ZALM0XIS
Registered Member
- Mar 11, 2011
- 96
- 44
Google latest update, penalize several website owners (particularly affiliates), who are relying on EMD (Exact Match Domains) as their main marketing tactic.
If you are relying on Exact Match Domains as part of your strategy then u must take care. It's not all carnage, though you'll see Google is certainly trying to remove low quality EMD sites, and as a result some good sites are also caught in the crossfire.
So if you're hurting from Google's recent updates, I feel your pain! If the Panda and Penguin updates weren't enough, us poor affiliate marketers now have further woes to deal with.
Basically, what appears to have happened is that Google has come along and taken the hatchet to websites that use long-tail keywords. This has been designed to weed out "low quality" sites that use EMDs to artificially inflate the rankings of the site for a particular keyword. However, if your site also has a lot of links keeping it in traction, or a big social presence, then you might well have seen steady rankings and traffic, or even an increase in site performance.
What can you do?
1. Add quality content to your website.
2. You should look to build your social presence. Building up a strong social presence will show Google that you are serious about community, and serious about getting REAL people involved in your website experience. I would advise spending as much time as possible building up your social presence!
3. Start incorporating some alternative traffic strategies.
4.Build your list, now. I cannot stress enough the importance of list-building. Once you've built up a big list, you can stop worrying about your business disappearing overnight. In fact, if you want to stop worrying about Google and SEO altogether then focus on building up your list with a simple squeeze page, kickass opt-in content and a profitable newsletter sequence - just send direct traffic from solo ads, ad swaps, article marketing, forum marketing.
5. Experiment with PPC. Although the word PPC conjures up nightmares of expensive campaigns, failed profit models, and big credit card bills, PPC can be a real traffic goldmine that is independent of organic Google SEO traffic. The more cynical among us (myself included) might even be inclined to argue that Google's constant algorithm updates and penalization of those trying to profit from free search traffic are designed to herd us towards Google Adwords.
After all, sites that drop big coin on PPC never seem to be punished when algorithm updates occur.
6. Look for external traffic sources. Find relevant forums in your niche, set up a signature that redirects to your squeeze page, and then post like crazy (if you find this tedious you could even hire an outsourcer to do the work for you
. Comment on relevant blogs and add value, then watch the traffic roll in. Create high-quality YouTube videos and link these to your site. Guest blog on sites with big readerships. Own up with Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo; keep in mind, the possibilities for generating traffic that doesn't rely on Google (or any search engine for that matter) are virtually limitless.Now Google's goal isn't to remove all exact match domains! Instead, they are just trying to cull those "lower quality" EMDs that were deemed to add little value to the webspace. Unfortunately, some innocent sites got caught up in the crossfire too. However, if you have good content that gives value to your readers, you should see a recovery.
The meaning of all this? Google wants you to start building a branded authority site. They are continually showing a preference towards authority websites.
Looks like it could be time to start writing more content!
