Another Google Update on It's way
- Thread starter SeoWrecker
- Start date
I don't disagree with many points made in this article about big guys having a massive advantage. But when you have legit high authority health websites like Draxe.com getting completely demolished by these updates, it's damn near impossible for me to believe the ONLY reason the other companies are successful is because they cross link from their established sites.
Dr Axe has a ridiculous amount of domain authority. And don't tell me he's been penalized because he has popups. That's horse s*** to the nth degree. Quite frankly, these updates don't make much sense to anyone but I believe that's Googles entire goal.
D
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The winter is coming.
Jeepy
Elite Member
- Jan 22, 2013
- 1,994
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A couple of my big clients were hit hard. This was the best analysis I found thus far...
1.) Hours before Google released its new update they mentioned that they had finally come up with a solution to diversify content, and that it was answering the demands of the people through this diversification update that would only allow domains to appear in the SERPS for 1-2 pages and hyper relevant queries.
What that means for the SEO community:
Long gone are the days of being able to rank for multiple keywords. As Googles AI becomes better it is now able to understand the topics of websites and pages, and we can no longer manipulate the SERPS to come up for multiple searches around different keywords having to do with the same topics.
For example. If you have a local service niche like painting and wanted to come up for Painters Near You, Painters + City and Best Local Painter you would have created three pages around these search terms with the intent to optimize the pages for those specific Keywords. Why did we do this? Because using more than two keywords per page was leading to Google becoming confused about what the keyword actually was and we were unable to get into the SERP for what we wanted.
Going forward to June 1st 2019, instead of creating three different pages you would create one page with these terms being used as close variants on the same page.
For example: You would create a location page called Painters Near You and then discuss through on page text and SEO best practices why you are the best plumber in your city and the locations in which you travel to. You would then be able to come up in the SERP with this singular page across multiple queries rather than multiple queries tailored to multiple pages.
Take away: Start creating pages with long form content that contain multiple topics around a broad topic. Google has stated themselves you will now be incredibly lucky to get more than two pages into the SERP going forward unless it is for a long tail phrase like ‘The best time of year to paint my house’.
2.) Websites that have backlinks but no referral traffic are being targeted. Why? Because this most likely means that there is a PBN scheme taking place. SEO’s, the point of backlinks are NOT for the backlink its self. Yes I know we all want the juice but the first priority should be to provide educational resources to similar audiences of different website.
Example: If you have 10 backlinks on Wikipedia.com and are not getting referral traffic because of them, you may experience a hit if the content on Wikipedia is thin or there is no actual referral traffic coming from the backlink.
Take away: Backlinks are still the number one ranking factor and as time goes on it will not be good enough any longer to have them for the sake of having them. Your backlinks will have to have certain attributes to matter and not be affiliated with a link buying scheme or PBN.
3.) Site speed is up next on our list. We saw websites that scored a 60% or lower on GTmetrix take a severe hit. With Googles recent announcement around mobile first indexing taking priority on all new websites, you can see why this will be extremely important.
Please make sure your sites are as follows:
Load time: under 2 seconds
Page size: under 1mb
Requests: under 80 requests
Because Google uses 3G network speeds to measure your website speed, you need to remember to make it accessible for 3g speeds with the metrics above. Optimizing your images will be a huge must, and decreasing java script queries will play an integral role. This is not becoming an option any longer and must be adhered to.
Take away: optimize your website for speed ASAP!
4.) Schema! Our favorite thing right guys?
SEO’s across the world are noticing that Schema is becoming more and more important. With this update, websites that include on page Schema through item prop positioning (not json tld) saw an increase in rank as long as the following above was adhered to.
Example: I personally noted on website pages that included singular reviews, Schema dates, Schema business descriptions and Schema area radiuses of service we saw great ranking as long as everything else above was in place.
Take away: Learn how Schema works assp.
5.) Google My Business listings also saw a nose dive due to this update. The ones that we noticed take the biggest hit were ones who’s locations were over optimized for more than 3-4 surrounding areas.
Example: One client I saw had 50 Zip Codes in their GMB location section. This worked great a week ago and today they most likely saw a penalty because of it. Please be cautious in how you optimize your GMB.
Take away: On the other hand make sure your GMB is optimized! Please fill out all sections with your main keywords in mind while keeping it as natural as possible, including the services section for services you offer. Do not over optimize any of these areas but you do need to use your keywords on a topical basis so Google knows what your business is about!
