by henjon
14 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hi guys!
Kindda baffled after the EMD washed most of my sites. Have been using the past month simply trying to figure out where i went wrong with the sites that I lost. And honestly I can´t really find any errors. So I have been trying to look at what I haven´t done.. But Im still somewhat confused on what to do next...

It seems that most of the "conventional" seo has died out overnight and we have to rethink our practices. I mean.. whats the point in starting a new site using an EMD, doing social and web 2.0 backlinking efforts along with tons of videos and unique well written and useful content if SEO as we know it is more harmful than helpful now? Guess im kindda paranoid here but wft is one to do? the oposite of what we have done before?

I get that google now frowns upon micro niche sites with emd´s, and alot of article / web 2.0, blog and forum backlinking.
The big question is then... which way does G wan´t us to go? (other than down the toilet).? Should we completely abbandon EMD´s, keyword links, and article / web 2.0, blog backlinking? And if we do so how the hell are we to rank for the keyword we are targeting? In the sites that was washed i kept a keyword % at around 1.5 to 2 % in the articles. No keywords in the pic alt tags, but in the metatags along with the domian / subdomain. I kept my backlinking at around 15 - 20 % keyword density and the rest were either naked links or some other generic backlink.

I do belive that the sites were relevant, unique and helpful compare to other sites in my niche. But anyway.. they are gone and all i can do is try to learn from the mistakes.. only problem is that I have no clue as to what the mistakes were and G leaves very little clues about that other then the EMD´s didnt really work all that well.

Have you guys got any ideas or clues yet? or is it still to early to say? Guess we can forget all about a rebound of sites lost as it has already been a month.
#emd #seo
  • Profile picture of the author ronnieavelino
    Originally Posted by henjon View Post

    Hi guys!
    Kindda baffled after the EMD washed most of my sites. Have been using the past month simply trying to figure out where i went wrong with the sites that I lost. And honestly I can´t really find any errors. So I have been trying to look at what I haven´t done.. But Im still somewhat confused on what to do next...

    It seems that most of the "conventional" seo has died out overnight and we have to rethink our practices. I mean.. whats the point in starting a new site using an EMD, doing social and web 2.0 backlinking efforts along with tons of videos and unique well written and useful content if SEO as we know it is more harmful than helpful now? Guess im kindda paranoid here but wft is one to do? the oposite of what we have done before?

    I get that google now frowns upon micro niche sites with emd´s, and alot of article / web 2.0, blog and forum backlinking.
    The big question is then... which way does G wan´t us to go? (other than down the toilet).? Should we completely abbandon EMD´s, keyword links, and article / web 2.0, blog backlinking? And if we do so how the hell are we to rank for the keyword we are targeting? In the sites that was washed i kept a keyword % at around 1.5 to 2 % in the articles. No keywords in the pic alt tags, but in the metatags along with the domian / subdomain. I kept my backlinking at around 15 - 20 % keyword density and the rest were either naked links or some other generic backlink.

    I do belive that the sites were relevant, unique and helpful compare to other sites in my niche. But anyway.. they are gone and all i can do is try to learn from the mistakes.. only problem is that I have no clue as to what the mistakes were and G leaves very little clues about that other then the EMD´s didnt really work all that well.

    Have you guys got any ideas or clues yet? or is it still to early to say? Guess we can forget all about a rebound of sites lost as it has already been a month.
    Hi Henjon,

    I always share this post of Ed Pudol here.. Why other EMD sites were not affected by the recent update | edpudol.com: Building Real Online Business

    Here is the result of our investigation to our 50 EMD sites, some
    of them are affected and many of them was not affected.
    1. Most of the sites that remain and even climb to their rankings
    was shared more than 50 times in facebook, twitter, linkedin,
    google plus, and youtube
    2. All of the 39 sites have their own youtube channels while the 11
    sites affected have no channels in youtube.
    3. All 39 sites only have 3% or lower keyword density
    4. Keyword has been use in the title combine with other phrase or
    words
    5. Keyword has been use in the h1 tag, combine with other phrase or
    words
    6. All affected site use more than 30% of the keyword as anchor
    text while the 39 sites only use 20% or lower as anchor text.
    7. All 39 sites have more than 15 post and the 11 sites have only
    2-4 post
    8. And lastly to our observation is that all our site that was not
    affected have link to one or more authority sites related to it.
    For example one of our niche is about SEO we link to google.com,
    SEOmoz, and Bing.com
    Regards,

    Ronnie
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  • Profile picture of the author henjon
    thanks for the article Ronnie! Some good tips there and some which I have already given some thought, however i see the article was made just a few days after the update, so I would have been to early to make any solid asumptions as how to recover.

