A lot of the SEO forums and blogs are getting a pounding with comments about the Google MAY DAY Update that’s for sure…
I have even read comments where people want to take Google™ to court with a class action WOW!
However I am not really sure why…. But good luck anyway.
Now for the bad news for many, it all could have been avoided with some very easy and simple SEO practices implemented that would have ensured that your traffic remained intact and exactly where it was or even having a better search engine ranking after the Google May Day update…
So What Did This “Google Update” Actually Impact On…
It seems to me that the main change happened for the bigger e-commerce sites or sites that were built by simply placing product after product on pages with no real content or what I should call “unique content” what so ever to compliment or even describe what was being offered for sale on that page.
These sites can also be potential affiliate only sites where site feeds or widgets were used to generate the pages, but have no content.
The next issue here was that these product pages do not seem to have very many links pointing to them and if they did they were of a very poor quality, after all who wants to link to a page that really gives no value to their users, all that will do is draw away from your own credibility.
If you were one of these sites and have seen a big difference in either traffic or sales we would like to hear from you…
What Our Research Revealed About The May Day Update…
After doing some more research on this, firstly by looking at a friends e-commerce website that has been online for many years and very successful I might add and noticing a big drop in traffic which also meant sales I thought I should dig a little deeper into this…
So here is what Matt Cutts had to say about it on YouTube…
[youtube=http://youtu.be/WJ6CtBmaIQM]
Okay now you have seen the video from Matt so now let’s have a look and see when I started to warn all my users that this was going to happen, oh and by the way most people who read these posts said it would never happen and some even laughed.
You can find the first post here which I released back in July 2009 Evolving As An Affiliate Marketer
Then I released another in August of 2009 titled Building Trust As An Affiliate Marketer
And again in February 2010 where I talk about What Is The Future Of Affiliate Marketing
So whether you realize it not or maybe you did not hear what Mat Cutts said this is a long-term change “meaning it’s here to stay” so if you want to stay online you are going to have to change with it.
So why do we think this May Day update took place? Is it simply to bring quality businesses higher into the index of the search engines.
So what do we mean by quality well it is the Google quality that we are talking about and they want content and relevant links to that content it is really that simple. And if you are a business that hasn’t listened to the warnings and there have been many then you are paying the price today.
And the reason we believe this is happening now is the economy and not just the economy in the USA but all over the world where many business websites are suffering due to the amount of poorly built and no content sites that were jamming up the rankings for many long tail keywords and simply listing product after product on thousands of generated pages trying to make a sale.
So What Can You Do?
It all comes back to the basics of SEO marketing and a strategy that has been working since the internet began. Building your sites with quality content so that you can then receive one way back links back to your site without too much effort or cost to you.
Our average visitor count was 485 visits for the month of May 2010 and so far to date June 2010 is showing us at having 515 visitors on a daily average and we seem to be ranking now for a lot more long tail keywords.
You Need To Have Not Just Quality Content But Unique As Well…
By using quality content to do this, two things will happen, initially you will see that you are getting your visitors to stay on your site longer followed by your site being indexed and visited more frequently by all the search engines not just Google™.
This quality content will also enable you to draw other sites to link to your site so they can also provide helpful information to their users this will also include getting links from the many social networking sites such as Stumble Upon and Twitter and even getting listed on Facebook and MySpace pages.
Are You Still Using Html Pages?
I would also suggest that if you are using static HTML websites then it is time to make a change. Using the WordPress platform which has become the Content Management System of choice online today for the simple fact that it is easy to use and has literally hundreds of free plugins that you can use to increase the SEO effectiveness of your business site.
What would I recommend as a template for these WordPress sites, well for affiliate marketers I could not go past these – Thesis Theme – Ultimate Blogging Theme. All of these blog templates serve a purpose so you will need to decide which is a good fit for your business.
If you are selling your own products or services then I would have to go with StudioPress as the preferred template selection there are many different designs available to customize your site to what you need as well as a very large user forum and video tutorials.
Where To From Here…
My next prediction is this, Video Marketing is going to start to become much more popular inside of the next twelve months and will be the dominate force in all aspects of selling and promoting products online. All you need to do is look in the search indexes of Google right now to see that their YouTube videos are getting listed very high and that is only one service of many.
In Closing: You really need to keep everything as simple as possible go back to the basics and start again if this Google May Day Update has hurt your online business. It is not as hard as you think it might be and you will be well rewarded by doing it.
Don’t believe all the hype and scare tactics that will be used by many who see opportunity to get you to purchase products or services that have a miracle fix, there is none except hard work and dedication.
After all do you want your visitors to see you as an authority in your niche or just a general annoyance they come across in the search engines from time to time.
I do not believe their intention is improved quality. Their CEO publicly announced in his now famous Internet cesspool comment that they are intentionally favoring Big Brands and that is exactly how this MayDay update is affecting traditional ecommerce stores such as those built on Yahoo Stores.
It makes sense for stores to be build the way they are and there is no valid reason Google should penalize them for being what they are – a store – but many of them ARE far too light on product description information.
Anyone can look at the ecommerce store traffic drops for any store by typing their URL into Compete. Most traditional stores such as those that use Yahoo! Stores lost 20-30% of their traffic and sales almost overnight. And this is only the beginning.
I predict that more and more keyword phrases will be affected over time. I warned merchants that accepting Google Analytics would be used against them one day. Thanks to that “FREE” service they know precisely what keyword phrases are converting and can systematically give those to their favored big businesses in both organic placement and AdWords pay per click ads.
Too bad almost no one listens to Ron or me or any of the few others who have been warning businesses what was coming. Perhaps a few of them will listen now in time to save themselves. Power affiliates can help many if they choose to – even those who don’t have any idea what we are talking about here.
It is clear to me that no business owner could possibly learn all they would need to know to implement effective online marketing themselves. Even if they could they could not run their businesses and do that too. Only those online marketers who assemble a team of specialists such as the one we have put together can succeed.
There is simply too much to know, too much to stay on top of and too much time required for any person to do it alone. We are developing best practices so if anyone needs them do ask us.
Interesting comments by Matt Cutts as he says google just wants to improve the service to it’s customers which is what every good business aims to do. With seo you just have to adapt and go with the flow.
Hi Mal yes you are right very interesting comments for Matt…
Many people will read into this what they want but the bottom line is this, quality content and experience for your readers. It is not anything more than this, Google wants content so give it to them. However for those that are using PLR content to fast track this it will still be a negative result. Quality content means not only useful but unique as well.
Did you know that the 10 spot in google page 1 gets more % of clicks than the top spot in the sponsord links? !! almost makes not paying for ppc a smart thing to do.
Hi John
Thanks for the stats on Google™ PPC, however many people do not have a choice in this as they need an avenue to start producing income from their business straight away. Getting a top 10 ranking in the SERPS takes time depending on your niche. Many people can not wait as their business needs to be turning over income all the time or bills will not get paid.