6.) Directory websites saw a boost for local services. In our findings we saw them fly to the top above local websites. Expect to see Google showing favoritism towards them more and more. If Google can keep the directories at the top, guess what we have to do? You guessed it! Pay more to stay above the fold in ads’
7.) Ad color also changed. This is a minor update but should be noted. The word Ad for mobile is no longer green. There is speculation Google is trying to train our eyes to ignore it so they are blending it in with the natural headlines that are also used for organic SERPS.
1.) Hours before Google released its new update they mentioned that they had finally come up with a solution to diversify content, and that it was answering the demands of the people through this diversification update that would only allow domains to appear in the SERPS for 1-2 pages and hyper relevant queries.
What that means for the SEO community:
Long gone are the days of being able to rank for multiple keywords. As Googles AI becomes better it is now able to understand the topics of websites and pages, and we can no longer manipulate the SERPS to come up for multiple searches around different keywords having to do with the same topics.
For example. If you have a local service niche like painting and wanted to come up for Painters Near You, Painters + City and Best Local Painter you would have created three pages around these search terms with the intent to optimize the pages for those specific Keywords. Why did we do this? Because using more than two keywords per page was leading to Google becoming confused about what the keyword actually was and we were unable to get into the SERP for what we wanted.
Going forward to June 1st 2019, instead of creating three different pages you would create one page with these terms being used as close variants on the same page.
For example: You would create a location page called Painters Near You and then discuss through on page text and SEO best practices why you are the best plumber in your city and the locations in which you travel to. You would then be able to come up in the SERP with this singular page across multiple queries rather than multiple queries tailored to multiple pages.
Take away: Start creating pages with long form content that contain multiple topics around a broad topic. Google has stated themselves you will now be incredibly lucky to get more than two pages into the SERP going forward unless it is for a long tail phrase like ‘The best time of year to paint my house’.
2.) Websites that have backlinks but no referral traffic are being targeted. Why? Because this most likely means that there is a PBN scheme taking place. SEO’s, the point of backlinks are NOT for the backlink its self. Yes I know we all want the juice but the first priority should be to provide educational resources to similar audiences of different website.
Example: If you have 10 backlinks on Wikipedia.com and are not getting referral traffic because of them, you may experience a hit if the content on Wikipedia is thin or there is no actual referral traffic coming from the backlink.
Take away: Backlinks are still the number one ranking factor and as time goes on it will not be good enough any longer to have them for the sake of having them. Your backlinks will have to have certain attributes to matter and not be affiliated with a link buying scheme or PBN.
3.) Site speed is up next on our list. We saw websites that scored a 60% or lower on GTmetrix take a severe hit. With Googles recent announcement around mobile first indexing taking priority on all new websites, you can see why this will be extremely important.
Please make sure your sites are as follows:
Load time: under 2 seconds
Page size: under 1mb
Requests: under 80 requests
Because Google uses 3G network speeds to measure your website speed, you need to remember to make it accessible for 3g speeds with the metrics above. Optimizing your images will be a huge must, and decreasing java script queries will play an integral role. This is not becoming an option any longer and must be adhered to.
Take away: optimize your website for speed ASAP!
4.) Schema! Our favorite thing right guys?
SEO’s across the world are noticing that Schema is becoming more and more important. With this update, websites that include on page Schema through item prop positioning (not json tld) saw an increase in rank as long as the following above was adhered to.
Example: I personally noted on website pages that included singular reviews, Schema dates, Schema business descriptions and Schema area radiuses of service we saw great ranking as long as everything else above was in place.
Take away: Learn how Schema works assp.
5.) Google My Business listings also saw a nose dive due to this update. The ones that we noticed take the biggest hit were ones who’s locations were over optimized for more than 3-4 surrounding areas.
Example: One client I saw had 50 Zip Codes in their GMB location section. This worked great a week ago and today they most likely saw a penalty because of it. Please be cautious in how you optimize your GMB.
Take away: On the other hand make sure your GMB is optimized! Please fill out all sections with your main keywords in mind while keeping it as natural as possible, including the services section for services you offer. Do not over optimize any of these areas but you do need to use your keywords on a topical basis so Google knows what your business is about!
