Reports say there was like­ly a sig­nif­i­cant Google algo­rithm update on June 25, pri­mar­i­ly tar­get­ing sites rank­ing in posi­tions 6 to 10 and impact­ing the food and bev­er­age indus­try the most, but also hit­ting indus­tries like retail, trav­el and health.

When­ev­er this occurs, there seems to be wide­spread alarm and pub­li­ca­tions push out posts about what each update means and how brands can tell if they were hit by it.

And while we don’t want to rein­vent the wheel, this is a good time to remem­ber why Google updates its algo­rithm in the first place – and what the state of the art of search engine opti­miza­tion is in 2017. In oth­er words, when there is an algo­rithm update:

1. Look to the SEO community.

Accord­ing to Brock Mur­ray, COO of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency SEO­plus+, per­haps the most impor­tant thing SEOs can do before, dur­ing and after updates is to sim­ply keep their ears to the ground.

“The best way to do that is to fol­low all the biggest SEO names on Twit­ter like Bar­ry Schwartz and Marie Haynes and keep fol­low­ing the SEO blogs like SERound­table,” Mur­ray said. “What’s cool is that when one SEO is affect­ed, we’re all affect­ed and we head to Twit­ter to dis­cuss. The more infor­ma­tion we can share with each oth­er, the more like­ly we are to get­ting to the bot­tom of why the changes hap­pened and how we can adjust.”

Jamie White, head of tech­ni­cal SEO at dig­i­tal and search mar­ket­ing agency Search Lab­o­ra­to­ry, agreed sites that see drops in traf­fic and are try­ing to come up with recov­ery plans in par­tic­u­lar should take note of what’s being said in the SEO com­mu­ni­ty about the algo­rithm – par­tic­u­lar­ly if Google has not been vocal about what the update impacts.

2. Remember the goalpost is always moving.

And even if your traf­fic does drop, don’t pan­ic.

“The [oth­er] thing we need to remem­ber is that, out­side of things such as Pen­guin and Pan­da, algo­rithm updates are just that…updates,” said Josh Pat­ter­son, senior SEO direc­tor at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Jel­ly­fish. “Google’s mis­sion, as it has been from day one, is to pro­vide the best results to users based on search and intent. Each sub­se­quent algo­rithm update looks to bet­ter that promise. If that means the way in which con­tent is served has changed, it is up to us to adapt to it.”

In oth­er words, SEO is nev­er real­ly fin­ished.

“It’s a mis­con­cep­tion with­in the indus­try that, when hit by an algo­rithm update, we can make some fix­es to our con­tent or prop­er­ties as a whole to get back to where we were,” Pat­ter­son added. “We for­get that the goal­post is always mov­ing. Where we were no longer exists because the rules have changed or adapt­ed.”

3. Don’t fixate on the algorithm.

And so per­haps the most sound advice when it comes to algo­rithm updates is to ignore them.

“There is very lit­tle to say that has not been said a mil­lion times before. If you focus on deliv­er­ing the best pos­si­ble con­tent and the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence for your users, then these algo­rithm prob­lems will pass you by and often deliv­er an improve­ment in your vis­i­bil­i­ty and organ­ic traf­fic,” said Mar­cus Miller, an SEO and PPC con­sul­tant. “If you chase the algo­rithm and try to find ways to exploit the sys­tems used to rank web­sites then each pass­ing update will dent your traf­fic and make you want to cry. Organ­ic search is a black box.”

And that, of course, is because no one knows exact­ly how Google ranks web­sites or what the inter­play is between var­i­ous sig­nals.

“Clear­ly, engage­ment sig­nals are becom­ing more impor­tant and you can’t fake that,” Miller added. “As the algo­rithm becomes more AI-dri­ven, then all the links and opti­miza­tion in the world won’t help you trick the engine into giv­ing you more than you deserve. If you want the best pos­si­ble posi­tion for your web­site, focus on being the best pos­si­ble answer for a giv­en search.”

Mur­ray agreed a good rule of thumb is to just take care of your con­tent.

“Cre­ate long, in-depth con­tent for your read­ers and cre­ate online rela­tion­ships that make sense,” Mur­ray added. “As long as you’re putting in the work and tak­ing care of your con­tent, Google will take care of you.”

4. Monitor, diagnose and act.

That being said, White said regard­less of updates, brands should always close­ly mon­i­tor their vis­i­bil­i­ty and traf­fic lev­els and respond to the data. And that starts with iden­ti­fy­ing any poten­tial issues.

“Set up alerts in your ana­lyt­ics soft­ware to ensure that you are always aware when organ­ic traf­fic has seen a drop beyond a cer­tain expect­ed [per­cent­age] lev­el,” White said. “We would rec­om­mend >10% ver­sus the same day in the pre­vi­ous week as any­thing less than this could be nat­ur­al fluc­tu­a­tion, but you can base it on how change­able your traf­fic is on a week-by-week basis. Addi­tion­al­ly, you will ide­al­ly have rank­ing soft­ware that tracks posi­tions dai­ly, so you can quick­ly iden­ti­fy any drops in rank­ing per­for­mance in line with site traf­fic.”

From there, diag­nose the cause.

“See­ing a traf­fic or rank­ings drop around the same date as an algo­rithm update can imme­di­ate­ly ring alarm bells, but cor­re­la­tion doesn’t always mean cau­sa­tion,” White said. “Devel­op­ers can reg­u­lar­ly make changes to a site with­out inform­ing the SEO or mar­ket­ing team so it’s worth hav­ing an ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion to deter­mine whether any­thing behind the scenes could be respon­si­ble for the impact that you’ve seen.”

5. Look to the Webmaster Guidelines.

If your site does see a drop in traf­fic, White sug­gests drilling down to spe­cif­ic key­words and land­ing pages that have been affect­ed to deter­mine whether the issue is site-wide or iso­lat­ed to a cer­tain sec­tion of the web­site.

“This part of the process is cru­cial as it will shape any reme­di­al action that you may need to take,” White added.

Pat­ter­son agreed, but also point­ed to Google’s Web­mas­ter Guide­lines.

“Eval­u­at­ing our per­for­mance against those rules, rather than alleged algo­rith­mic changes, not only set us up for pos­i­tive progress, regard­less of updates, but is also a bet­ter mod­el for long-term suc­cess in SEO,” Pat­ter­son added.

6. Communicate.

In addi­tion, Pat­ter­son said brands need to find the prop­er way to com­mu­ni­cate algo­rith­mic changes and sub­se­quent SERP fluc­tu­a­tion.

“Whether report­ing to clients or inter­nal lead­er­ship, it is impor­tant to con­vey these events in a way that is digestible to some­one unfa­mil­iar with the sub­ject,” he added.