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Google announced an update to its algorithm this month that can affect fashion and style bloggers, particularly if you use a lot of affiliate links. Here’s what Fred, as the search engine optimization (SEO) community has dubbed the update, means for you — and how you can use the new rules to your advantage. 

The premise of this update is simple: Google want content to benefit readers more than it benefits the author or even Google itself. Fred is meant to assess whether your content is there to drive people to your affiliate links — or to educate readers about a particular topic. 

The update is great news for bloggers who have invested time and effort into creating quality blog posts with good imagery and a thoughtful story to accompany sponsored content. These posts — even if peppered with affiliate links — will not be affected by Fred. Weeding out low-quality content for your keywords also means less competition and clutter. 

Here are three factors to consider as you create new content to ensure you see the greatest benefits from Fred: 

1. Quality of your incoming links: Although generating incoming links (called “backlinks” in the SEO community) has always been important, Google is now focusing far more heavily on the quality of those links. Relevancy is important. This means ditching directories if you use them, and focus more on opportunities like contributing to fashion, beauty or lifestyle websites with strong traffic. 

1. Diversity of your anchor text: Anchor text is just the hyperlinked text you see that takes you do a different site. For example: Shopping Links. Using relevant keywords has always been important, but now it’s also important to use a variety of text, including your blogger name, fashion keywords, and even your URL itself (what the SEO community calls a naked URL). 

1. Overall quality of your posts: Everything from your the article length to the amount and types of multimedia you use can affect your ranking. What Google really looks for, however, is relevancy and usefulness to readers. Rather than targeting a specific word count, like the magic 300 words, concentrate instead on the value you’re adding to readers through personal stories and practical advice. Speak like a real person, and Google will reward you.  

The most important factor to remember as you optimize your content is authenticity. Much has been made of the fact that Fred can hurt bloggers who use affiliate links, but this only holds true for those who view blog posts purely as a vehicle to deliver advertisements. Focus on your passion, speak directly to your readers, and affiliate links will not affect your traffic. 

We have made some updates to your Shopping Links profile to make checking the strength of your Google rank much easier. You can log in to see your Moz score, which measures the quality of incoming links to your site and is a good indicator of your SEO. You want to strive for a score of 25 or higher.  

If you have more questions or want to contribute to our Shopping Links blog, get in touch at hello@shoppinglinks.com!