August 2024 Core Update - Anyone Else Shaking Their Head?

[codyecp]

Preface: I own an agency that focuses only on dental clients

Curious if anyone else is scratching their heads after this new update? We spent the last 6 months reinventing how we created localized content for clients, pushing for quality photography/imagery, uniquely written longer form content, that answered more questions relevant to a KW search topic. We spent countless hours focusing on showcasing expertise, testimonials and focusing on addressing personal experiences.

We're now worse off across the board after the August update, generally falling 2-5 spots for our primary KW targets per page. Only to see that our clients are outranked by 100-200 words of repurposed content, stock heavy imagery and just all around bad/bogus content from less qualified "experts."

Now I'm shaking my head, left wondering if:

1. Content written for search engines doesn't rank well AND...
2. Content written for actual people doesn't rank well AND...
3. Unique experiential content written by experts doesn't rank well BUT...
4. Horrible half-ass stock heavy cookie-cutter content does rank again now...
5. What in the heck are we actually supposed to be doing as marketers anymore?!?!

Would love to hear other's thoughts from the same or different industries, verticals, niches etc. on their thoughts, and if you like the August Core Update.

Anyone seeing similar things? Has anyone who put in effort seeing gains from those efforts?

 

[JoyHawkins]

No, that one is a lawyer