    I am seriously considering shutting down some of the old sites completely and use the old content on a new domian with a brand/semibrand name instead. It should be a better way to control the inbound links aswell with the 2012 updates in mind. And cut the keyword density with abt. 50 % along with cutting down on anchors on the backlinks to a minimum.. Guess its just a question of beeing able to let the old domains go and move on instead of living in the dream that they may one day recover., RIP emd´s
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  • Profile picture of the author jfambrini
    Ronnie:
    Thanks for sharing the article. Have been wondering about decline of primary keywords on my EMD site.
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  • Profile picture of the author trentonlaura
    It's my contention that EMD are still worth the time if you can get one new or for cheap because I believe they're helpful from a branding point of view. I don't think they'll hurt you in terms of SEO if you're doing everything else correctly, IE you don't have a thin content/micro niche site.
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  • Profile picture of the author nikhilsg17c
    I think after EMD updation SEOs throwing high dollar seo services and charging people for them are playing the internet marketing game for sure.
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  • Profile picture of the author petemcal
    I think quality EMDs will still work, as there are many EMDs that are brands as well. If you've chosen a domain name for SEO value then you've made a mistake (in today's game).

    I think the type that have been targeted most are the whitefridgesforsale.info type domains. I know there will have been a lot of quality casualties, but I think google's intent was to take out the aforementioned site types
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  • Profile picture of the author risingrank
    Yes, if you put up a few pages using emd, you will get it. If you have an authority emd with many pages of useful information, you will rise in rank.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr Lim
    To know if EMD still works, you can refer to this chart,
    MozCast Metrics

    It some how giving you what Google is ranking on random terms.
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  • Profile picture of the author realseowarrior
    There is not much penalty on EMD rather google takes out the advantage they have for an EMD. But few sites are badly hit which uses spammy links. Rather than losing heart Man make brandable site which can occupy a authority status. It does not take much time may be a month's hard work is sufficient for it. Make it big so that it can survive big updates
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  • Profile picture of the author henjon
    I dont think there were any specific emd algo at all.. rather it was an addon to the penguin.. think about it... how could google ever target EMD´s ? every name is an emd in itself.. rather the algo is now looking for comparisons of emd + meta, titles, keywords to weed out mns and also larger sites using the EMD along with extensive keyword usage on and offpage seo aiming to abuse the emd bonus. so there is a penalty to sites using this combo. question now is.. is it worth it to redo the old sites and attempt recovery or should we simply cut our losses and start over?

    thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author henjon
    just thought i´d share this.

    Google EMD Update
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  • Profile picture of the author bsbear
    Forget about your EMD problems.

    Getting hit by the EMD update was just a way of Google telling you that your SEO background/your backlinks were low-quality.

    As with every update, they are only penalizing low-quality websites, and then they tell you what piece of those websites they were targeting.

    For the EMD update they penalized websites that were barely hanging on to their rankings due to the domain, rather than a solid SEO profile done on the website.
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    • Profile picture of the author henjon
      The EMD(penguin update) penalized sites that abused emd for easy ranking by sniffing out what was previously the "way" to go with MNS. It did its job and to some extend killed alot of good sites as well.. just gotta tone down the onpage seo and get a healthier linkprofile imho.

      Originally Posted by bsbear View Post

      Forget about your EMD problems.

      Getting hit by the EMD update was just a way of Google telling you that your SEO background/your backlinks were low-quality.

      As with every update, they are only penalizing low-quality websites, and then they tell you what piece of those websites they were targeting.

      For the EMD update they penalized websites that were barely hanging on to their rankings due to the domain, rather than a solid SEO profile done on the website.
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  • Profile picture of the author january14n
    I think every site have it's EMD on it and I think everything is just about making yourself an authority in the field as well creating your own unique brand. We all know that Google is unpredictable and I believe the safest way to be on top is to let users remember you as you. I know it's tough but I guess that's the only way unless we we're able to decipher big G's secret formula just like everyone is doing.
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