seo

With Google Penguin, Google hopes to get a handle on violators of its Webmaster Guidelines. The aim is to decrease search engine rankings of individual websites that abuse regulations by duplicating content, using keyword stuffing, or participating in link schemes and cloaking that have the potential to enhance rankings. These methods are referred to as “black-hat” SEO techniques. Many small to medium sized businesses have been dramatically affected by the update. The first update went live this year on April 24th. The following month, Google updated the algorithm with Penguin 1.1. The latest version would allegedly affect less than one-tenth of a percent of English web searches.

Google Penguin fights Keyword Stuffing Content

Over-optimization of SEO articles is a common practice. The sole purpose of these articles is to hit high in search engines and it’s not unusual to use any method such as keyword stuffing in order to succeed. Google wants to “level the playing field” and its main focus with the Penguin update is on web spam that is frequently generated through over wrought, SEO content and material that can flood the typical search.

The one type of material that can look to be hurt by Penguin is content produced by non-English writers which can be extremely low quality, over optimized, difficult to read and filled with duplicated keywords, synonym free content.

Google Penguin Links: Natural and Unnatural

Links are vital; they help us find what we need. On the opposite end, it helps businesses lead us where they want you to go. Without links, the Internet is no more than a stack of papers without any method for streamlining and accessing information. Google wants to guide you to the logical next step in the search for information. Penguin will technically look for building links that are based on satisfying results, not manipulation. Manipulation is essentially building links to take you where someone else wants you to go, which can often have no relevance to your initial search.

Avoid Low Quality Links

Natural links was the original idea behind Google. Through links, a subject was deemed worth ranking, allowing the user to link to it naturally. Yet, in a bid to outrank everything else, ways were to found to fill material with not just natural links, but an increasing number of spammy, or unnatural, links.

Avoid Paid Link

Google Penguin isn’t necessarily used to block anything. It wants to wean out unnatural links like paid links using keywords as anchor text; comment spam; guests posts used solely to get a link back to one’s own site; and, lastly, links flagged for malware, spam issues and sites that focus on porn or drugs.

Poor Quality

At the end of the day, Google Penguin will have a prominent effect on exact-match domain usage, or rather, overuse; both inbound and outbound use of keyword stuffing; extremely aggressive exact-match anchor text links and, of course, duplicate content, poor quality SEO material and blog spamming.

What Now?

Google Penguin is increasing the value of strong links and pruning the weak and unwanted to produce top notch and better analysed content to give the user better SERPs. This is a good thing and actually won’t disturb the traffic of anyone that’s providing legitimate SEO material in the first place.

Warranted Concern

Not surprisingly, a number of businesses are unhappy. Content writers are concerned as well, but there is no need to panic. Placing effectiveness and quality above links and cheap production is more crucial than ever and will probably need to be with each subsequent release that strengthens a search engine’s ability to differentiate material.

There are still plenty of active tools to be found that can be used for the benefit of correct and original optimized material. They provide Internet marketing solutions with dedicated staff promoting quality content. Seek them out and Google’s Penguin will not affect your production in the least.

Google Penguin Expanding On Panda

If you like you me you are doing a lot of search engine optimization of your sites in order to attract free traffic to your site.  Last year when Google Panda was rolled out I really wasn’t affected all that much because I didn’t depend on article marketing or some other spammy method to get back links as a primary method.  But when Google Penguin came out my site was hit pretty good and the overall traffic for my site dropped pretty quickly.  In addition, Google launched an update to Google Panda and that hit me again.

To tell you the truth though I am not all that worried about it because I know that I am doing right when it comes to my SEO techniques.  I concentrate very heavily on making sure that my on page SEO is fully optimized but not over-optimized.  And 90% of my backlinks are either social media or natural backlinks with only a few “low quality” backlinks thrown in for diversity.

The key to surviving the Google Penguin and Panda 3.0 (I just gave it that name) is to ensure that your always doing the right thing when it comes to getting quality links to your site.  As well as ensuring that your not spreading around bad quality content on the net and pointing it at your website.  With a little patience your sites ranking will return and more than likely stronger than they were in the first place.

What The Heck Is Google Penguin?

If you read the SEO blogs like I do you already know, but just in case, Chris Crum from Webpronews.com put together this information.

In case you haven’t heard the news, the official name for the Webspam update Google launched this week, is reportedly the Google Penguin update. Google’s Matt Cutts even tweeted a picture of a stuffed Panda hanging out with a stuffed Penguin. How cute.

Now, we don’t know exactly what all Google takes into account with the Google Penguin update. But Google made it pretty clear that it’s about targeting those violating its quality guidelines. Here’s an exact quote from the announcement:

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.

There wasn’t this much apparent clarity with the Panda update. There was (and frankly, still is) a lot of speculation about how to survive Panda. Google did release a list of questions that webmasters should ask themselves related to how Google assesses quality, but it wasn’t completely black and white.

Luckily, Google lists exactly what the quality guidelines are. In other words, Google tells you exactly what not to do.

There are 8 “specific guidelines”. They are (verbatim):

1. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

2. Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

3. Don’t send automated queries to Google.

4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

5. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

6. Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.

7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Some of them are more black and white than others. For example, avoiding hidden text or hidden links seems like a pretty obvious thing. Just don’t do it. The duplicate content one is a little different. What does Google consider “substantially duplicate content”? How much is too much?

Beyond the specific guidelines, Google also lists 4 “basic principles”. These are:

1. Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”

2. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

3. Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

4. Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Google provides plenty more guidelines and elaboration on the quality guidelines in its help center.

Of course, none of this is new. It’s just that now Google has a better way to enforce them (or at least, it hopes it does).

The fact is clear though that several sites where hit, like mine, that were unjustly hit by the update and if you think you were wronged you can go to this Google Panda complaint form and request that the Google Penguin team check it out.