How to recover from Google EMD update
Google recently announced the new EMD update which discounts the low quality exact match domains. Read our experience and explore the possibilities of avoiding such penalties in future.
I was exploring why some of our micro niche websites lost some decent amount of traffic from yesterday. I quickly realized this has happened after Matt Cutts announced the EMD update. After analysing the traffic in all the websites in our network, I concluded few points:
1. Sites that has some good keywords in it has lost good amount of traffic.
2. Even though Matt Cutts said this change will affect 0.6% of English-US traffic, he did not mention how does it affect other regions. From my experience, I believe a large number of bloggers are affected.
3. We survived Penguin and Panda from Google but our small sites are affected by the EMD algorithm change.
4. Traffic in our branded websites like www.dotnetspider.com and www.Techulator.com are not affected.
5. I am getting a lot of cries from small bloggers that they lost about 80 to 90% traffic.Are Micro Niche Websites dying?
Few months ago, one of the top earning bloggers in the country told me that he makes much more money from his secret micro niche sites than his famous blogs that everyone know. I am sure there are several bloggers who focus on small sites that focus on specific keywords to bring traffic in. Just 3-4 days ago, I read it on a famous blog that Micro Niche Websites are the way to go and that is where the future is! I don't focus much on such sites but I have a few such sites where domain names include some keywords. They all don't fetch much traffic but surprisingly they lost a significant amount of the traffic it was getting. Even my personal website - www.TonyJohn.com, which is a 10 year old domain with just few static pages that talk about my personal and professional life, was affected by this EMD algorithm. Most of the traffic to this small site was from the search queries people specifically looking for my personal information. I do not really care much about the traffic loss to these small sites but I do wonder if Google made the correct judgement in this update.
We have about 70 websites in our network. I don't think any of them are made as exact match domains for any big keywords and none of them get significant traffic from the exact match keywords. They all survived Panda and Penguin updates but failed to pass Google's EMD test. Many of the small sites lost some amount of traffic while the big authority sites showed an increase in traffic after the change.
If you look back to what Matt Cutts said last year, you will see he had given hints that Google is considering making the ground level for both keyword rich domain names and brandable domain names. Listen to this video where he talks about the domain names:Exact Match Domain Update Penalty: A Case Study
One of the big impact for me was my new website I launched for SEO training courses in Bengaluru. This website was launched just 2 months ago and it did pick up Rank #1 or Rank# 2 for the keywords I was targetting. However, the site lost its ranking after yesterday's Exact Match Domain algorithm update. The site was dropped from page 1 to page 3 or sometimes not even anywhere in the results.
If you look carefully, this site is not an exact match domain for the keywords we are targeting - SEO training in Bangalore. However, it has the word "SEO" in it and this algo change has affected the traffic without an exact match keyword. Well, SEO is a keyword but I don't think site was attracting any traffic from the word "SEO" itself. It had less than 100 visitors per day and all traffic was from some keywords related to "SEO training", "Internet Marketing" and associated with the city name "Bangalore".
This case study is just one scenario out of many similar cases I analysed in our own network. I did analyse the traffic change in our network and about 15 small websites have lost traffic after this changes from the search engine giant. One important point is, all the sites that lost traffic are very small sites with less than 1000 visitors per day and those sites were updated very rarely. The big and branded sites are not affected. In fact, this website (Techulator.com) shows some increase in traffic, but I need more days of data to conclude anything from that.
After analyzing the impact on several websites (some affected and some not affected by this change), I am coming to the conclusion that frequently updated and fresh content is the key to retain the ranking for small niche sites.How to recover from Google EMD algorithm update?
This is the million dollar question now. When Panda and Penguin updates were released, a lot of experts quickly came up with suggestions to recover. But that is not the case with the new algorithm changes. The penalty is for low quality sites with exact match domains. Even though Matt Cutts said this will affect only the low quality sites with exact match domains, I believe several sites with exact match domains have lost the traffic they were getting from exact match keywords.
If your primary traffic source was the keywords in your domain, you will probably see a big drop in traffic. According to Matt Cutts, if you maintain high quality content, your site will not be affected.
Here are my suggestions to reduce impact of the EMD algorithm change and possibly recover from the traffic loss:Update your content often
In the past, many bloggers used to create several small blogs with 3-4 pages with some static content. If they managed to get a good keyword rich domain, those blogs used to get good traffic. The new algorithm update has significantly affected a lot of such sites. What I learnt from my own research is, micro niche sites that are rarely updated are significantly affected and those sites which always provide latest and fresh content are least affected by the update.
If your site has lost traffic, check your content. When did you update your content last? When did you add a new post? Do you provide latest updates on the subject you are covering in the website? If not, you can safely conclude that it is the primary reason you lost your traffic after the EMD update.
Adding fresh, high quality, up-to-date information is the key to survival and recovery from EMD updates. Don't leave the site to automatically bring traffic. Instead, keep adding fresh content regularly.Change your strategy
You probably may want to change your strategy on your website business. Sit back and relax. Review your current blogging and website business strategy. My general approach was to create one big site and then multiple small niche sites to take advantage of traffic potential for micro niche topics. But I may be forced to change this strategy. Considering the traffic loss on small sites, it may no longer be worth spending my time on small sites. Rather, I would put all my energy to promote a single site and make it the authority site on several niche.
