As you may know, from time to time Google decides to roll out updates to its search engine algorithm and whenever it does webmasters immediately begin to get nervous. The latest of these updates has been causing a lot of waves ever since it went live, and it is known as the EMD update.
“What Does the EMD Update Really Do?”
Before you can decide whether or not any panic is warranted, it would be a good idea to know what the EMD update actually consists of.
The truth is that ‘EMD’ stands for ‘Exact Match Domains’, which basically means any and all domains that match keyword phrases exactly. In the past these domains were commonly used by marketers because they provide instantaneous SEO value – and it is those domains that the EMD has in its sights.
That being said, contrary to popular belief the EMD update isn’t going to eliminate the value of such domains completely. Instead, it is structured to find domains with exact match keywords that have little or no value otherwise.
Long story short, if you own a lot of exact match domains that have tons of ads and no content – this update should have you worried. If not, it shouldn’t affect you.
Misattributed Effects of the EMD Update
Needless to say, the EMD update doesn’t really sound all that scary – and it isn’t. As Google have noted, it should only affect about 0.6% of the English-US searches.
The reason why you may have heard so many horror stories about the EMD however is that around the same time the EMD went live, another Panda update was released as well. Basically that means that some websites that have seen their rankings drop recently may not have been affected by the EMD at all, but by an entirely different Google update.
Chances are if you have been having issues ranking on websites without exact match domains then it is the Panda update that has hit you this time round.
Simple Solution: Create Value
The good news in this entire series of events is that it is possible to either avoid being hit by the EMD update or re-acquire search engine rankings after being hit by it. At the end of the day this update (and Panda too for that matter) is intended to deal mainly with websites that do not provide any value to their visitors.
That makes the solution easy: Make sure your websites have enough value on them in the form of original and high quality content.
The EMD update may be live but it is one of those updates that will deal with websites a few at a time. That means that even though your website may have escaped this time round, there is no guarantee that one or two months down the line it will still be safe.
Based on all of this it should be easy enough to see that there’s no real reason to panic about Google’s EMD update – and if you feel you are at risk of being affected by it, there are measures you can take to avoid any impact to your search engine rankings.
