Since being hit hard by Google’s recent algorithm update, EzineArticles is hard at work, trying to get its rankings and traffic back up. CEO Chris Knight tells WebProNews, "Beyond what we shared in the blog/twitter, we’re going to return to not sharing specifics on our traffic or ranking."
He adds, however, "We’ve had quite a few niche categories go up in traffic but the overall is still lower than before last Thursday. I’ve heard today (Wired.com) that Google is working on getting it more ‘right’ so that great content doesn’t get caught in this filter and I’m hopeful that we’ll see better rankings for most of our members who deserve it."
You can read more about changes the company was looking at here. Since he mentioned Twitter, here’s some recent messages they’ve put out:
In today’s Blog, we dig deeper into quality and begin by focusing on 3 key areas: http://is.gd/WoRCYl
EzineArticles Team
EzineArticles
NEW: On Link Relevancy and Resource Box Content. Your link and resource box content must be consistent and relevant to your article topic.EzineArticles Team
EzineArticles
NEW/IMPROVED: Location stuffed articles that fail to deliver a positive user experience will be rejected.EzineArticles Team
EzineArticles
If English isn’t your first language, we strongly recommend that you have an native-English editor check your work before you submit.EzineArticles Team
EzineArticles
Hearing positive comments by many EzineArticles members who are happy they won’t have to compete w/ article vomit/spammy spun content.EzineArticles Team
EzineArticles
No layoffs for @EzineArticles team members. Quality exceptional article content will always rise to the top over-time.
Chris Knight
ChrisKnight
We shut down all of our public @EzineAPI services last night. Our positive intentions for its use never materialized. Perhaps another day.Chris Knight
ChrisKnight
Article spammers typically don’t include their author name at the start of their resource box. Because they are not proud of their articles!EzineArticles Team
EzineArticles
If you want credibility, don’t do what article spammers do. Duh. 🙂 Include your author name at the start of your resource box.EzineArticles Team
EzineArticles
On Facebook, Knight added:
Just announced via Twitter that we won’t be laying off any of our 75 behind-the-scenes team members due to last Thursday’s Google algo update. High quality exception articles will always rise to the top; so shall EzineArticles.com again in the near future.
22 hours ago via Facebook · 16 likes · 9 comments
He added in the comments of that post, "I’m trying to stay focused on what I’m grateful for. We still served over a million people yesterday. How awesome is that!? Yet, I’m still on high-alert to ensure we do everything we can to draw a very sharp line as to what denotes quality content vs. what should never be published. The bar has been raised, but that’s nothing new."
The talk about not laying people off is presumably in reference to the Mahalo situation we covered here. Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis told us "All we can do is put our heads down and continue to make better and better content. If we do our job I’m certain the algorithm will treat us fairly in the long-term."
"The 90+ members of our team are rallying around this challenge, and you will continue to see amazing content from experts with real credentials at Mahalo.com," he added.
Clearly, despite some of the questionable casualties of Google’s update it seems the message was sent loud and clear. You better be putting out quality content if you’re expecting to get traffic from Google.
The eHow debate will surely continue to rage on, as that site still gets plenty of Google love, but Demand Media does nothing but stress the importance it is putting on quality as well.
In time, we’ll see how Google’s search quality holds up, and how the traffic levels of some of these sites do – and how dependent on Google they remain.
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