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How long to wait before giving up on EMD Update Hit site?

by Voyager64
16 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I know there is a boat load of threads about the EMD update - not surprising as many peoples livelihoods have been gravely affected!

My question is does anyone have an idea about how long you should wait (if your site has not come back) after the EMD update before either giving it up as lost forever, or going through the site with a fine toothed comb to check the optimisation etc?
#algorithm #emd #emd update #giving #hit #long #site #update #wait
  • Profile picture of the author MikeWike
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    • Profile picture of the author Voyager64
      Thanks for the tips Mike - awesome.

      Having made the changes is there a period of time after which you just say "its dead and I am off to build a new site" to replace it?
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      • Profile picture of the author darrenlc
        NEVER EVER GIVE UP.

        Ask yourself this though. Would you pay Google to advertise your site and would you earn more money than it costs to do so? If the answer in no then you need to make your site better until it is worthy of spending money on it.

        I've been hit and the last thing on my mind is SEO. I have money to advertise but won't pay out until I bring it up to a standard good enough for it to convert better. So SEO has now completely stopped and will do so until my site is worthy of the visitors it recieves.

        Like the post above states - BOUNCE RATES and TIME ON SITE. I have a 45% bounce rate and an average of time of 2 minutes on site. What I really want is 20% bounce rate with 5 minutes on site. Make the most of your visitors first and you will eventually be loved again by Google. In the mean time try targeted forums for traffic and find other ways were you don't have to rely on Google.
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        • Profile picture of the author Voyager64
          Thanks Darren.
          I must admit the thought of giving up on the 2 sites in question really does not appeal. They were my babies! Not to mention bringing in over £1500 per month!! All gone at the moment

          My bounce rate pre EMD update was 36%
          My time on site was 2 mins
          Returning visitors was 6%
          Website consists of 16 pages so not a thin affiliate site.
          To my mind the site has good info and actual products on it.

          My first thoughts were that maybe I did not have enough backlinks and maybe the keyword was mentioned a little too often on the site. Cant see any other reason really.

          Thanks for the ideas and tips so far - keep em coming guys
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          • Profile picture of the author Mkj
            Originally Posted by Voyager64 View Post

            Thanks Darren.
            I must admit the thought of giving up on the 2 sites in question really does not appeal. They were my babies! Not to mention bringing in over £1500 per month!!
            Surely you should consider ppc. Speculate to accumulate. Even if you spend £500 a month and get £1500 in return it is still good money.
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    • Profile picture of the author PhoenixWS
      Originally Posted by MikeWike View Post

      Depends on how "valuable" this site was. The "waiting" wont help much... If you really want to bring this site back from death than here is some tips you should do:

      Make backlinks with random anchor text, try to brand your domain
      Make quality posts/articles + fix grammar mistakes
      Try to reduce bounce rate
      Try to higher average visitor time on site

      Make your site enjoyable for visitor, don't over tweak your on-page seo etc.
      I am not convinced that bounce rate and visitor time really makes that much difference, at least on all sites. Here's why:

      If someone is searching for something specific and they click on a site which quickly provides the information/answer to the query, that visitor will leave the site with the information they were looking for and go on their way. Most people are after quick answers and they are not interested in browsing further.

      You can't penalise a website for quickly providing the relevant information required by the visitor. For example, I have a website with a blood pressure chart on the main page. It ranks for the term blood pressure chart. When people click to my site they want to check their blood pressure readings on the chart and then they are off. The site has a 65% bounce rate, but it is a quality site that quickly provides the information the visitor is looking for.

      I could be completely wrong but it just wouldn't make sense for bounce rate to be a big deal, unless the thresholds for bounce rate penalties vary by niche....
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    • Profile picture of the author stockpost
      Originally Posted by MikeWike View Post

      Depends on how "valuable" this site was. The "waiting" wont help much... If you really want to bring this site back from death than here is some tips you should do:

      Make backlinks with random anchor text, try to brand your domain
      Make quality posts/articles + fix grammar mistakes
      Try to reduce bounce rate
      Try to higher average visitor time on site

      Make your site enjoyable for visitor, don't over tweak your on-page seo etc.
      Excellent points
      Just something came to my mind.
      If one tricks to get to visitors to their site, unless you provide what the visitor is looking for they are going to jump out very quickly.
      ** And try getting repeat visitors.. If you can do it by giving what your visitor was looking for in the 1st place, your site will be back up.
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  • Profile picture of the author jodiesmitham
    It's a good question and one that quite a few on here will want answered. Some believe that you can sit back and do nothing while others will suggest getting on with tweaking your site. I guess there is no harm in making sensible changes, which would have been beneficial anyway.

    I had a site which got hit months ago and no matter what I did (change the theme, content, add backlinks, delete backlinks etc.) nothing changed. A number of others have experienced the same, whilst others have not touched a site and suddenly months later the site reappears in SERPs.

    Personally, I have made some changes to the one site of mine that was hit last week. I've seen a slight change in rankings, but nothing to shout about. It may be too soon to scrap, but I'm going to start a new site soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    If you were truly hit by the EMD update, there is no reason to give up. It will be just as hard to rank a new non-EMD site as it will be to rank this one. It was not a penalty. They just took away the ranking bonus previously awarded to EMD's.
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    • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      If you were truly hit by the EMD update, there is no reason to give up. It will be just as hard to rank a new non-EMD site as it will be to rank this one. It was not a penalty. They just took away the ranking bonus previously awarded to EMD's.
      I agree with this post by Mike. You lost a boost due to the devaluation of the "EMD Boost." Solution? Relevant keyword links, especially ones from sites with authority that contain the anchor text phrases but don't overdo it.

