Has Google launched a trap for website owners?
The rumor goes that Google ran a new algorithm that shook up users’ traffic.
Even though Google has a habit of testing algorithms that have little impact on the website traffic, this time the SEO community observed great fluctuations and differences in rankings.
The explosive recent dynamics of the online world suggest that Google has indeed made a serious update. However, Google has not officially announced that the update took place.
However, we are not so sure that this update is for the well-being of the website users.
Jokingly, the Google Updates have been called “Fred”, but apparently this update is “THE Fred”.
It focuses on the link quality features already existing in the overall Google algorithm. Unseating the content quality aspect of the algorithm, the new Google update caused severe drops in traffic as more webmasters and SEO specialists check their statistics.
At the cost of important keywords, the content did not save the dropped rankings and this created a rise for links with poor profiles. Still, there is a pattern of websites that were especially affected by this possible update.
Websites with various types of content, usually blogs, which host ads and affiliate links in a chaotic fashion registered between 50% and 80% traffic decline on Google search.
Most of these websites host content written in order to increase or improve rankings, but apparently Google’s Fred played a trick on them. While Google’s Fred is having a party, there are some steps that website owners can take in order to reduce the damages of this crisis. Everybody should check their analytics and see if there was a substantial change in traffic.
What is to be done?
If you were hit by Fred, divide your content into high-quality and low-quality.
Find the lost keywords according to traffic volume and past rankings that lead to the low-quality content. Start updating your low-quality content with better writing and SEO optimization.
Additionally, you could use a backlink checker to identify faulty backlinks and remove them.
We are deadly curious to see how Google’s Fred impacted the website owners, so share with us your experience and tell us in the comments bellow if you have noticed any change in your website traffic in the past month.