Small business SEO has never existed in a vacuum. It’s been shaped continuously by Google’s hunger for better, faster, friendlier user experiences. And every now and then, an algorithm update comes along that shifts the entire landscape. For modern small businesses, these updates are no longer simply technical quirks to navigate — they’re something more personal, more pivotal. They can unexpectedly snap the threads connecting you with your customers online.
In March 2024, Google rolled out one of its most significant core updates in years. The update placed an even stronger emphasis on content quality and eliminated vast amounts of low-value pages in an effort to solve the search engine’s long-standing challenge: relevancy. Small businesses that once relied on templated blogs, duplicated location pages, or SEO hacks suddenly found themselves buried below the fold — or worse, removed entirely from search results.
This post is a deep dive into how that March 2024 update affected small businesses, particularly those operating locally, and what you as a business owner — or as someone knee-deep in helping businesses grow, like myself — can learn from the rubble. If SEO feels like a confusing game of chess where Google keeps changing the rules, my goal here is to help you understand the new board, figure out where you stand, and decide how to thoughtfully move forward.
Before we get too deep, let’s break down what the update actually was. On March 5th, 2024, Google released what it called its most “significant core update” since BERT in 2019. The update wasn’t a targeted tweak to things like backlinks or page speed. Instead, it was a broad reassessment of how well content meets user intent, combats misinformation, and contributes to search quality overall.
According to Google’s release notes, “This update involves changes to multiple core systems and improves how we understand what’s helpful content.” This included tightening how it assesses Helpful Content — a concept Google has been pushing since 2022 but is now prioritizing much more actively.
Here’s the kicker: Google said it expected this update to reduce unhelpful content in search results by 40%. Suddenly, even legitimate pages that were thin on depth, over-SEO’d for keywords, or published primarily for ranking (rather than user value) got hit.
Within a week, clients I consult in Tennessee and beyond began emailing with a mounting sense of confusion. One Franklin-based fitness studio saw a 58% drop in organic traffic seemingly overnight. Their blog section — packed with short keyword-heavy posts like “Best Exercises for Weight Loss in Franklin, TN” — lost rankings across the board. Meanwhile, their multi-location rivals who invested in storytelling and deeper user-centered guides stayed afloat.
In Los Angeles, a boutique interior design firm who outsourced SEO blog writing noticed a drop in visibility for several key service pages. Upon digging, we saw these pages were primarily built on templates with generic copy like “Luxury Home Renovation in LA” with little to distinguish them from thousands of others.
What became apparent quickly is that Google was applying a much higher level of scrutiny — not just to individual pages, but to site-wide patterns of shallow or redundant content.
Here’s the deeper shift: where past core updates applied more to individual pieces of content, this one placed a heavier weight on the overall perceived quality of an entire site. That meant small businesses with hundreds of so-so posts were judged based on the forest, not the trees. One weak page was no longer an isolated issue; it became part of a pattern.
If you’ve worked with freelancers or content mills in the past to crank out weekly blog posts just to “keep fresh content” going, this update punished that strategy. We saw small service-based businesses lose visibility for having large archives of off-topic or underdeveloped articles.
For example, a small HVAC company in Nashville had blog posts about everything from “How to Clean Your Shower Head” to “5 Christmas Decor Ideas,” even though none directly related to their core service. These were clearly created to farm traffic, not serve potential HVAC customers. Google finally said: enough.
In my work, I often say that your website isn't just code; it's psychology. It's the digital body language of your business. And that's what this update codifies. The algorithm is more than a robot parsing HTML. It’s learning, cross-referencing, and evaluating whether your online presence sends the right message: are you a trusted local authority, or just another noise-maker?
That’s a bleeding-edge concept — Google is moving closer to emulating a thoughtful customer scanning your site with fresh eyes. If they sense fluff, inconsistency, or inauthenticity, they bounce. So does your ranking.
