Google Penguin
This is Google’s newest update. You have probably all heard about Panda, which was more targeted to content and content farms, whereas Penguin is targeting websites which appear to have spammy backlink profiles. It is aiming to penalise sites that seem to be manipulating the search results. So what does this mean for SEO?
This post will give an overview of the update, what it entails and a few ways to counter it.
What is Google going after? They are targeting sites which have:
- over-optimised anchor text - using the same keyword over and over in external content as the anchor text pointing to the site.
- guest posts on unnatural looking sites - while guest posts are a legitimate way of gaining links, content hosted on irrelevant blogs or low quality sites will be penalised.
- article syndication sites - as a reinforcement to Panda, Penguin will also be looking into links from article syndication websites and low quality article directory sites, as well as links from content farms.
- overtly spammy links
The main culprits which have been identified so far from the sites which have been hit are:
- blatant paid links
- content on link farms
- link exchange
The key indicators of the update are:
- ranking losses: keywords will no longer be ranking in high positions
- de-indexation of pages: web pages will no longer appear in Google
Some businesses are suffering badly from this update, to the point of losing their business.
An example which has been quoted on many Penguin update related articles is Oh My Dog Supplies, which has been hit by this update. This site used to rank highly in the US for keywords such as ‘dog beds’ and related terms. It is no longer visible for many of these keywords on the first few pages of the Google results, and according to the Wall Street Journal this business has lost 96% of its Google traffic and 64% of its revenue which was generated by natural search.
Why were they hit? The owner of the business admits to have paid for hundreds of links in 2011 and hosted content on sites such as EzineArticles.
How can you counter this update?
The first thing to state is that there is no quick fix. It is important to monitor your backlink profile. Anybody can link to a given site, be it good or bad links. Focus on creating quality content over quantity. Ask yourself ‘is this content that is shareable?’ Make sure your site is well optimised and try and build your site’s authority.
