Combating the Latest Google Algorithm Change
Most of our sites and those of our clients were not affected by the latest rounds of Google algorithm changes. We did have a couple of sites that were not exactly EMD’s (exact match domains) but were keyword rich domain names that took a bit of a hit – but nothing serious. However, we have the luxury of owning a content company and so we never really lack fresh unique content.
If you did lose some ground in this past round of updates, then it is probably site content related. But even if you didn’t lose any ground and are just looking to be prepared for what’s coming, then read further anyway.
Here are some things that you should be doing today to either help restore your rankings (if you lost ground) or to just solidify them and/or improve them going forward.
- Add Fresh 100% Unique Content – A blog is the easiest way to do that. You want to mix it up a bit and have some very large posts (greater than a 1000 words) and some more appropriately sized blog posts as well. Variety is the spice of life. Don’t just write anything though, do a keyword analysis first and write titles and content that is keyword sculpted for your site. DO NOT keyword stuff – just write naturally and don’t exceed 1% keyword density. A good place to start is with about 15 posts a month (that’s one every other day). Even if you are a pure e-commerce site, you need to be looking for places on your site where you can add more fresh and unique content and you should be doing daily or every other day blog posts. The beauty of all of this fresh content is that it creates more keyword opportunities and also solidifies your site authority.
- Vary Your Anchor Text – Is this likely by itself to get you poor rankings? No. But looking natural only makes good sense. Take 10% to 20% of your article marketing and dedicate it to diversification of anchor text. So let’s say you’re distributing 10 articles a month. Take 2 of them and really mix up the keywords. Use some long variations, use your domain name, use related keywords, etc… but first and foremost, mix it up.
- Mix up Your Link Building Strategy – Remember we want linkbuilding to look natural and we tend to get in a rut doing the same thing month after month. If you’ve fallen into a rut with your SEO efforts, then it’s time to shake things up and do something different. Subscribe to a new service, purchase a new submitter, try out some profile links, send out a high end PRWeb press release – just do something different to mix up your routine. The problem with using the same tools over and over again is that you begin to leave a footprint and you also stop getting fresh links. The reason I say that is because you’re getting links from the same network of sites, the same domains, the same IPs, etc… That’s why it’s good to mix things up.
- Get Social – This is probably the most important theme of 2011 SEO strategy – get social. The fact is that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are just absolutely huge and you need to get into that space. Personally, we’re not big into spending a lot of time in these communities because they can be a big waste of time. However, there are some small steps that you can take such as getting a twitter account and facebook fan page setup and start to auto post your blog posts to them. Another way that they are becoming more and more important is as a gage of the “chatter” surrounding your site. If your site generates a lot of “buzz” on Facebook, you can be assured that Google notices that and in some way rewards you. Google is watching social activity very closely and we are expanding a lot in that direction. Our favorite new tool in this space (review coming soon) is Synnd. Check out its sales page and spend some time reading through all of them (there are several links to more information off the main page) – I think you’ll be impressed with it as well – whether you choose the Pro version or the Enterprise version like we use.
The above suggestions are all geared to create a better and more authoritative site. Take the opportunity of the latest Google shakeup/scare and step back and reassess your linkbuilding efforts and strategies. Getting in a rut when it comes to linkbuilding is not a good practice, so mix it up and get back on track.
Forget writing content, finding link partners, evaluating and testing the best networks - just let us do it for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Get a mix of link types, unique content, high PR links, a monthly Press Release - plus reports and rank tracking.
About Troy
Troy Broussard is avvid writer, owner of ArticlesOnTap.com, a regular contributor to sites such as TopMarketingStrategies.com and ArticleSubmissionReview.com. Troy also enjoys creating information products and is a regular speaker at many Internet marketing events. Check him out at Google+ for other work.
On March 10, 2011 Peter Johnson wrote:
Nice suggestion and I agreed about almost everything.
1% keyword density is something that I am not so sure about.
Many of 1st places on SERPs in internet TV niche have 3-5%
Some of them are 2-3year old sites with 2-3 blogs with maximum of 500 words per blog. Maybe less. That’s very hard to explain.
On March 10, 2011 Troy wrote:
Hi Peter,
Well, keep in mind, all guidelines should be varied by examining the norm in your particular niche. However, I can’t imagine any text reading like anything other than spam if it’s written with 5% keyword density and even 3% is very high in my opinion. 5% keyword density would mean in a typical 500 word article you would use your primary keyword 25 times or a short 200 word blog post would have 10 repetitive uses of the keyword. I can’t see how you could possibly have any quality content at those percentages. 1% is our recommendation – 1 1/2% on the high end.
-Troy
On March 15, 2011 William wrote:
Is it ok to add duplicate content pages to get your site authority thereby giving your money pages (with unique content) some push? Or will the unique content pages suffer due to the other pages being duplicate content?
On March 15, 2011 Troy wrote:
Hi William,
Adding duplicate content to your site is not going to be a very effective strategy for gaining authority or giving your money pages “some push” as you put it. Can you do it? Sure. Would we recommend it? Nope. Our philosophy has always been:
Original Content On Our Site
Any spun or dupe stuff offsite only
Following those tactics we were untouched by the Farmer update because it is just sound SEO strategy. What gives you “authority” is having a relevant and interesting “story” within your niche and that really can only come from unique content.
-Troy
On March 16, 2011 William wrote:
Thanks for your reply , Troy.
My main point in asking that question was, I have seen several sites in less competetive niches ranking at #2 and # 3 positions on page 1 where they are EMD’s and the main page is optimized and about more than 150 pages which are all dupe content from article directories. with very few backlinks and these sites are out ranking Ecommece sited like Amazon
On March 17, 2011 Vinod Sharma wrote:
HI, Troy
This is really informative, Tell me can i 1 article to many different article ( approx 100 ) submission site is write or wrong, If wrong help me…..
On March 20, 2011 admin wrote:
Hi Vinod,
Can you explain a bit more? Are you asking if taking one article that is spun content and distributing it to 100 sites? Or are you saying one article and sending 100 exact copies of it out?
You can do either, but you’re not likely to get near as many accepted and published articles if the content is not spun. Also, its much harder to find submission networks that allow you to submit duplicate content em mass like that. Lastly there is the issue that you would get a lot more link diversification if you spun the articles and spun the anchor text and URLS as well to target a more natural link building profile.
Hope that helps…
-Troy