While the March update affected everyone, it hit traditional local SEO strategies particularly hard. For years, one semi-effective technique was to create near-identical city landing pages targeting each suburb or metro with minor keyword tweaks — a mechanic might use a page like “Brake Repair Franklin TN” and clone it as “Brake Repair Brentwood TN.”
These now fall in the “unhelpful content” category if there’s not enough identifying, location-specific content — ideally with a real-world presence or unique insights for each area.
A real estate client I work with in Tennessee lost organic visibility for 12 city landing pages almost simultaneously. They were all similar pages: generic copy and a Zillow-style listings embed. After auditing, we deleted 9 of those pages and rebuilt 3 of them with unique research, interviews with local residents, and detailed profiles on school districts, new developments, and a local mortgage lender they partnered with.
Three months later, while the rest of the site plateaued, the refreshed location pages jumped to the top 5 positions. People landed, stayed, and converted. Because they actually learned something.
This update isn’t just about removing bad content. It’s about rewarding the good — especially when good means personalized, expert-driven content rooted in real experience. Google now weighs signals like authorship credibility, firsthand experience, and demonstrable knowledge heavily in rankings.
For example, if you're a web designer creating a guide about how to migrate a Wix website to Webflow, Google wants to hear your experience with migrations — not a paraphrased list scraped from others. That might mean acknowledging quirks in image compression handling between the platforms, or telling a story of how a past client in Franklin saw a 28% increase in conversion after migrating because we simplified the checkout flow.
If you're outsourcing blog content, make sure the writer is speaking in your voice and pulling directly from your unique insights. Use tools like Otter to transcribe your verbal walkthroughs or project recaps. Then build content around your language, not generic SEO fluff.
The March 2024 update has also revitalized the discussion around site hygiene. That includes internal linking, old URLs, unused pages, and even redundant service listings. Cleaning your site is no longer optional hygiene — it’s a ranking strategy.
In early April, I worked with a local coffee roastery that had 250+ pages, most of which were from outdated cafe branches, old promotions, or abandoned flavor blog posts. We removed nearly half and rerouted internal links more intentionally — and within two Google crawl cycles, their domain authority bumped up two points without publishing anything new.
As someone who acts as a kind of marketing therapist (that’s not my term; I’ve just come to accept it), I care deeply about getting to the shared center between your brand story and what your audience needs. That's how websites become truly useful and trustworthy. This algorithm update is a prompt to revisit your website's voice and intent. It rewards authenticity and depth — and penalizes superficiality disguised as optimization.
If your “About” page reads like a resume and not a story, if your service pages sound like robots and not humans, if your blog titles care more about clicks than clarity, then you’re leaving ranking potential on the table. Real storytelling connects intent to expertise.
Tell the story of a client who was stuck with a broken WordPress theme and saw double the leads after you migrated them to Webflow. Talk about why you offer Squarespace and Wix, not just because “they’re easy” — but because sometimes clients need freedom, not friction. These are the things Google’s now rewarding, quietly and consistently.
If you’re feeling the pinch, or worried your rankings are vulnerable, here’s a rundown of practical steps to take starting this week:
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about sincere effort. Even 3 or 4 pages rewritten with new insights and a conversational voice can reopen trust signals to Google. You don’t need 100 new blogs, you need 7 great, useful ones.
The ripple effects of the March 2024 Core Update are still unfolding, but the message is already clear: Google is done tolerating noise. Anyone creating content — particularly small businesses with limited resources — must now think of SEO beyond just strategy. It’s reputation management. It’s personality. It’s clarity over clutter.
For people like me who build websites with a blend of tech, psychology, and listening, this update is frustrating but also refreshing. It forces us to go back to the human side of digital. The core principle hasn’t changed: be helpful, be real, be relevant. Only now, there's less room to fake it.
Your website isn't just a collection of pages. It’s a conversation. Treat it that way, and even Google's newer, smarter algorithm will see the value in what you’re building.
Copyright © Zach Sean Web Design
