In a continuous attempt to make the people use legitimate ways to reach the top of the search page, Google has to work fervently in order to plug the loopholes – then announce it as an update and give them catchy and creative names such as Hummingbird, Panda and, Penguin.
So, March 8th, 2017 was the day then Google came up with their new update and this time around, they once again came up with a completely unique name – “Fred”. I know this name instantly reminds of that old cartoon series, The Flintstones. Google has a habit of introducing updates on a regular basis that now people hardly pay attention to these updates anymore. Except for all those people who get affected and get upset with the drop in their website’s traffic.
But, people don’t realise one important thing i.e. the main reason behind these updates is to offer the best results for a search. Owing to these updates, Google has maintained its supremacy since its inception in 1996.
Let us divert our attention towards the things you should know about Google Fred Algorithm.
Is Your Website Affected By Fred Update?
Well, if your website has a spammy link profile, then it may have dropped your keyword rankings. You may be checking the performance of your varied keywords and you may want to go through Google Analytics to have the latest insight of the organic traffic performance.
How Fred Affects Your Website?
If you are one of the ‘white hat’ internet users, then you don’t need to worry about this update, in fact, the chances are high that you may witness a boost in the traffic after this update. The main motive behind this particular update is to target all those website owners who are mainly concerned with generating ad revenue by using the ad-heavy and low-quality content.
If you think your website or blog has been hit by this update, then the odds are high that you are suffering from the following content quality issues –
- Have poor user experience
- Duplicate content or post titles
- Over-optimised pages for SEO
- Low-quality content with overflow of advertisements
- Advertisements covering majority of the webpage
How To Recover From Fred Update?
As Google has not released any official statement regarding this update and given a hint to the types of links this update will be targeting, there are certain steps you can follow if the rankings have been hit from the update.
- It is imperative you have built a natural anchor text cloud including – business and generic keywords, naked URLs, and brand name.
- You must have seen a number of sites ranking with site wide-do follow links, but make sure you are cautious of such link profile. It has a risk of going down anytime.
- Make sure that the backlink is related to the context.
- Avoid using automated tools or bots in order to create backlinks for example – mass blog commenting bots
- Always remember that the quality of the links has more relevance than the total number of the links.
- If a link can be claimed easily by everyone, then the chances are high that it has less value.
- Make sure you have avoided paid links, link pyramids, and link exchange.
- You can use affiliate links but make sure they should not be the sole motive of the page. Make sure affiliate links are only added when they are according to your content and avoid overdoing them.
- The focus should be on the users instead of stuffing keywords strategies.
- Inclusion of various other content forms such as gifs and videos should be encouraged.
- Just because you have a chance to claim a particular link, it does mean that you have to go for it. Almost every website is after such links and moreover the search engines don’t value these links. Instead, you should go for the high-quality links.
What Are The Best Google Fred Update Seo Tactics?
If you are in search of Google Fred update SEO tactics, I would suggest that you should make yourself familiar with the Google Quality Rating Guidelines. Make sure that the content you are posting on your website or blog meets the guidelines. Following are the elements Google really value when it comes to quality –
- Good reputation of the website (should have positive reviews, quality backlinks, and industry awards).
- Should have clear indication of who owns the website.
- Content that demands one of the following – expertise, time, and effort.
- Should have clear indication of what the page is all about.
- A well-maintained and updated page, this means that the page loads quickly and have fewer errors.