Dofollow Digest #2: Google's March Update Analyzed

Greetings, compadres -

Eric Carrell here with dofollow.com. This is issue #2 of our newsletter series on SEO for marketing leaders.

A LOT has been happening in the world of Google in March. In this issue, I’m going to do a deep dive into the March Google Update, what was it focused on, what it means for the industry, and who the winners and losers are after the roll-out.

I’m also going to talk about how the new update could impact link building, and why we need to be more vigilant than ever about spammy link building tactics.

Feedback: what sorts of topics would you like to see covered in these newsletters?

Let’s get into it.

What's in the newsletter

• 🔬The March Google Update Analyzed

• 📰 Industry News & Google Updates

🔬The March Google Update Analyzed

In March, Google rolled out a huge update targeting spammy SEO tactics. Among the different focuses of the update, Google targeted: AI content, site reputation abuse (parasite SEO), and expired domain abuse (RIP expired domain sellers).

Let’s dive into each area of the update:

AI Content: Google officially called this “scaled content,” but the focus was on AI-driven content. I’ve said from the beginning that AI content is on borrowed time, and it seems that Google finally prioritized demoting content built with AI.

This is part of an ongoing “helpful content” initiative that prioritizes ranking the best and most helpful content around the web and devaluing content built solely for ranking and monetizing.

Google calls this “scaled content abuse,” and they clarify they are targeting content built at scale to rank and not creating helpful content. They also clarify that it could be content created by automation, humans or a combination. However, we’ve seen an absolute tidal wave of content created with AI over the past year.

I believe the best way to either recover from getting penalized from this update OR protect your business in the future is to strip your site of AI content and focus on building helpful, human-centric content written by an actual human.

Also, sorry to say, this update seemed to absolutely kill the old-school affiliate model. I don’t believe that smaller affiliate sites will have a big future in SEO. That being said, I have seen plenty of affiliate sites who build really good content weather this update mostly or completely unscathed (I’ve even seen a few gain traffic after their competitors lost rankings).

Site Reputation Abuse: This practice is known as “parasite SEO.” Basically, this is when a company without good reputation or high authority writes content for a website with a great reputation and a lot of authority to piggyback off of that authority so it can rank that article and drive traffic to their business.

The main issue with this, and the reason Google is taking efforts to fight it, is because the parasite content is usually created with vastly different quality standards than the content the host website creates, which can be misleading to visitors.

Google is giving website owners until May 5th, 2024 to make adjustments to content on their website that may have been written by their party companies and are low quality.

Expired Domain Abuse: Building websites on expired domains has long been a spammy SEO tactic. The idea behind expired domains is you buy an expired domain that was once a respected website with strong backlinks and trust, you can repurpose the domain to build SEO content and rank easier and faster than if you were starting a website from scratch.

This worked quite well for a lot of people I know, however, this will not likely last. Google is now devaluing people who do this practice. There are a ton of expired domain sellers out there, but I imagine that market is about to crash quickly.

Recap: What does all of this mean for SEO and link building? This means that the days of trying to “game” Google are over. Black hat SEO’s had a good run. AI content, expired domains, parasite SEO, building crappy links worked for a long time.

Google is getting smarter, however, and what worked before will not work in the future. We need to create real content that is truly built to help answer the user's questions, without cutting corners. We need to have the patience to build up our website’s trust and authority over time. We need to build that trust with great content and high-quality links.

Impact on link building: out of this update, two main impacts on link building come to mind…

First, it might get much, much harder to land guest posts on trusted websites as they become aware of their site being in jeopardy by hosting lower-quality content. They might either raise their quality standards, or they might flat-out decline hosting content created by third parties.

Second, many link sellers buy expired domains with a lot of backlinks and a high Domain Rating, throw a bunch of crappy content on top of it, and then start selling guest posts. At dofollow.com, we’ve always been against this practice, these types of websites would never meet our quality standards. However, now that Google is actively targeting these types of sites, it will be even riskier.

To get an assessment of your backlink profile to see if any potentially risky backlinks may have been built by others, you can reach out to us for a free backlink assessment at the bottom of this email.

📰 Industry News & Google Updates

• Here are two more sources regarding the March Update; one from Google and one from Search Engine Journal.

• Google testing SGE interface to users in the US for some search queries. I know, I know, in the last issue I said that SGE is unlikely to roll launch to all Google searchers. However, it looks like Google is testing SGE to a wider audience. I imagine this is to get behavioral feedback from searchers who might not be familiar with the SEO world or who aren’t early adopters. I still maintain that this likely wont cut into keyword searches where there is a lot of potential for ad revenue, but for now, we wait.

• The role of SEO in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). How to do your due diligence.

Interested in getting a free link building assessment? We’ll do a deep dive into your backlink profile to find any toxic links, areas of improvement, quick wins, etc. Get in touch below :)