The June 2019 Core algorithm update was completely different than both the two previous updates – the March 2019 core algorithm update and the August 2018 algorithm update …which were both really kind of evolutionary updates of one another, and for which many sites experienced ranking and traffic reversals.
In this blog post, I have simply summarized what some of the current top SEO experts have said below about the June 2019 Core Algorithm Update. A big shout out to Eric Lancheres for his thorough analysis of the June 2019 Google algorithm update.
It seems that in this update Google has changed the dials on the link trust factors and domain authority metrics.
Google is now rewarding domains with more authority and more trusted links a lot more – and sites with more authority and links (trusted links) have seen an increase in rankings across the board.
Google has focused more on domain authority to increase the trust of sites that show up high in the search results. While sites with higher trust have seen and increase in rankings, those with lower trust signals have seen significant declines.
Its entirely possible that this may have been a direct result of some of the pressure from the public and outcry of fake stories that bubbles up the SERPs on lower trusted sites. It seems this would be a great way to combat that from happening.
A Domain Level Update
It has been observed that the June 2019 core update was an algorithm update that affected entire sites and not just specific pages on sites. The update affected entire domains as one unit. Interestingly this meant that all sub-domains were affected similarly – and either saw similar ranking gains or drops… on a domain-wide basis.
In the past Google treated sub-domains as different sites – but this time around it has applied the algorithm on a domain level.
What The June Algorithm Update was NOT About
A few top SEOs have uncovered that the update was…
- not related to user experience
- not related to content
- not related to layout or ad insertions on site
- not related to site speed
The Update Was About Domain Authority & Links
The primary factor that Google re-evaluated for ranking domains in this update was the importance of domain authority.
Pages within sites with higher domain authority (trust) – seemed to have gotten a boost in the rankings.
This was seen in Ahrefs very clearly across multiple niches….
Content that was on page that resided on trusted domains with a high domain authority got a boost while content on lesser authority domains saw drops in rankings.
It also seems as though Google changed the way it calculated domain authority metric and gave “backlinks” even more significance.
All in all sites with more backlinks got a significant boost in rankings!
A Summary of The Analysis – Factors You Need to Pay Attention To
Here is a list of all the factors you need to be paying more attention to while doing your SEO, moving forward.
These are the metrics of how the top 10 rankings (page #1) now differ – when compared to the top 10 rankings before the algorithm update.
On average the Top 10 Pages now have…
- 30% more backlinks (*wow*)
- 60% more referring domains
- 31% more do-follow links
- 120% more incoming image links
- 164% more .edu links
- 18% more external links
- 10% more internal links
- 34% less no-follow links (which means that Google is now not trusting your internal no-follow links and is penalizing sites for using internal no-follows)
- 50% less keywords in bold (not surprising)
- 100% more H5 tags (*wow*)
- 16% more schema tags (2019 and beyond will see Schema becoming a major ranking factor)
A Note About Your Backlink Profile
The algorithm now looks at the trust from your backlinks AND the entirety of your backlink collection.
If you just get a couple of links from trusted sources – it wont count as much if you had other links along with them. You CANT focus on just getting a couple of really good links from trusted sites… you now need to look at your overall link profile ratio!
With that said…
All in all, just when we thought that Google was moving away from giving backlinks as much importance as it had in the past – they surprise us with an update that treats backlinks with a LOT more importance!
This is very interesting.
It looked like Google was moving the needle a little further away from backlinks but has not brought it back, but in a diffrent way.
I wounder if this is because people started to rank easier without needing trusted sources to back up the information?
I do have a question to the author though… in terms of back links I am assuming there is more weight getting say 5 backlinks from 5 different domains, than 5 backlinks from the same domain (all things being equal)?
Hi Alex, Yes… links for different domains are better over getting them from the same domain.. all other things being equal for the domains in the data set. Also, I presume you meant to say “now brought it back” above… and not “not brought it back” when referring to backlinks above. thanks for stopping by and dropping a comment.