EMD dropped ranks after Fred; Will 301 Redirect Save it?

Marshal Tom · Jun 12, 2017

Hi all!

This is my first post in Black Hat World!

This is regarding the EMD Domain I have which considerably dropped it's rank after the Fred update

Except the EMD part, it has excellent articles covering various aspects of the niche topic. Article length ranges from 1k-6k long with 2k being the average. The site was doing well couple of months back. But after the Fred update, it dropped rankings considerably. Now only few pages are ranked in the first two pages of Google.

After the Fred update, I tried the following :
1. Reduced the number of outbound affiliate links.
2. Reduced the keyword density.

Both these couldn't help the site to recover.

Now I'm thinking of 301 redirect as a last restoration step. I'm confused whether I should go for 301 redirect to expired domain or fresh branded one.

I would appreciate the suggestions from experts and experienced persons here.

Nargil · Jun 12, 2017

Why people think 301 will fix anything these days? 301s were the shit a few years back but nowadays are not working as much. For SEO boost purposes kinda yes, but in this case, I doubt it. 301s transfer all the backlinks and anchors, so doubt it will help you in any way. I also suspect that anchor ratios and overall overoptimisation is the problem here.

Marshal Tom · Jun 13, 2017

Thank you Nargil,

Thank you for your support..Anchor texts are clear and clean. I haven't over done it. I used anchor texts as per standard practices and majority of them are long partial matches.

I have reduced the keyword density too. I took account of images' meta data too for the optimisation part. Anyway I will work on I again.

If not 301, are there anything else I could do?

Nargil · Jun 13, 2017

Marshal Tom said:
Thank you Nargil,

Thank you for your support..Anchor texts are clear and clean. I haven't over done it. I used anchor texts as per standard practices and majority of them are long partial matches.

I have reduced the keyword density too. I took account of images' meta data too for the optimisation part. Anyway I will work on I again.

If not 301, are there anything else I could do?

If majority of them are long partial matches, then you can be sure you are overoptimised.

aidenhera · Jun 13, 2017

why i think fred targeted only overoptimization that is not end of the world and can be fixed

op you can try to get some nofollow links with general anchors and naked urls to all your pages

LeanLow · Jun 13, 2017

After Fred EMD's got devalued for everyone, try getting links from niche relevant sites.

Marshal Tom · Jun 13, 2017

Thank You all..

Now I guess I should take care of optimisation and should get links from niche relevant websites ..

I have one more doubt ; What if I 301 redirect and then do the above two works ? It will Take care both emd issue and over optimisation

Thanks in advance !

aidenhera · Jun 13, 2017

xdd you dont need 301 to avoid overoptimisation

Marshal Tom · Jun 13, 2017

aidenhera said:
xdd you dont need 301 to avoid overoptimisation

Thank You man,

I don't think the issue is with over optimisation. I have taken enough care on this. The issue might be on the EMD name. I keyword densities as low as .1% in the website and incoming anchor texts are partial matches and in many cases they are not even using the keyword. I have tried to use the synonyms and other variations.

Marshal Tom · Jun 13, 2017

LeanLow said:
After Fred EMD's got devalued for everyone, try getting links from niche relevant sites.

Thanks for the solution. I will definitely try this one

Marshal Tom · Jun 13, 2017

Nargil said:
If majority of them are long partial matches, then you can be sure you are overoptimised.

Thank you man,
Let me work on the incoming anchor texts then!

moonlighsunligh · Jun 13, 2017

Is the anchor ratio your sites similar as the competitors? Check top 10 sites (in Google) anchor distribution and try to figure out the pattern.

Marshal Tom · Jun 13, 2017

moonlighsunligh said:
Is the anchor ratio your sites similar as the competitors? Check top 10 sites (in Google) anchor distribution and try to figure out the pattern.

Thanks moonlighsunligh,

I've started optimizing the anchor texts as you've suggested. I think I should make some changes to the anchor text distribution.

Thanks for the advise!

Amily · Jun 14, 2017

301 do help ,but it may still drop after more days ,i have meet more than once

Marshal Tom · Jun 14, 2017

Amily said:
301 do help ,but it may still drop after more days ,i have meet more than once

So basically what you did was optimisation and 301 redirect, right ? How much time did it take for the new site to get ranked and also how long was it there in the top results ?
Lemme try with optimisation first !
Thank you for your suggestion!

JustCash · Jun 15, 2017

I would not 301 it at all. You can get the ranking back up and the EMD still has value, in fact a lot of EMDs gained rankings after Fred IMO. So try to continue to improve other things about the site - backlink profile, reduce keyword density + over optimizations, work on the quality of the site make sure the quality metrics like bounce rate and average visitor duration are improving. Build a few more powerful links and your rank should bounce back. Good luck.

Initial Effort · Jun 21, 2017

OP, Check your backlinks, look out for spammy, low quality backlinks and clean those out.

EMD dropped ranks after Fred; Will 301 Redirect Save it?

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