile friendly.

I saw slight fluctuation myself in terms of organic traffic and search engine rankings when comparing month-over-month but nothing drastic.

See screenshot below to see what I’m talking about:

Organic traffic for August 2018 came in at 135 search visits compared to 168 search visits in July 2018.

However, comparing month-over-month isn’t what I generally look at when analyzing my data.

A better metric is to compare year-over-year to really see how your website is doing over a full 365 days.

Which we’ll get into below.

Organic Traffic (August 2018)- 135 Visits

For the month of August, organic traffic came in at 135 search visits.

August was an excellent month for content generation as I was able to publish 10 blog posts to my website!

A few of these were guest posts, mixed in with my own articles as well.

My goal is to publish 4-8 articles every single month and this was by far one of my best months in terms of content generation.

As I said above, comparing month-over-month, my organic traffic was down slightly, but now let’s take a look at year-over-year data.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (August 2018 vs. August 2017)

I continue to see large year-over-year increases which I’ll continue to push for with the SEO work I have planned moving forward.

For starters, organic traffic is up 365% when comparing year-over-year (135 vs. 29).

The two charts above reveal quite a bit.

This type of growth keeps me motivated to push ever harder than I have in the past, especially since SEO and blogging can take a little while to start building momentum.

The second chart dives in a little deeper and shows the daily plot points from August 2018 (blue line) and August 2017 (orange line).

Overall I’m very happy with these results even though I saw a little fluctuation (month-over-month) due to the core google algorithm update.

Strategy & Next Steps For September 2018

Now that summer in Connecticut is winding down, I really plan to ramp things up starting in September.

Let’s take a look at some of my next steps below.

1.) Publish 4-8 Blog Posts: I’ve been very consistent with my content generation the past year which is partially why I’m seeing the year-over-year growth in traffic lately. To continue building upon this, I plan on publishing 4-8 blog posts to my website in September. Remember, this is always high-quality content for my readers which gives me a better chance of ranking in the search engines.

2.) Link Building: I know it’s boring that this is always on my list but it’s crucial in any successful SEO campaign that you are doing consistent link building. I had a handful of really quality links built last month, and plan to acquire 3-5 more in September. Boy does this help with search engine rankings!

3.) Set Up New Funnel: I’m setting up a new funnel for my blog which will be a bit more robust than my current one and offer some very high-quality training. I have already started it at the time of writing this, but am hoping to be mostly finished by the end of September. You constantly have to be adapting and improving your website if you want to grow in this space.

That pretty much wraps it up, short and sweet this month.

If you’re reading this and haven’t started your blog yet, I reccomend you take a look here.

If you already have a website but are looking to generate more results, send me a message here so we can chat!

I also recorded a video for this blogging report here.

How is your website traffic looking?

Did the core google algorithm update affect you?

Below is the video version of this blog post: