Google update again?!

Me and my competitors in the 'directory niche' are being outranked by someone who just slap a wall of keywords to a page. He had 20+ of these, probably more and always 2-5 of his sites appear on the first page, it's crazy. These site only have inner pages (no homepage) with domains that you would expect to be used as PBN's.Anyone familiar with this? It seems like he just want to rank on multiple low volume keywords, for what reasons I don't know.

Yeah. Same observation in my niche. PM me. We can exchange notes.
 
Google completely screwed up the SERP. All what I see now is Quora everywhere and really old websites that have information from 2004-2005.
Google says we should care about User Experience, but I don't think they care about it. It just looks like they trying to make more money in august by sending all businesses to Adwords.

That has been going on for more than two years now, old crappy info in the serps especially when it comes to digital stuff, if you have a problem with. let's say. wordpress the average age of the top 10 in the serps is 4 to 6 years... Really up to date
 
For each keyword about 3%. 10 keywords total. The weird thing is that I have lots of longtail keywords which are now outranking the keywords, that's why I think its to do with the keywords at 3%. The longtails are typically less than 0.8% and they are ranking.
The website only went down on the keywords, not longtails.

That's irrelevant IMO. The 3 sites that overtook my domain for a 3-word-keyword have all higher occurrence of this keyword. My site has around 4% keyword density, while the other 3 sites have 5%, 5% and 6% keyword density.
I believe we are past the age of "keyword stuffing" and this update has nothing to do with this. It's also fairly easy to spot keyword stuffing and I believe this parameter is integrated in the main algo already for a long time now.

In other news.
My main health site is slowly creeping up in the serps, however the traffic isn't moving, or is decreasing slowly. Some of the keywords are recovering, some long-tails are overtaking my main keywords (which are sinking), some keywords dropped completely out of visibility (not in top 100 results).
I am getting worried now. Will wait until September and then try and act on it.
If this authority is now a de-facto thing (which can sink a site regardless of its links) I believe it is time to switch niches.
 
That's irrelevant IMO. The 3 sites that overtook my domain for a 3-word-keyword have all higher occurrence of this keyword. My site has around 4% keyword density, while the other 3 sites have 5%, 5% and 6% keyword density.
I believe we are past the age of "keyword stuffing" and this update has nothing to do with this. It's also fairly easy to spot keyword stuffing and I believe this parameter is integrated in the main algo already for a long time now.

In other news.
My main health site is slowly creeping up in the serps, however the traffic isn't moving, or is decreasing slowly. Some of the keywords are recovering, some long-tails are overtaking my main keywords (which are sinking), some keywords dropped completely out of visibility (not in top 100 results).
I am getting worried now. Will wait until September and then try and act on it.
If this authority is now a de-facto thing (which can sink a site regardless of its links) I believe it is time to switch niches.

I've bad news for you the algo hits almost all the niches. the update wasn't targeting only the health niche.
I may be wrong but the update I think was to favor already old established websites rather than new ones. so if you're domain is less than 2 years you may suffer regarless of the niche.
 
I've bad news for you the algo hits almost all the niches. the update wasn't targeting only the health niche.
I may be wrong but the update I think was to favor already old established websites rather than new ones. so if you're domain is less than 2 years you may suffer regarless of the niche.
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Have clients with older sites hit by this...
 
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Have clients with older sites hit by this...
I didn't say they rank ALL the older websites. I said they favor old already established authorities.
Meaning if your "clients websites" have bad SEO or weak authority then the age doesn't matter even if they were created in the dinosaurs era.
 
A couple of my keywords were back on page 1 last night but they are nowhere now.

I am seeing such sites on page 1 of google:

site.com/keyword
site.com/tag/keyword
site.com/keyword-anotherkeyword
site.com/keyword-anotherkeyword-anotherkeyword

3-4 pages from the same site on page 1 of Google. Have seen this happening for multiple keywords.
  • EMDs are ranking
  • Sites with loads of backlinks are ranking
  • Sites with no author profiles are ranking
To me it seems like the March 2017 update is reversed.
 
I've bad news for you the algo hits almost all the niches. the update wasn't targeting only the health niche.
I may be wrong but the update I think was to favor already old established websites rather than new ones. so if you're domain is less than 2 years you may suffer regarless of the niche.

I realize that other niches may also be affected, but in my repository of sites only the health site was hit. Others stay approximately the same (gardening, interior design etc - sites that are fairly new (1-2 years)).
My health site is 6 years old (and got more and more traffic with each update over the past years) but was affected by this one. Or was it? Perhaps only my competition got a boost, and my site was left out, looking like it got demoted?
Anyway, since I am still trailing health giants in SERP (I am mostly ranked directly after healthline or webmd for keywords that I track) I am starting to think that my site wasn't hit. It's just that those giant sites got a boost, regardless of their "links with exact keyword" amount. But then again - some of the keywords fell out of top 100, so it still seems like a minor penalty...
 
