Google performs multiple algorithm updates each year. Some of them sometimes lead to several changes in the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages).
Between March 7th and 8th, Google has modified its SEO algorithm. A new update called Fred caused sudden drops in search engine rankings and traffic for some sites.
” Why Fred?” Simply because Gary Illyes (Webmaster Trends Analyst and Google spokesman) humorously indicated on his twitter account that from now on all updates would be called Fred.
Who is affected?
The majority of sites penalized by this algorithm update were using duplicate or low-quality content as well as excessively artificial backlinks or exact anchors. If Fred notices that your content is worthless, outdated, or contains too many ads, you may notice a drop in search engine rankings.
How can you avoid a drop in ranking?
Here are 4 things you can do to check whether or not you have been impacted by this new algorithm.
- Explore your analysis tools. With your Google Analytics account, you can spot a drop in traffic or a drop in ranking. If you notice a drop between March 7 and March 20, you have probably been affected by this update.
- Categorize your content: Recent and quality content / older content with low value.
- Improve the quality of your low value content. Start with the pages that were generating the most traffic before the Fred update. You can do this with the help of the Google Quality Guide.Â
- Make sure your backlinks are natural and relevant. Google uses anchor texts and ratios to determine the value of your inbound links.
Monitor the movement of your website in the following weeks. The Google Fred update has already had many negative and positive impacts. While this new algorithm is encouraging people to react, others may have noticed some unexpected rankings increases since March 8th.
