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Some Interesting But Quiet Obvious Facts About The EMD Update

by nik0 Banned
24 replies
  • SEO
    • |
We did a little questionairy at another forum to see what our sites had in common and the 2 things that jumped out

- very few back links
- not so great content

About very few back links you could say, yes the EMD lost it's value and thus rankings are gone, however to drop to position 300+ is a bit odd.

As I sell quite a lot of packages and also have my monthly service I saw a few people who cancelled cause they tanked. As a matter of fact I just had someone getting a little annoyed (not so strange of course) and saying that there was nothing wrong with his content. So I decided to run it through some spelling and grammar checker and it turned out there were a lot of errors.

So I started to compare some sites and are still ranking fine vs sites that tanked.

All the 5 sites that I looked at had many grammar/spelling errors.

The 5 sites that didn't tank only had 0 or 1 grammar/spelling errors.

Go figure!

Guess the times where you just outsource a crap piece of content for a few bucks are definitely over.
#emd #facts #interesting #obvious #quiet #update
  • Profile picture of the author MatthewWoodward
    That could also be part of the Panda update that took place just before hand as well - that entailed some serious changes to the actual algo as opposed to a refresh of the data itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando1954
    Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

    All the 5 sites that I looked at had many grammar/spelling errors.
    This has me a bit worried, when it comes to grammar and especially spelling what version do they class as correct, American such as color or English colour, the list goes on with different spellings of same word.

    Being english I use the english spelling, am I being penalised for what they see as bad spelling, as in not the American spelling of the word.
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    • Profile picture of the author Nelapsi
      Originally Posted by Fernando1954 View Post

      This has me a bit worried, when it comes to grammar and especially spelling what version do they class as correct, American such as color or English colour, the list goes on with different spellings of same word.

      Being english I use the english spelling, am I being penalised for what they see as bad spelling, as in not the American spelling of the word.
      That would probably be based on perhaps 2 different things.. the local setting or the location of the host/domain. This is also if even it goes that far were it doesn't accept both spellings as natural/normal.
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      • Profile picture of the author Fernando1954
        Originally Posted by Nelapsi View Post

        That would probably be based on perhaps 2 different things.. the local setting or the location of the host/domain. This is also if even it goes that far were it doesn't accept both spellings as natural/normal.
        My sites hosting is US based, I know it may not go that far but if it does then my pages are full of spelling mistakes in their eyes.
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        • Profile picture of the author ogenox
          Originally Posted by Fernando1954 View Post

          My sites hosting is US based, I know it may not go that far but if it does then my pages are full of spelling mistakes in their eyes.
          Be sure that is very important what you put in Webmaster Tools as geographically targeted country. If you put US, then you should use US spelling.

          On the topic side, I saw that Matt Cutts said that this algorithm update affects about 2.4% of English queries, which is pretty much. I suppose that most of this goes to US queries.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    mi grmer and spelin aint nevr wroung
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  • Profile picture of the author pdrs
    I'm sure they would take things like USA/Brit spelling into account - I think you might be over thinking/worrying about that one...

    But if your site contains some really bad spelling/grammar (i.e. spun content) then you're probably (and deservedly) at risk for a thumping
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    • Profile picture of the author Fernando1954
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      my grmer and spelin aint nevr wroung
      u av being dooin 2 mutch texing


      Originally Posted by pdrs View Post

      I'm sure they would take things like USA/Brit spelling into account - I think you might be over thinking/worrying about that one...

      But if your site contains some really bad spelling/grammar (i.e. spun content) then you're probably (and deservedly) at risk for a thumping

      Probably me over thinking, never use spun on my sites and I always check for spelling and grammer, then the wife gets stuck in and finds the mistakes I missed.
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
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    It's an advanced algorithm so they probably know, also it doesn't bother with 1 or 2 spelling/grammar mistakes, but its pretty easy identifiable when there are like 10 errors, then I think it kind of works like this:

    - adsense or affiliate links on page -2 points
    - 5 grammar/spelling mistakes -5 points
    - 10 grammar/spelling mistakes - 10 points
    - keyword stuffing - 4 points
    - multiple plagiarism -10 points
    - no images or youtube or whatever - 3 points
    - more then 3 affiliate links - 5 points

    Too many neg points and you're screwed!

    At least that's how I would do it, obvious Google is a little more advanced.
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

    So I decided to run it through some spelling and grammar checker and it turned out there were a lot of errors.
    Shame you didn't do the same for this post. :p

    Note: quiet and quite are two completely different words.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by UMS View Post

      Shame you didn't do the same for this post. :p

      Note: quiet and quite are two completely different words.
      I was just waiting for someone to come up with that

      Fixed it
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Haven
    Nope, even some sites with great content and tons of backlinks got hit on the 27th. Some recovered naturally, others are, well, down for the count for the moment.
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    • Profile picture of the author jfambrini
      Originally Posted by SEO Haven View Post

      Nope, even some sites with great content and tons of backlinks got hit on the 27th. Some recovered naturally, others are, well, down for the count for the moment.
      Agree with your assessment.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by SEO Haven View Post

      Nope, even some sites with great content and tons of backlinks got hit on the 27th. Some recovered naturally, others are, well, down for the count for the moment.
      There are more factors that play a role, see my post above.
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      • Profile picture of the author condra
        FWIW I have an EMD with basic holding page and no backlinks, and it kept its spot around number 3.

        Another site, an EMD with good content and a few dozen decent backlinks, and reasonable traffic, got knocked out of the park. It is quite keyword heavy though, and some of the backlinks won't look very natural.

        I get the impression they are only targetting EMDs which have other red flags, such as keyword over optimization, weird link profiles, etc..