I realize that other niches may also be affected, but in my repository of sites only the health site was hit. Others stay approximately the same (gardening, interior design etc - sites that are fairly new (1-2 years)).
My health site is 6 years old (and got more and more traffic with each update over the past years) but was affected by this one. Or was it? Perhaps only my competition got a boost, and my site was left out, looking like it got demoted?
Anyway, since I am still trailing health giants in SERP (I am mostly ranked directly after healthline or webmd for keywords that I track) I am starting to think that my site wasn't hit. It's just that those giant sites got a boost, regardless of their "links with exact keyword" amount. But then again - some of the keywords fell out of top 100, so it still seems like a minor penalty...
I agree with you maybe it's not a hit just some websites got a boost and others not. regarding the "high exact anchors", google do not treat all the websites the same, I dont think the Algo is "linear". the big authorities always get special treatment so what works for them will not necessarily work or even be allowed for small websites without any real aythority.
 
ya i went from 19 to 55 ish lol ...

Also I noticed MANY double web site positioned back to back, like long tail search, then :
result number 1:
bestlaptops.com
Result number 2
beslaptops.com/best-laptops-2018

Anyone else see these double website postings, I've never seen it before but its all over
 
Yes I see this too, for some of the keywords.
Also, what I am seeing with my keywords is that some private / local clinics are now overtaking me.
It's like all keywords regarding "blood pressure" are now "profitable keywords" and indicates that people searching for these keywords need a therapy in some clinic, if you know what I mean?

Perhaps this update was not about EAT or links, but about how google treats keywords and how it understands the user intent in the background.
I do agree that when a users searches for a specific issue (like low blood pressure) it might indicate that the person has problems with low blood pressure and needs "therapy" or "pills", which explains new SERPs that now rank clinics and web-stores highly when it comes to these keywords. But on the other hand, perhaps this person is only looking for general information on low blood pressure and has no intentions to be hospitalized or visiting a private clinic because of this.
It's just so unclear still what google was after with this update. Maybe semantics of the keywords? ...
 
Quora and wikihow take over all search result all the way now. Few my old sites since 2006 now become number 2 and 3 on high competition keyword, still cant beat the wikipedia and quora.
 
Yes I see this too, for some of the keywords.
Also, what I am seeing with my keywords is that some private / local clinics are now overtaking me.
It's like all keywords regarding "blood pressure" are now "profitable keywords" and indicates that people searching for these keywords need a therapy in some clinic, if you know what I mean?

Perhaps this update was not about EAT or links, but about how google treats keywords and how it understands the user intent in the background.
I do agree that when a users searches for a specific issue (like low blood pressure) it might indicate that the person has problems with low blood pressure and needs "therapy" or "pills", which explains new SERPs that now rank clinics and web-stores highly when it comes to these keywords. But on the other hand, perhaps this person is only looking for general information on low blood pressure and has no intentions to be hospitalized or visiting a private clinic because of this.
It's just so unclear still what google was after with this update. Maybe semantics of the keywords? ...
well put bruh! Exactly what I am seeing!! So maybe you could do what you said, add an ending proposed intent to your kw's like instead of blood pressure do blood pressure therapy, or take these pills for blood pressure nom sayin? Thats totally whos ranking in all my neighborhoods.
I always tried to be different and write content from a different perspective. But goog wants to turn every situation that can into a robot answer of if A then B Then will need C. Thats another reason why natural remedy sites have been banned and devalued. They want sheep, nah Ill stay a lion, just gotta lie now to get their attention now instead of tell them the truth.
 
ya i went from 19 to 55 ish lol ...

Also I noticed MANY double web site positioned back to back, like long tail search, then :
result number 1:
bestlaptops.com
Result number 2
beslaptops.com/best-laptops-2018

Anyone else see these double website postings, I've never seen it before but its all over

Hell yes! I see 2-4 pages of the same website in TOP. And a lot of Quora and old forums...
 
This algo is a huge lesson for those that still want to go the authority site route - you need to diversify your traffic sources:
  1. Social Media
  2. Video
  3. PPC
The days of counting on consistent organic traffic are numbered...
 
On the back of this update I have done an extensive post-mortem of a client's website and found that the blog had indeed been hit by the Yoast Plugin Bug with over 1000 img attachments being indexed. Has anybody else on here had the same issue and implemented Yoast's advice? I am adding the Index Purge Plugin but does this require I manually submit the XML sitemap containing the 410 request?
 
This algo is a huge lesson for those that still want to go the authority site route - you need to diversify your traffic sources:
  1. Social Media
  2. Video
  3. PPC
The days of counting on consistent organic traffic are numbered...

Actually, I have seen websites in my niche(s), they have been there for years, you can still build an authority site. But yes, you need to diversify your traffic source, email, SM, etc.
 
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