Well, it is my first Blog post which is dedicated to the most hustling topic in SEO industry; everyone is worried about their websites ranking. By the way, not everyone, as some are having fun too.
You may have gone through a couple of posts on social media, blogs, Forums etc. Different people are talking about their experience after Unconfirmed Google Fred update. Google Fred update is not just too recent, a lot of dance has been happening after Google Penguin’s last update.
Here are few shots I took from a group on Facebook.
And some of them went too colorful.
Before I dig deep into it.
Here I introduce myself, which I am always bad at it.
My name is Waleed Najam. I started my career on 11th August, 2014. Right now, I am working as Digital Marketer for different SMEs with having top rated and preferred profiles on Upwork and Freelancer. And by the grace of Allah Almighty, I have a partner software services company MaxMind Solution here in Lahore, Pakistan. Beside that, I am certified by Google Adword and Bing Accredited Professional along with some other certifications too.
There are many reasons behind, to start my own blog, but one of them is my passion and interest for Blogging (tbh, there is not that much fun in money sites). And I’ll be focusing on Case Studies, SEO, SEM, Local E-commerce and SMM. Well, lets move forward.
I have seen fluctuation on SERP from the start of February. But after Google Fred update it’s a complete messed up as you don’t have a clear cut idea about whats happening. Sites with PBN and without both are fluctuating on SERP. I think it will take some more time to get things working.
But for those sites whose branding is good, and having few campaigns too are not still affected, and even they are ranking higher after the update.
Well, I concise it as the update majorly targeted low value content sites, irrelevant and spammy backlinks that conflicts with website’s content.
After having deep analysis through multiple resources, I have combined all the information and steps you should take after this Google Fred update.
Guest Posting, PBN, NBN and TDN
Gone are the days of spammy sites, now you need to avoid sites having following matrices and factors
- General niche PBNs are useless now.
- Avoid PBN’s with a lot of posts or having too many outbound links.
- Moz spam score greater than 3. Check backlinks of domain too and avoid sites having too many spammy backlinks.
- Way back, having adult, chinese, other language, drugs, illegal content as per policies of search Engine.
- Having Chinese, drugs, adult, gambling and other language anchor (yes, other language effects too)
- Having low MOZ PA/DA and Majestic’s TF/CF.
Do also consider these factors next time, whether you are finding PBN domains or buying guest posts.
- Try to link/find Niche relevant sites (Niche Blog Network). Trust me, you will rank higher in less NBN’s then a lot of general PBN’s.
- Lookup up Way Back of your PBN’s and don’t completely change the site as it was before.
- High matrices as DA/PA at least above 30.
PBN’s into Traffic Domain Network (TDN)
To get maximum link juice out of your PBN’s Turn your sites into TDN or buy domains having traffic, but they cost higher. All you need to do is to find keywords with low competition and low searches. Starting from even 10 avg. per month. You can easily rank on these keywords and in return you can get authority and traffic to your sites.
Soon, i’ll be sharing working link building methods and local E-commerce case studies. You can drop your email here for receiving monthly Emails.
Content – Huh, It is still the King
Search Engine Land recently analyzed 100 different sites and they believe this update mostly targets to low value content sites that value revenue above helping users. This Screenshot is one of those sites with low value content.
You have to prevent your sites from duplicate content, keep topic relevancy by adding LSI keywords and put valuable content for users. As the update targeted sites with poor content and content written for the sole purpose of ranking. So you must have to focus on user valuable content, which benefits the users in its own unique way. I recommend to do research yourself on topic to even understand what writers have done for you.
I have been listening and reading this around the community “Longer the content better you rank”. Are you sure about that?
Here the question is Why is the Sky blue? And you are going to write a 2000 words content for telling is it really blue or white. Writing long content do really helps but it is not always the solution. You always have to provide valuable content to your readers. Better CTR, better you rank, when you are in top 10.
“The idea behind topical relevance is that the more relevant your article is about your topic/keywords, the better your rankings will be. Now, this is 2009 news, but most people have no idea how to increase this relevance to the max. without keyword stuffing even in 2017. And increasing the topical relevance correlates with increasing the word count, a.k.a article length and when you think about it, it’s completely logical and makes perfect sense, because you can’t really explain everything possible about a certain topic in 500 words, unless the topic is very very narrow and your main keyword(s) are long tails.”
Source: Black Hat World
Relevancy – it’s all that matters
Whether, its content or link building you have to maintain relevancy. Traditional link building does not work anymore. But you can still take good out of it by maintaining relevancy. Now you have to work hard to make good backlinks. Here I am discussing new ways of link building bellow.
No More – Traditional Link building
Yes, traditional link building ways work no more. But SEO can make traditional link building great again with little efforts and changes.
Web 2.0
As previously simple Web 2.0 with spun and short content don’t work anymore, you have to create natural looking Web 2.0 or super Web 2.0. Add about us, privacy policy, disclaimer, contact us etc, pages to your Web 2.0. Do social sharing, add videos and images in your content. Add different articles to make them look natural.
PS: If you want to adopt black hat strategies by bombarding GSA, then don’t link directly your web 2.0’s to your site. Go with tier 3 and tier 4 in case you are a pro.
Real and Niche Relevant Sites
You have to find real and niche relevant sites. There are many authority sites that accept guest post as by asking “Write for Us” and they have mentioned their acceptance criteria.
There is a lot of ways available on Google for finding relevant sites but here I use this one as most.
Do deep competitor analysis, try to avoid brands as they get a lot of natural links. Find sites other than brands and explore there link profile. You can use ahref, moz, majestic, but here I use seoprofiler, you can create free account. And go to Link profiler > Backlinks. Then click on LIS to rearrange the sites and see percentage of their contribution in ranking.
Find sites and outreach them via emails. You’ll be wasting your time if you are sending spammy emails. Write proper emails and tell them how your guest post can be beneficial for their site. You’ll get around 60% replies in case you write relevant emails. Do ask me in comments I’ll email you some of the templates that work for me.
.Edu and Scholarship Campaigns
.edu domains always work far better than other TLD’s. Because of some specialized process for acquiring an .edu domain name and the authority these domains transfer are far more beneficial than any other TLD. For me .edu has always worked like a charm and has helped in staying long on SERP.
To design a Scholarship campaign you can look up this MOZ guide here. A successful Scholarship campaign can help you getting a lot of .edu links and you can rank for very long term. But do consider this guide too before getting into scholarship campaigns.
Comment Backlinks – How they Worked for me?
Yes, they still work for me because of these factors. Most important thing in comment backlink is to look for relevancy; you have to find niche relevant sites. Avoid sites accepting too many links in comments. And if you don’t want your comment to be deleted on authority sites than read article and comment accordingly (long relevant comments are mostly accepted).
Site wide Comments?
This is how forums rank, in recent tweet of Gary llles talks about comments on sites as sign of healthy site.
And here you have the answer.
If you are not getting comments on site then all you need to do, to get healthy comments on site is to do a lot of social sharing on different social media sites, and in their relevant groups and communities. If your content is valuable and debatable than you’ll get a lot of natural comments and you’ll see change your ranking pretty soon.
Inbound and Outbound Ratio
There are no such specific ratio suggestions by Google. All you have to do is to maintain ratio by linking to/from authority sites. Why I included inbound and outbound ratio is due to recent tweet by Gary IIIyes along with other tweets of Google Fred update, which is about stuffing your sites with too many links.
Fun Out Of Update
Ultimate Solution is here 😛
March’s Calender for SEO.
“If you want to play the game, than learn the rules first”
