{"id":135,"date":"2013-02-28T20:01:25","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T20:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/?p=135"},"modified":"2013-04-13T20:59:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T20:59:20","slug":"everything-you-need-to-know-about-googles-emd-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/everything-you-need-to-know-about-googles-emd-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Google\u2019s EMD update"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>What\u2019s the Google EMD update about?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<div align=justify>I believe that Matt Cutts explained it perfectly in his tweet.\u00a0 EMDs used to offer a competitive advantage to those who knew how to use them. Ranking for a keyword was easier if the website domain matched that keyword, especially in the early days of search when Google\u2019s ranking factors and algorithms were not as complex as they are today.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What types of sites were affected by this update?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Mainly websites that use keywords as their domain name and are also low quality sites.\u00a0 On the other hand, there are many EMDs out there that haven\u2019t been hit. These are quality websites that are relevant for the keywords they employ as their domain names but are not over-optimising their website for ranks.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Ok, but what defines a low-quality site?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Keyword usage<\/strong> \u2013 when done aggressively, the user\u2019s overall experience can suffer as the content is stuffed with keywords and is no longer informative or useful.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Low authority<\/strong> \u2013 a website\u2019s authority is given by the number and quality of backlinks. Having a backlink from another site means that your site is trusted. Having more links gives your site a better trust score. However, in order to increase your authority, the websites linking to you must have a high authority. Receiving trust votes from bad sites will only make your site look untrustworthy as well.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Spammy link-building<\/strong> \u2013 The same as above, getting links from low quality sites will only make your website look bad in the eyes of the search engines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>Is there any way to get a site up again if it\u2019s been hit by Google\u2019s EMD update?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s too early for success stories but many webmasters that were hit are in the process of fixing their websites.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the <em>actions that will help get a website on the right path<\/em> are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Content clean-up<\/strong> \u2013 Take a good look at the quality of your content. Make it relevant, stop stuffing it with keywords and ensure it\u2019s unique and useful for your site\u2019s visitors.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fix over-optimised pages<\/strong> \u2013 Double check to ensure your most important pages are not over-optimised. You might fall victim to another Google penalty. Start by varying internal anchor texts and use related keywords as well instead of repeating the same keyword over and over again. Give your copy some lexical richness!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fix pages with high bounce rates<\/strong> \u2013 If you do have pages with high bounce rates, it can be an indicator that your users haven\u2019t found what they were looking for. Ensure you rank for keywords that are actually relevant for that page. Otherwise your users will search one thing and find something different on your page. That\u2019s when they bounce to a more relevant website.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Get associated with brands, websites and people famous in your niche<\/strong> \u2013 Prove you\u2019re part of a trustworthy group of people with high authority. Engage with experts, bloggers or even clients.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be social<\/strong> \u2013 Take the time to enrich your social presence. Find ways to get people talking about your website on as many social channels as possible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>What happens if none of the above works?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It takes time to complete all of the above so have patience. If you\u2019ve done everything and still haven\u2019t recovered, then it\u2019s time to think of a domain name change. Get your brand\u2019s name this time. Make sure you redirect your old EMD domain to your new brand domain using a 301 redirect.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to lose the benefits of all the hard work you did trying to salvage your initial website.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Prevention is key<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>All in all, even if your site has been affected by Google\u2019s EMD update, there are plenty of things you can do to recover. But <strong>prevention is key<\/strong> so take the time to go through every page of your site and ensure you are providing your visitors with the useful information they are looking for.\n<\/div>\n<p>Page Source <a href=\"http:\/\/www.123-reg.co.uk\/blog\/domains\/everything-you-need-to-know-about-googles-emd-update\/?_$ja=tsid:45073\" target=\"_blank\">www.123reg.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s the Google EMD update about? I believe that Matt Cutts explained it perfectly in his tweet.\u00a0 EMDs used to offer a competitive advantage to those who knew how to use them. Ranking for a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}