It is too early to judge, but if the impact of Google's Exact Match Domain algorithm update continue as it is today, then don't focus much on micro niche sites or exact match domain sites. Focus on creating authority, brandable websites. Reduce number of sites in your network and put all your energy to make an authority website that can be branded.Don't depend on domain name to bring traffic
In the past, if you manage to get an exact match domain, you already won the game. A good keyword rich domain with 4-5 pages of content was enough to get good amount of traffic in that niche. Many webmasters call it "auto pilot mode". All they do is, keep creating small micro niche websites with exact match keywords, add few pages and then keep getting their AdSense cheques in their accounts automatically.
The auto pilot mode may no longer work after the Google EMD change. An exact match domain is no longer a guaranteed way to get traffic. Maintain high quality content in your exact match domain sites. Don't expect traffic just because you have a great domain. Combine multiple micro niche sites into a single, authority site
I have seen few bloggers creating too many micro niche sites on each variant of the keyword they can think of. It is no longer a good idea to have too many small blogs scattered with different variants of the primary keyword. Combine them all to a single site and try to make it an authority site.
For example, if you have blogs like www.BestDellLaptops2011.com, www.BestDellLaptops2012.com, www.BestDellLaptops2013.com etc, consider combining them all in to a single site like www.BestDellLaptops.com or www.BestLaptops.com. Even though keyword based sites used to bring lot of traffic in the past, authority sites are the way to go in future, at least with Google.Avoid tricky keywords in micro niche sites and EMD sites
Google has said they are after the low quality sites. This means an exact match domain site will not be penalised just for the name. Instead, they will be affected only if they are of low quality.
Avoid tricky keywords meant for fetching traffic using all combinations of keywords in your small niche sites. If you analyse carefully, all recent updates from Google were meant to deal with some or other form of over optimisation. That include link building, abuse of keywords, trying to take advantage of domain name etc. Ultimately what Google wants from you is, provide great content and don't depend on SEO to get organic traffic. The signals from Google indicate that they will count only the quality of content and most of the other signals will be discounted while ranking a website.Analyze your content and check quality
If you lost traffic after this algorithm change, carefully analyse your blog posts and check what made Google think your site is a low quality site. Remove any low quality pages that were meant to trick Google. Remove any pages that add no value to the web. In other words, improve the overall quality of your site and make sure you provide all possible information about the specific topic if your site is focussing on a very micro subject.Compare with your competitors and learn from them
If your site has gone down in the search results, then look at the sites that are appearing in the top of SERP now. Do a search engine ranking comparison of your site against those sites that are ranking higher. I have written a detailed article on how to compare the search engine ranking of your site with your competitors. If you find your competitor is now ranking better than your site, then analyze the competitor sites to find what are they doing better.Strong backlink profile and domain age matters
If I look at the list of domains in our network that are affected by the EMD update, the newer sites are affected more seriously than old sites which have a good, natural backlinks from various sites. Obviously the older sites have more natural backlinks and newer sites have lower backlinks. There is one new site for which we made some efforts to build backlinks through commenting, which shows the worst impact.
This analysis shows older sites that have lot of organic backlinks have survived the EMD update even if they have been getting advantage of the keywords in domain. This shows the importance of strong backlink profile in surviving various algorithm updates from Google.
Caution: Don't try to build lot of links by commenting and spamming in various forums. Write unique content and try to get natural links. Google either ignore or penalise massive links from Forum footers and commenting.Start all over again
Well, this is an extreme step that you may want to consider if your site is seriously hit and you lost most of the traffic. Considering that only small and low value sites are affected by the EMD updates, it may not take a long to start all over again and rank well in search results with your new site. But don't repeat the mistakes. You probably may not get the exact match domain again and it is definitely worth if you get one. As I mentioned few times earlier, you will not be penalised for exact match names. Having a matching name can help you rank well at least in other search engines like Bing. And obviously, provide valuable content in your new site. If you decide to kill your old site, then you may move some of your good articles to the new site after doing a review for any potential issues in those articles.
NOTE: Don't jump into this solution yet. I am writing this just 1 day after the EMD announcement and it is too short period to come to any conclusion. You should watch your traffic atleast for 2 weeks and explore all possibilities of a recovery by following other suggestions mentioned in this article. Switching to a new site should be considered if all other options fail.Content is the King!
Add great content (this advice is applicable for all past, current and future Google algorithm updates). If you have been just adding many micro niche sites with no valuable content, it is time to slow down. You may need to invest more work in each of your sites and add a lot more content. Quality is the key and Google has made it clear that this update is targeting only low quality content and not all sites that have exact match domains.
So, the solution to recover deal with the Google EMD update is, create great authority websites instead of too many small sites with shallow content.
This does not mean you have to shutdown your micro niche websites. Let them stay where they are if you have quality content. But start focussing more on a single brandable website.
I am sure many of you may disagree with the single site approach, especially the people who are not hit by this algorithm update. I am eager to hear their voice as well. Feel free to express your comments below.
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Hi, I was looking for an awesome post like this.. finally! The good thing about Google is that when they roll out all these kinds of updates chances are that they always leave behind tons of exceptions :)