I want to talk to you about “Fred”, or the March 9 Google update, which was actually a few updates done around the same time. Some of you may have seen your rankings drop off a cliff, but the advice I offered over the previous few weeks may have helped bring them back up again. One of the sites I was helping with was having a hard time recovering as quickly as the owner wished, but I think it was more a matter of him being in a competitive market than a problem with his site. The more competitive your phrase is, the longer it can take to recover lost rank. That’s true of everything in the more crowded markets.
One of the things this site owner did was to remove the Amazon affiliate links he had on his pages. He wasn’t getting much traffic from them anyway, so he tried to de-spam his site by taking down the affiliate links. This technique works for some site owners, less so for others.
What was more important in recovering his rank was improving the content. He had the main key phrase in every heading on each page. What I’ve always said in the past is to include the key phrase where it’s natural, but don’t stuff it into the content just to have another instance of the key phrase. Since this latest update, this advice is more important than ever. What I’m doing in my own blog posts is to use the key phrase in the H1 heading, and then using it in the content if it makes sense.
Go through your own pages and try removing key phrases. If the sentence makes sense without it, leave it out. Keep it natural to keep Google happy.
If you’ve got any questions you want me to cover in an upcoming video, let us know. Drop us a line through the comments section.
This article was originally published on stewartmedia.com.au.
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Jim Stewart is a leading expert in search engine optimisation. His business StewArt Media has worked with clients including Mars, M2 and the City of Melbourne.
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