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It’s that time of the month again.
Time for another case study update!
In the last month, we continued optimizing the site so it can rank for even more keywords, while watching the income steadily increase.
During the first few months of a new site’s life, income (from organic traffic) is not expected. As time goes on, though, especially after the 6-month and 12-month mark, income generally makes a huge upward spike.
We have been impressed to see that our case study site has already cracked the $100 per month mark and is bringing in between 20-40 visitors a day.
Traffic Numbers:
Earnings:
Domain Info & Rankings:
click to zoom
Over the last few months, though, Google has been rolling out new algorithms that have taken aim at affiliate based websites that are banking off using certain types of content and taking the strategy to the extreme.
We want to help everyone reading this avoid getting caught up in the major algorithm updates, so we’re going to address the latest “Fred” update and show you what you need to do to avoid having your site penalized.
Going forward, we’re going to continue adding new content to the site that’s focused more on driving traffic to it on it’s own, along with bringing in more links.
In other words, we’re going to thin down the amount of money-focused pages on the site in favor of helping our visitors in more ways than simply locating the products that they want to purchase.
If You’re Not Familiar With The “Fred” Update, Here’s A Quick Rundown On How It Works
As with most other updates, Google hasn’t come out and directly commented on the factors that are influencing the latest update, but by analyzing enough tools and having access to enough data, it’s pretty easy to figure out which types of sites were targeted.
- The update primarily targeted content-based websites that aren’t necessarily experts on their topic, but are instead focused on making money from advertisements and affiliate links.
- Many sites targeting “best of” and “review” type keywords experienced a 50% to 90% drop in their organic traffic, with the hardest hit sites having the highest percentage of these types of posts.
- Sites that were targeted specifically by the “Fred” algorithm were generally lower quality content, and focused more on revenue generation than helping their visitors.
- There were other sites that were penalized that didn’t fit these criteria, which leads us to believe they were hit with other algorithms that were updated the same time “Fred” was released. These could be Penguin or Panda refreshes.
Most of the sites that got hit during this algorithm update were blatantly violating Google’s Terms of Service and “should have been hit”, according to Gary Illyes of Google’s Web Spam Team.
While we didn’t notice many drops across the sites we managed, and haven’t heard about any complaints from our clients, we want to make sure that we’re always ahead of the curve and aren’t doing anything that could potentially land us in hot water.
And Here’s How You Avoid Getting Caught Up In It Yourself
Going forward, we are going to work on fleshing out the case study site, along with other sites that we own, and encouraging our readers and clients to do the same thing to their own sites.
Adding more content to your site that’s specifically focused on helping your visitors in ways other than locate products they can purchase (ie: money content & pages).
Doing This Is Going To Have A Bunch Of Positive Effects
First, it’s going to make your sites more helpful to the people that land on your site.
Instead of focusing solely on helping them purchase products, you’re going to give them new insights, answer questions they have, and help them solve other problems associated with your niche.
- It’s going to make it easier for you to generate new links. Many webmasters refuse to link to websites that are focused solely on making money. Adding social content to your site is a great way to generate new links, and tap into traffic sources other than Google.
- You’re actually going to drive more traffic to the site. Since you’re relying primarily on Google for your traffic, having more content lets you target more (non-commercial) keywords, which is going to increase your organic traffic on a consistent basis.
- You will end up making more money. In general, more traffic equals more money. By targeting non-commercial content, your traffic will increase, but you will uncover new, low competition commercial keywords that you can target in the future.
- You’ll be impervious to Google’s algorithm updates. If there’s one thing they consistently target with their algorithm updates it’s low quality content and sites that are skirting the lines of what is deemed useful to visitors using search engines to find solutions to the problems they’re having.
The end goal, if you’re wanting to build a sustainable business, is to give Google’s visitors exactly what they want, and aim to be the best resource available for the niche you’ve chosen.
As long as you do that, and aren’t building sites that are designed solely to line your own pockets, you will have an easier time and won’t have to worry about every new update that rolls out.
Going forward, we’re going to continue adding content to the site, and working on a new silo to tap into another area of the market we’re targeting.
Stay tuned for updates and, if you haven’t already, make sure to enter your email below to receive the updates as soon as they’re released, and get entered for your chance to win one of our premium packages if we fail to hit the $100,000 goal we’ve set for ourselves!
