If you’ve spent any time searching on Google, you’ve seen content farms pop up time and time again. If you did click on their results, you likely hit the backspace key right after because the content is so shallow. The content farms rely freelance writers � who earn next to nothing per article, if anything � and marketers who submit to the directories solely to boost their sites’ search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Research by Sistrix, a German research firm, indicates that the biggest losers in the update include wisegeek.com, ezinearticles.com, suite101.com, hubpages.com, buzzle.com and associatedcontent.com. which saw their rankings in the United States drop between 77 and 94 percent. While much of the content can be considered devoid of value, there have been reports of collateral damage. For now, the change is only in effect in the United States, but Google promises it will implement it worldwide soon.
If you have seen a drop in site traffic since last week, here are just some steps you can take to get back on Google’s good side:
Make sure your content is unique. If you copy and paste content from other sources, this is detrimental to your SEO efforts. And if you don’t have permission to use the content, you could be on the hook for copyright infringement. Write all your site’s content from scratch. If you have trouble, hire a copywriter, but make sure he or she is SEO savvy.
Stop keyword stuffing. Don’t repeatedly use the phrase you’re targeting in your content. A few times will suffice.
Only provide valuable content. You don’t need to write a novel about every topic you cover, but providing nothing but a paragraph of text and a link to an off-site article provides little or no value to the reader.
Ensure inbound links are legitimate. If your link profile consists mostly of fly-by-night directories and spammy sites, this looks suspect in the eyes of Google. Make sure you have plenty of quality sites pointing to your domain; a handful of them beats out hundreds of directories.
Appeal to Google. Using Google Webmaster Tools, you can file a request for reconsideration. Only do this if you’re certain that your site cannot be viewed as spam.
Has your site been impacted by the algorithm update? Do you have any more advice for those who’ve been affected? Let us know in the comments section below!