      I actually discovered an EMD yesterday that has a six pack of SiteLinks when searching for ExactMatchDomain.com but has been banished for the term. To me that really suggests its a 'phrase-based over optimization penalty' and is not necessarily a punishment for the domain.

      Does your site still rank for just the domain name?
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Silvey
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      If you were truly hit by the EMD update, there is no reason to give up. It will be just as hard to rank a new non-EMD site as it will be to rank this one. It was not a penalty. They just took away the ranking bonus previously awarded to EMD's.

      There is a key difference. If you were hit by the EMD update. You forever lose the Serp weight on the domain. At this point the site would be hobbled. You can change your site title and description to a related secondary keyword.

      You could roll out a new domain/site roll everything over, 301 your existing links. Here you will have some serp juice on the domain, but in a branded way. Better than having none.

      Also I would like to point out it is still possible to build EMDs, but you need to do some preliminary work. First block Googlebot - no index/no follow content none. Block it first . Make sure you DO NOT use the keyword in description or Title, or heading tags on your home page. Inner pages are fine, build internal links to show relevancy on various related keywords, not just the one in the EMD. Build deep links. Build quality backlinks. After the site is flushed out for google, then open the gate for it.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by Chris Silvey View Post

        There is a key difference. If you were hit by the EMD update. You forever lose the Serp weight on the domain. At this point the site would be hobbled. You can change your site title and description to a related secondary keyword.

        You could roll out a new domain/site roll everything over, 301 your existing links. Here you will have some serp juice on the domain, but in a branded way. Better than having none.

        Also I would like to point out it is still possible to build EMDs, but you need to do some preliminary work. First block Googlebot - no index/no follow content none. Block it first . Make sure you DO NOT use the keyword in description or Title, or heading tags on your home page. Inner pages are fine, build internal links to show relevancy on various related keywords, not just the one in the EMD. Build deep links. Build quality backlinks. After the site is flushed out for google, then open the gate for it.

        Nobody was "hit" by the EMD update. They just lost the ranking bonus previously provided by the EMD. Now they have to work just as hard as everyone else in their search to rank. That is my point. There is no need to start over from scratch. They can just continue to try ranking the site they have.

        There is no data to prove that a site is now "hobbled" by its EMD.
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        • Profile picture of the author Chris Silvey
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          Nobody was "hit" by the EMD update. They just lost the ranking bonus previously provided by the EMD. Now they have to work just as hard as everyone else in their search to rank. That is my point. There is no need to start over from scratch. They can just continue to try ranking the site they have.

          There is no data to prove that a site is now "hobbled" by its EMD.
          You are wrong. As Matt Cutts said this targeted Low Quality EMD sites (their terminology). Those sites, like mine that did get hit lose the benefit of the Serps for the Domain. It is not just a reduction, but those flagged do not get the bonus on the domain name.

          This was pointed out to me last week on Google Webmasters.

          At the time 2 updates were hitting at the same site. The EMD and the Panda Algorithm update. If you got hit by the EMD, You lost all ranking on that particular keyword, all backlinks were de indexed. The only way to find your domain was to type it in. After this the spiders started to recrawl sites.

          Others at the time who lost ranking on keywords thought they were hit by the EMD, but in fact was hit by Panda that was released on the 27th. The public was told last Monday.

          Those that say they are recovering is due to ranking by interior workings, but the bonus on the domain itself is gone for those that flagged.
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  • Profile picture of the author Voyager64
    When I put in the domain name I get 141,000 results the top one being my domain but without the www. unlike all the other entries that have the www. on them. Does this mean anything?

    Thanks all for your input by the way so far. Seems to be an interesting debate.

    Seems like the way forward for me is to strip out the optimisation and put just a little bit back in, add some MORE quality info, maybe a video on the home page to engage visitors a bit more.

    Re: ppc - cant go down that route as Google has also just suspended my Adwords account. No idea why except maybe that my ad, whilst only UK specific, is for a product that can be sold in the UK but not the US.

    I like the idea of trying to target an alternative keyword in my niche that is not my domain. Does anyone know if I was to try that route would I need to target a keyword phrase that did NOT have ANY of the words in the domain in it?
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    • Profile picture of the author darrenlc
      AdWords can be a bit picky. If I was you I would keep pestering for a reason as to why your account is banned. If they sent you a response full of automated crap then ask again and keep asking until you get an answer from someone who has actually looked at your site. You may find the reason why your sites got penalised with there response.

      Ok so they won't tell you directly but it could give you a good idea of where you should be heading. Remember it is in their interest if you get your account up and running again. I know they don't like sites that link directly out to the product from the advertised page which is their loss I'm afraid.
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  • Profile picture of the author Toyota Hilux Dealer
    One of my site was hit by EMD update and within a week traffic halved which means thousands of hits are now gone. I saw some recovery today but not in keywords in the domain. Let's see if this continues. Never give up though.
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  • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
    If a domain goes wonky on me, I shoot it in the head on the spot. No tears, no long goodbyes. Just a sudden and quick death for that dodgy domain.
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