        So if you have an EMD with good unique content, and no silly paid links, you might get away with it, to a certain degree.

        I could be wrong though. Interested in seeing how other people are getting on...
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  • Profile picture of the author ogenox
    Well, I saw a great improvement yesterday when I added google authorship to one my EMD site. I suggest that to everyone.

    Also, forget about hyphenated domain names, except if they are two words domain names. Multiple hyphens in the domain names are clear sign of spam, because they can never be considered as a brand name.

    Anyway, I think that EMD can still give a great advantage if website is built properly, with a unique content and some social signals. Then you don't even have to build a lot of backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
      Originally Posted by ogenox View Post

      Well, I saw a great improvement yesterday when I added google authorship to one my EMD site. I suggest that to everyone.

      Also, forget about hyphenated domain names, except if they are two words domain names. Multiple hyphens in the domain names are clear sign of spam, because they can never be considered as a brand name.

      Anyway, I think that EMD can still give a great advantage if website is built properly, with a unique content and some social signals. Then you don't even have to build a lot of backlinks.
      You saw an improvement in one day because you added a G+ account? Are you sure you're not just looking at personalized results?
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      • Profile picture of the author FrankRumbauskas
        None of my EMDs moved, and one that I've only begun to rank recently jumped from #4 to #2. But that's probably because it has real content - it's a real blog, not a dummy site for SEO purposes.

        Strangely enough, I have a totally BLANK EMD site (still says "Hello World! This is your first post") that made page 1 with just a few backlinks and that one hasn't moved either. Which proves that NOT ENOUGH content is not a problem, whereas much as GARBAGE CONTENT is.

        I suppose I should add some content to it...
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        • Profile picture of the author Mkj
          I run a lot of comparison sites. I have around 50 now. What I intend to do is include Youtube videos on all my product pages. I intend to do this by including a Youtube search that automatically searches for the product title. I won't include this on all my sites but sites that might well have a product Youtube review such as my tv, cookers, computer sites and so on. These videos will be viewable from a drop down panel so the site itself will not be disturbed. It is apparent that Google loves these videos so I think it will help my pages rank. My sites convert like crazy so this is one avenue I intend to exploit to it's fullest. Good idea or what?

          Once I have it sussed ( I already have more or less ) I will post the necessary code here on Warrior's forum. I should think it will help immensely on lots of sites to get you traffic.
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      • Profile picture of the author ogenox
        Originally Posted by PerformanceMan View Post

        You saw an improvement in one day because you added a G+ account? Are you sure you're not just looking at personalized results?
        Exactly. And no, there weren't personalized results, as I'm using Microsite Masters to check my rankings. These are todays rankings for that domain:



        You can see that Bing and Yahoo don't even care about my site, which means that I'm doing something right according to Google. One of the right things is Google authorship, I'm pretty sure about that.

        Of course, I have to give a credit to nic0 for my rankings, as I'm subscribed to his monthly SEO service (from this month), but I have the same backlinks indexed in Google and in the Bing (according to Webmaster Tools). And you can see that for my main keyword I'm ranked #2 in Google, and not even in the fist 100 in the Bing. Thats tell me that, when you add Google authorship, everything have more weight in Google's eyes. Then you are considered as the original author of the content, and if your posts are long enough (800+ words), and if you have proper on-site SEO, and when you publish your new posts on your G+ account as an author, then it has to have some weight.

        And, for the record, when I just launched this site in the August, my main keyword (EMD) was ranked on the #11. And almost for the month I only had Hello World post.
        And then I added new content, and the ranking was the same. It start rising when nic0 started his campaign, but my main keyword slipped to #33 after the newest algorithm update. Then I added Google authorship and the next day - I was on the #5. I know that nic0 helped me a lot, but I'm sure that Google authorship helped me even more.

        This is my experience, and even if its not applicable in every case, my friendly suggestion to everyone is to verify Google authorship on sites with the original content.
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
          Banned
          Originally Posted by ogenox View Post

          And, for the record, when I just launched this site in the August, my main keyword (EMD) was ranked on the #11. And almost for the month I only had Hello World post.
          And then I added new content, and the ranking was the same. It start rising when nic0 started his campaign, but my main keyword slipped to #33 after the newest algorithm update. Then I added Google authorship and the next day - I was on the #5. I know that nic0 helped me a lot, but I'm sure that Google authorship helped me even more.
          Maybe it helped, maybe not, it's quite standard that rankings dance after we place links, not for all sites but for plenty it happens when we add like 4 PR4 and 4 PR3 links at the same day (which is part of the monthly service), so slipping to #33 and coming back to #5 is kind of what we see all the time.

          Right now it's really hard to measure things cause there were 3 Google updates in the last week and some of these updates can also cause dancing of keywords (at least that's what I saw with a few websites that didn't have links for some time).
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Using just 3-4 on-page factors to filter sites would kill like 90% of EMD sites owned by the members of this great forum. Which is exactly what happened.
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  • Profile picture of the author ogenox
    Yes, I know that it's hard to tell how much impact Google authorship alone had in my rankings. But after reading a lot about it lately and after I saw this overnight change, I'm pretty sure that it can help and that it will give more weight to any link building campaign.

    EDIT: I sent you a message on Skype, but I want also publicly to say you that I really like your services.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by ogenox View Post

      Yes, I know that it's hard to tell how much impact Google authorship alone had in my rankings. But after reading a lot about it lately and after I saw this overnight change, I'm pretty sure that it can help and that it will give more weight to any link building campaign.

      EDIT: I sent you a message on Skype, but I want also publicly to say you that I really like your services.
      Thanks, just replied to your Skype, just came home from the weekend few hrs ago.
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