Google Penguin Update
“Overnight my business which supports my 5 children, 3 employees, pays for my mortgage and debts has been wiped out”
This is just one of the hundreds of comments from small online business owners who are signing a petition on Change.org to have Google kill their Penguin update.
So what is Google Penguin?
On April 24th Google released a change to their algorithm named “Penguin” with the intention of penalizing sites for over-optimization or spamming.
On Google’s Webmaster blog they write:
“The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”
What does the Google Penguin update target?
As shown in Google’s official comment they will not divulge what they are specifically targeting to classify your site as being spammy, however in comparing sites that were and were not penalized the update seems to focus on a ratio comparing natural site links to forced or unnatural links.
Glen Gabe at G-Squared noted these 5 common issues;
- Paid text links using exact match anchor text:Avoid sponsored or paid links that use exact match anchor tag keywords.These are very easy for Google to spot and your competitors will report you
- Comment spam:Another easy footprint for Google to spot!Avoid using those forced automated link building tools such as Xrumer, Scrapebox and SENuke.
- Guest posts on questionable sites: Most “private” blog networks that allow you write a guest post/article, which you would upload it, their network have all been identified by Google.
- Article marketing sites: Links from EzineArticles, ArtileBase, SubmitYourArticle and other article marketing sites have been classified as being unnatural links by Google
- Links from dangerous sites: Sites that have been flagged for malware, numerous pop-ups, link farms or other spammy issues are another indicator causing sites to lose rankings in the Google SERPs.
Is Google Penguin is Encouraging Some to do Negative SEO?
Now that Google is penalizing sites that have a high amount of un-natural links do you think it’s possible to negatively impact your competitors rankings by using those blackhat tools to against them?
YES!!
And some slimy SEO have even been bragging about it as in this case study.
How Can I Fight Back Against The Penguin Update?
Here are a number of SEO tips we recommend doing to get your site re-indexed if you have been penalized and that will Google Proof your online business.
1) Identify any security weaknesses that you may have on your website to protect against malware. If you’re using WordPress or another CMS program be sure to have the latest updates and make sure that you’re only using plugins from trusted sources.
2) Employ tools that will monitor backlinks to your site and be watchful for a negative SEO attack from a competitor.
3) Do a site audit of your website and of the top level competitors in your niche.
4) Employ LSI (latent semantic indexing) techniques into your content NOW!
5) If you’re site’s template was designed by a third party make sure that there are NO links embedded in the template that go to the developer and/or other link farms.
6) Obtain backlinks from trusted websites and directories such as Best of The Web
7) FOCUS on the user experience! Make sure that your site is easy to navigate employing good site architecture and create great content that includes video, audio and images.
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29 Responses to Google Penguin Update
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Great info! Best over all Penguin info we have seen in one place.
Thanks….
In the section where you talk about what Penguin is targeting, you listed that Penguin targets links from article directories like EzineArticles.com, etc.
I have several sites ranking from those kinds of links alone that were left completely untouched by Penguin. So, I don’t believe that links from major article directories were targeted specifically.
Nice share. Great job.
I’ve watched a video from SEOMOZ a few days ago. In that video we have to report every bad links to our site.
But after I watched your video, I got a new knowledge that Panda doesn’t count any bad links. I do not worry anymore about the competition.
I will launched a new start up next week. My small company is a web consulting. And our market is small business owner. Can you please help how to build my brand with this new Panda and Penguin ?
I do have a good copy. Really useful for the viewers. I do not optimize my on page.
But from this video I got a good information that I have to be an authority person. Good reviews from the people.
Thank you very much.
Thank you Feber for your comments. As far as your brand it should be based upon your services and reputation
The larger article sites that review articles such as Ezine did not get hit as hard as the spammier ones, but they did get hit according to my sources
In addition to using Google Analytics to see if you’ve been hit, look at your search query report in Google Webmaster tools. That shows your impressions, i.e., how many times one of your pages (for a given keyword) shows up in the SERP. What are impressions?
Impressions are the number of times pages from your site were viewed in search results, and the percentage increase/decrease in the daily average impressions compared to the previous period.
If that drops on or after 4/24/12, that may also indicate a problem. In fact, impressions should drop sooner than traffic because organic traffic is dependent upon impressions.
Great tip Christopher, thanks
Good advice here. Though I question a couple of conclusions – particularly 2 and 4 in your first numbered section. The sites that were using those tactics were doing so poorly, and in Glen Gabe’s article, for example, he mentions that the articles were thin (probably poorly written), and over-stuffed with exact anchor text leading back to the site.
To say to avoid these two techniques altogether is a bit too much – just use them properly, avoid obvious spam, and you’re safe.
Thanks for comments, Doing a proper LSI will actually reduce “keyword stuffing” and give provide you with a theme of keyword phrases that will make your articles more relevant and better written
When you wrote about article marketing, did it mean it’s completely a forbidden technique? So, I shouldn’t use article marketing at all? Or are there some safe ways to do it? Please tell me your insight Mr.Roy. Thanks before
It is not as effective as it was at one time and we have stopped using it focusing our time in building links the old fashion way, calling people on the phone that have sites we wish to obtain links from and developing good relevant copy
Hi Roy,
Thanks for great information!
Btw, I am wondering how an article marketing sites/submission was marked as un-natural link source? You said “have been classified as being unnatural links by Google” can you show me the source of these information? Or such else which indicate which reinforces that statement?
Many thanks Roy!
Deny
I wouldn’t go as far as saying that they are “unnatural links” specially on Ezine or Squido, I will say that our testing on our site(s) and clients sites these type of links don’t do as well as they once did and that there are better options out there.
You’re saying that Penguin was an “onsite filtering change” – but I’m certainly seeing different opinions on many forums. Are you sure this is correct?
I thought Penguin was a combination of both onsite AND offsite issues?
It is both onsite and offsite. If you’re going out and getting crappy links it is offsite.
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How do you explain when a website that honestly looks like hell, but has great content ranks higher than a website that has moderate content but looks 50 times more professional. In other words Site A (spent $50 to build) and Site B (spent $3000 to build), where is the fairness. I think we should all move to BING and Yahoo.
Right now Google’s SERPs suck since Penguin
You’re right, perhaps we should start optimizing for Yahoo and Bing
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This penguin article was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found something that helped
me. Thanks a lot!
Everything is very open with a precise explanation of the challenges.
It was truly informative. Your website is extremely helpful.
Many thanks for sharing!
Roy, I congrats you to describe Penguin Update. We can track by analyzing tracking downfall comparing from April 24, if our traffic down drastically and keywords ranking also down then surely our site penalized by Penguin.
For recovery, you should remove UN-natural back-link from your site and regular check your content duplicacy and in your content “Google instant recommendations” should be covered.
i think we should post our article in ezinearticles, there is no exact proof that this article site harm SEO.
I don’t agree in snitching yourself off to Google from the start as there are many other factors you need to take into account. What we found best in working with clients is that we “dilute” the toxic links first while also addressing on page factors.
When it comes to writing great information you unquestionably know your stuff,
congrats!