Is your site overly SEO'd?

[Dizzy]

There are more moves ahead at Google to get the 'best' content to the top of the organic rankings, rather than just well SEOd sites.

This looks like it could be a real game-changer for many SEO guys out there? But who knows?

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-over-seo-update-14887.html

As mentioned in the previous thread re. Google and forthcoming changes, I guess it's all about making them more advertising £s

 

[cc976a]

That's been the thorn in independent or small businesses paw as of late

How do Google define 'best' - again it's by popularity, linkbacks, who's trending/talking about you, where are you active on social media, what reputable businesses are talking about you etc....

They can't automatically define 'content' on it's own merit. If it was, we'd all stand a better chance!

To get there you either need a lot of luck, large pockets (for advertising to become known) or already heavily established. Meaning big businesses get to the top of the engines rather than being a level playing field.

 

[Blossom]

I think it's a hint that they are focusing on spun and duplicate content. There are too many autoblogs with spun content that make ridiculous amounts of money.

 

[cc976a]

I thought that was the idea behind Panda - or wasn't it the crap content terminator Google thought it would be?

 

[Dizzy]

who knows?

I think that as long as you keep it all relevant, informational, unique (on page and from quality incoming links) you should have half a chance of keeping or improving your ranking positions.

Do you think this new change could increase the value of well aged exact match domains even more?

 

[cc976a]

Do you think this new change could increase the value of well aged exact match domains even more?

Can't see why?

 

[Dizzy]

I was thinking about the ability to be able to continue to push quality links using exact match (or similar and relevant) anchor text to an exact match domain without potentially being penalised for it, thus increasing the potential value of the exact match domain.

I found this article really interesting too.

http://www.seobythesea.com/2011/10/googles-exact-match-domain-name-patent-detecting-commercial-queries/

 

[Systreg]

Oh no, what are all the seo spammers sending their spam emails going to do now

 

[WiganWebs]

The bottom line is, Google wants everything to be natural, so make it look natural. Over optimising a keyword is like waving the white flag at them.

 

[murph]

From what ive read, we're talking too many backlinks with same anchor text... Thing is, EMD can't avoid the EMD term as anchor as it's the name of the site?! Surely if there was one phrase you would be given benefit of the doubt, it's this one?

 

[DavidL]

From what ive read, we're talking too many backlinks with same anchor text... Thing is, EMD can't avoid the EMD term as anchor as it's the name of the site?! Surely if there was one phrase you would be given benefit of the doubt, it's this one?

Spot on - EMD domains don't have the same risk of over-optimised anchor text as the anchor text is also the name of the site.

They wouldn't penalise Sainsburys.co.uk for having too many instances of the anchor text 'Sainsburys' so in the same way the algorithm should penalise CheapCarInsurance.co.uk for having 'Cheap Car Insurance' repeatedly in anchor text (although just thinking about it, might not be a bad idea to use Caps in some anchors for that reason)

 

[JMOT]

Yet another push to force people into paying them for traffic.

Not daft are they!

Most certainly relentless tho.

on edit:

I have no objection to paying for traffic btw. As long as the ROI is solid, stable and reliable.

Nothing is a given, you have to work at SEO as hard as PPC.

It just sucks in the UK google has 90%+ market share.

 

[cc976a]

Always going to happen as soon as they went down the public offering / shareholder route

Shame - would really like to have see such a powerhouse completely laugh in the face of corporate greed (like Apple - don't get me started there, with the dirty tricks and monopoly power they have, someone must be getting a few back handers)

Trouble is if they carry on the negativity will spread to bad press, will spread to competitors being given more higher profiles and awareness and the cycle starts again...

 

[MASSEY]

I think this algorithm has been kicking in slowly for a while now. It will be a good thing for people who vary their anchor to be more semantic.

Sites that have shed loads of the same anchors and rank well may fall and become filtered until they vary anchors. It will level the playing field for a short while at least.

 

[MASSEY]

Spot on - EMD domains don't have the same risk of over-optimised anchor text as the anchor text is also the name of the site.

Yes thats right. Keywords in the domain are a must for natural rank. You can always 301 to a brandable domain as soon as your ranks are very good.

 

[mrh]

This is to target sites with an over optimised back link profile

1. Link exchanges
2. Too much anchor text

What you need to do

1. Don't do link exchanges
2. Mix up your anchor text to include brand + term, name + brand , name + term , sentence linking etc

Try be natural and link exchange is NOT natural having a high % of keyword anchor text links is NOT natural.

The only thing I've yet to work out is how they will actually penalise sites for this. After all I can fire a lot of anchor texts links at any site I want and google won't penalise a site for something they might not of sanctioned themselves.

Ps someone mentioned social sharing - they is no fing way social sharing will take over from links for long term SEO. Might boost a little for when it's deemed as " fresh news" but that's about it.

 

[mrh]

Yes thats right. Keywords in the domain are a must for natural rank. You can always 301 to a brandable domain as soon as your ranks are very good.

The weighting signals do not place a great deal on emds. Do you honestly think google wants to display emds? It's wants brands, real companies, high quality sites not low quality affilaite / lead gen / drop shipping / landing pages / micro sites for SEO / traffic diversion etc

 

[murph]

I think this new update will likely play down EMD ranking unless the linking profile anchors are diverse enough. Although as I said, I think this is unfair due to the fact that EMD domains have that term as the site name! I think G has traditionally allowed EMDs to rank well as there are a limited number of quality extensions possible and so the odd EMD within the SERPS alongside the big brands isn't so bad. I get the impression though that enough complaints against EMDs taking highly commercial space have forced G to reassess this approach.

 

[MASSEY]

The weighting signals do not place a great deal on emds. Do you honestly think google wants to display emds? It's wants brands, real companies, high quality sites not low quality affilaite / lead gen / drop shipping / landing pages / micro sites for SEO / traffic diversion etc

Exact match is very powerful right now.

And having keywords in your domain is very helpful.

You need to do some testing.

 

[MASSEY]

I think this new update will likely play down EMD ranking unless the linking profile anchors are diverse enough. Although as I said, I think this is unfair due to the fact that EMD domains have that term as the site name! I think G has traditionally allowed EMDs to rank well as there are a limited number of quality extensions possible and so the odd EMD within the SERPS alongside the big brands isn't so bad. I get the impression though that enough complaints against EMDs taking highly commercial space have forced G to reassess this approach.

Google can't devalue EMD that much or some people wont even rank for their own biz name and google would be getting sued.