6.) Directory websites saw a boost for local services. In our findings we saw them fly to the top above local websites. Expect to see Google showing favoritism towards them more and more. If Google can keep the directories at the top, guess what we have to do? You guessed it! Pay more to stay above the fold in ads’
7.) Ad color also changed. This is a minor update but should be noted. The word Ad for mobile is no longer green. There is speculation Google is trying to train our eyes to ignore it so they are blending it in with the natural headlines that are also used for organic SERPS.
seo diagrams
BANNED
- Apr 15, 2019
- 117
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t2van
Banned - Constantly insulting other members
- Feb 18, 2018
- 1,178
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One of the best replies/posts I've seen on here in a long time.
cmghostbuster
Regular Member
- Apr 8, 2014
- 265
- 72
i think big G just f*cked me for good.. i was ranking in serp with some good keywords on page 1 and 2 ...all good until i decided to buy 2 old domains related to my niche...redirected each of them with permanent 301 to other 2 relevant pages and ..... Boom ... the pages are nowhere now 
Big mistake
Big mistake
fb3003
Elite Member
- Aug 14, 2015
- 5,035
- 3,500
i think big G just f*cked me for good.. i was ranking in serp with some good keywords on page 1 and 2 ...all good until i decided to buy 2 old domains related to my niche...redirected each of them with permanent 301 to other 2 relevant pages and ..... Boom ... the pages are nowhere now
when did you make the redirect?
- Dec 13, 2010
- 4,875
- 3,316
Can't agree more with this!
Most of the health websites hit have a topical trust flow unrelated to health in main part. We build a 400 sites PBN for a pharmacy website and we lost 50% on this update; when you check the TTF, it's unrelated to health and pharmacy.
I could give a ton of examples. It seems to be the main factor of impact so far.
Purush
Elite Member
- Jul 12, 2016
- 6,750
- 2,427
Great case study. good feeling to read you entire article.
RStar66
Junior Member
- Apr 11, 2019
- 164
- 105
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones then. I gained rankings for 'cannabis seeds' on page one, and now I actually have two spots on page one. I used to only rank on page one for the long tail of 'cannabis seeds south africa', but since the update I'm ranking for just 'cannabis seeds' too.
I completely agree with this. I've been saying for years that Google values links that get clicked by users above links that just lie there on a website that gets almost no traffic. I also think this is why Reddit links that get a certain amount of engagement/clicks/upvotes change for rel=nofollow to rel=follow. Honestly, it's a simple solution to prevent link spam that makes complete sense. Google has also become really adept at distinguishing bot traffic from actual user traffic. Link building is still extremely important. Now more than ever it's important to gain links that people actually click, because you provide relevant info. That is the real MVP-links.
What's an example? I haven't noticed this much actually....
MageNet_
Junior Member
- Oct 10, 2016
- 101
- 8
have been using this method for a while before the update and it worked well, after the update no big changes have been noticed
I don't really agree with your points. How can you possibly make such assumptions without having enough time to test anything? Yes your clients got hit, so did many of my websites. But your points are just theory, the update probably still hasn't even finished updating. It's likely a rollback because of their index bug caused by the March update. Getting rolled back all links between March and now need to be re folded back into the algorithm. Their diversity update was seperate to the core update. Diversity update is just to prevent websites taking up multiple spots in the results, I have competitors that rank 1st and 2nd and 4th adn 5th for a keyword but I rank like 7th. They take multiple spots in the results and that's what the diversity update is trying to solve. There is no where near enough time to test any of your assumptions at all. Even then it is still just pseudo assumptions.
RStar66
Junior Member
- Apr 11, 2019
- 164
- 105
Actually, the update rollout is complete. It's been confirmed by Danny Sullivan.
Doesn't mean anything. I saw that post as well. 'Yes it's complete', meaning they could of pushed a button and it's completed as far as human input is needed. But there could be a huge processcing requirement that the data centres need to go through in order for it to 'actually' complete. Google could just throw out rubbish and false information to scare/confuse/keep SEO's in constant doubt. They love to do that.
RStar66
Junior Member
- Apr 11, 2019
- 164
- 105
Ok, so basically you are right, no matter what anyone says. Got ya.
Lol, perhaps. But my point is no reason to trust anyone. Nothing is confirmed, nothing has been tested. Everything is just theory.