iGB Affiliate 95_iGB L!VE 2024 | Page 27

I ’ ve built solid links , including from top-notch sources in the UK and US such as The Guardian and USA Today . This shows you ’ re not safe from Google ’ s judgments , no matter how good your links are
However , Google ’ s battle against reputation abuse at least dangles the prospect of improvement on the restrictions for the smaller guys , right ? The irony of my holding onto that hope , having helped launch Better Collective ’ s first major B2B media cooperation with NJ . com during my time at the company , isn ’ t lost on me , by the way .
Anyway , back to British Gambler . In September 2023 , things took a wild turn . It felt like my personal Armageddon when out of nowhere the sunny skies turned grey as our organic traffic plummeted and our rankings started to slip .
Could it have been competitors messing with us , throwing spam links and weird social signals our way to tank our rankings ? Maybe . Our security plugin , Wordfence , did flag more attacks around that time . But it probably had more to do with Google ’ s big August 2023 core update .
All about ‘ About Us ’
Google ’ s core updates tweak the search engine ’ s algorithm . Their aim is to try and show better search results , focusing on factors such as experience , expertise , authoritativeness , and trustworthiness ( E-E-A-T ). The updates can really shake things up and I was confident that my site content met the E-E-A-T criteria , but it was clear that Google no longer shared that view .
Interestingly , earlier this year I had a conversation with a Google Rater who mentioned that the first thing they assess to evaluate E-E- A-T on a site is the About Us page . They then proceed to check for mentions of your brand externally to determine which authoritative media have mentioned you . In my opinion , there was nothing wrong with our About Us page ; it clearly states that the site is run by me and includes a link to my LinkedIn profile .
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