Was i hit by google fred?

[Encrypted]

Hey Guys ! ,

In August 2016 , i started an Azon Affiliate site in the outdoor niche. The site's main keyword has 5.4k monthly searches with fairly OK competition.

After about 4 months of Grinding , i managed to get the main keyword to first page and averaged around 100 visitors /day as at December 2016 , but i faced a big problem ; I WAS GETTING TRAFFIC BUT VERY LITTLE SALES.

And because i had little time , i just abandoned the project without investigating why my site wasn't converting.

Fast forward to early March 2016 , i improved the content on the main article and other supporting articles , hoping that will solve the problem.

About 4 days later , Google FRED update rolled out and the site lost some rankings. Main keyword dropped from position 8 to position 13 , while one supporting article got a huge drop from position 16 to position 108. Other keywords also had slight drops.

[broken image]

Because everything happened so fast , i couldn't understand why i lost rankings. Could it be change in content or i got hit by Google fred ?

Again , i abandoned the project to focus on other sites.

But Now , I willing to commit time and resources to this project but i need to first know if this site got hit or not.

Again , i'm thinking of moving the main content from the homepage to an inner page in order to make it look like a "Proper website" , but i don't know if doing this will lead to a further loss in rankings as most of the link were built to the homepage.

What are your thoughts?

 

[ryandiscord]

Fred rolled out 3/8/17. Do you see a drop in Google traffic that lines up with that time frame? There's already a Google Fred thread going so make sure to give that a look.

 

[Ryuzaki]

5 spots sounds normal when it comes to an algorithm update. Others might have gained, you lost, etc. It's a zero sum game. But nothing about what you said, minus being able to see the image you posted (it's too big to be shown, you can make it smaller or run it through an image optimizer like Kraken or TinyPng) says penalty to me. Seems like normal update movement. They recalculate links, on-page, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary to me.

 

[Encrypted]

Fred rolled out 3/8/17. Do you see a drop in Google traffic that lines up with that time frame? There's already a Google Fred thread going so make sure to give that a look.

I've just check the content revision history. I made changes on the 4th of March and noticed drop in rankings on the 9th of March.

I'd have a look at the thread. Thanks.

5 spots sounds normal when it comes to an algorithm update. Others might have gained, you lost, etc. It's a zero sum game. But nothing about what you said, minus being able to see the image you posted (it's too big to be shown, you can make it smaller or run it through an image optimizer like Kraken or TinyPng) says penalty to me. Seems like normal update movement. They recalculate links, on-page, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary to me.

Was able to run it through TinyPng But still wasn't able to upload. I don't know why.

Anyways , its here :

https://ibb.co/jtkgbQ

Earnings screenshot :

https://ibb.co/eAMhi5

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Yes , i know its normal to get drops once in a while but i'm worried about that big drop my supporting keyword had. Looks more like a penalty than regular fluctuations.

By the way , What's your take on changing the homepage's layout and moving the main content from homepage to inner pages. Does it make sense and will it result to a further loss in rankings?

 

[Tove]

It's impossible to tell without looking at a site and doing proper analysis, but my guess would be when you changed content you over-optimized it and that triggered the algorithm

 

[Ryuzaki]

What's your take on changing the homepage's layout and moving the main content from homepage to inner pages. Does it make sense and will it result to a further loss in rankings?

It depends on what you're trying to rank the homepage for and any Page Rank Sculpting you've tried to do with interlinking. You'll end up scrambling the content and creating a wider spread for the link juice to run through. I don't recommend ranking homepages these days, Google tends to resist it and only want to rank them for Brand terms. It can still be done with EMD's though.

How old is this site? Has it ever been through a major SERP update before? I find that that tends to be the window for sneaking up in the rankings before they do some mass offline calculation again.

I still say this all is normal. Finding a cause in this time frame is going to be impossible with all of the variables thrown at it all at once.

Another question, regarding Fred, would be... if you had to guesstimate a ratio of salesy pages like "Best ____" and "____ Reviews" versus regular informational content, how high would it be? Also, were you attempting to rank for non-commercial keywords with commercial content? Content and keywords are both assigned an intent "status" or tag, and if they don't match, good luck keeping the page ranking after that tag is assigned.

Hard to say, but it's most definitely not a lost cause by any means. Recouping after each update is what makes you stronger and stronger and ultimately unshakeable.

 

[ryandiscord]

On page SEO is STRONG

How are you determining that? Did you recover from your suspected hit by Fred?

 

[Encrypted]

How are you determining that? Did you recover from your suspected hit by Fred?

Because i know I'm good at on page SEO.

It wasn't a hit by Google Fred. I did research and found out some backlinks were removed (Scholarship links) + The huge drop in rankings was as a result of a complete change in content.