Unlike previous updates where we might see evidence of some degree of reversal afterward, HC stands out as one factor that shows no mercy.
In short, there are no easy fixes. Reversing a damaged site from an HC update is not straightforward and requires significant effort, depending on the site size and the time Google needs to reassess the site.
Expect a faster recovery for sites with fewer issues. Some SEOs have anecdotally reported site recovery once the TOC links were removed; however, these are the exception rather than the rule.
In my forensic consultations, I witnessed that most older sites often have one or more unrelated HC issues affecting their decline, such as overusing a keyword phrase or low-level optimization compared to their competitors. These must be identified and remedied.
Additionally, sites with multiple issues may have lost competitive ground to their rivals, or Google may have altered its blended search results and may no longer be suitable for showing that type of content in their results.
Each case is different, and one size does not fit all.
Where to start?
1. Identify the problem pages at the page level
There is a bias in our industry that a larger view containing all data is the best view. Search Console (SC) averaged data has not led me to find what I was looking for, but filtered and refined data has shown me something every time. Thankfully, SC provides a filter for performance data.
If this is your site, you’ll know which pages impact your bottom line, and that’s where you want to start.
You’ll need to dig into the data if you don’t know which pages were hit.
I identify problem pages by unchecking all performance metrics, except impressions, and setting the date range to 16 months to determine the impression bloom and sharp drop dates.
With that data, I filter the results further to see the data for all pages with a “#” in their URLs. This gives me the list of pages I need to review.
Next, I compare a canonical against all its anchor text links to assess the damage. Then I work through the pages one by one. At this point, the safest option is to remove the TOC links.
You may have pages that dropped, but don’t use TOC links. In a spreadsheet, notate a tab for the TOC pages for later review and place the remaining pages in a separate tab for other Issues, taking note if any are off-topic, and then create a separate tab for those URLs.
2. Group overlapping topical node pages
Problem pages are those that answer the same query. Often you can identify them by reviewing URL slugs within sitemaps or by crawling the data of the entire site.
Diagnostically, this process moves us from individual page assessment to assessing query groups.
Often, pages in this group are “Page is Indexed” when examined with the SC Inspect URL. Don’t mistake that for a page being served in the search results. [Source]
Indexed pages not being served in their performance data do not have any impressions or positions. The way to find them in search is to use “quotes” around the URLs. In this case, you get this response.