Is your website having trouble with the recent Penguin update? You are not alone. Other websites from white-hat seo websites to black-hat seo websites are also having the same trouble with the dreadful Penguin.
Most websites’ seo campaigns have stopped to learn about this Penguin update and to modify their seo campaigns accordingly. Other websites have already studied about Penguin and have continued with their seo campaigns to improve search engine rankings.
This guide will show you how you can conquer Penguin and increase your search engine rankings at the same time.
What Is Penguin 2.0
Penguin 2.0 is an algorithm update. An algorithm update means that seo tactics that might have been working before won’t be working today. Google has modified their algorithm to prevent certain seo tactics to be able to rank websites.
This update was also released in May 22. So, if your website hasn’t dropped in their rankings and search engine traffic. You’re most probably safe but just be ready for the ripple effects that might happen sooner or later.
“About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.”-Matt Cutts
Penguin updates are dedicated to targeting spam and black hat links. Unlike its other friend, Panda targets content and website related issues.
The thing about Penguin 2.0 is that it didn’t refresh Google’s algorithm unlike the previous Penguins but it changed their algorithm which for website owners is more headache.
Here is a video of what Matt Cutts said before they released Penguin 2.0
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQmQeKU25zg]
Inside Penguin 2.0
Backlinks: With this update, Penguin is reducing the value of certain type of backlinks and making these backlinks less effective. Hence, you may see your websites dropping in the search engine rankings due to those backlinks that you have that have reduced in its link value.
Authority: Google also wants to detect authority websites and authors in their niches and try to rank those websites higher in their niche.
Advertising: One more interesting thing that I found about Penguin 2.0 is that Google is also targeting negative advertising that are violating their quality guidelines. Google has detected websites that are buying their advertisements just to transfer Page Rank from the advertisers website to theirs.
Keywords: If your website is in 1 of the more spammy-side of keywords like payday loans and adult niche then your website is under the Penguin radar. Google has been placing a lot of effort to try to “clean up” the search results for these kind of keywords.
Three Ways To Conquering Penguin
1. Use Author Rank
One of the best ways to conquer Penguin is to establish and use Author Rank. Google is using their Google+ author profiles to find content writers that are an authority in that niche and factoring this into their rankings. You can start building your Author Rank now with these 4 tactics:
- Authorship Markup
- Sharing
- Connecting
- Generate Activity
Not only is building an Author Rank a valuable seo strategy to your website, it is also a long-term seo strategy which will be favoured by Google since Google+ is owned by Google themselves.
2. Build Higher Quality Backlinks
This seo tactic has been preached over and over again but it has worked wonderfully well for a lot of websites. If you are using grey and black hat links, you are just fighting Google in their own court. It is just like trying to fight a great white shark under water.
Google will never approve the use of black hat links to rank websites, they will always try to find ways to devalue those backlinks in their algorithms.
One of the easiest way to build high quality backlinks is to ask yourself: “is this website relevant to my niche?” and “is this website selling backlinks?”.
Another thing to take precaution of is the buying of backlinks. If you buy backlinks from a backlink vendor, you stand a chance of getting your links placed on irrelevant websites together with other non-related websites. This will get your website penalized if its detected by Penguin.
3. Diversify Your Anchor Text
The Penguin algorithm has been actively looking for websites with shady backlink profiles. For example: 80% of their backlinks have the anchor text “mortgage loans”. One way you can easily diversify your anchor text is to use partial match anchor text, generic anchor text and descriptive anchor text.
Imagine if you are trying to rank for “toy cars”, your anchor text profile should look like this:
- 30% partial match anchor text-red baby toy cars, green toy cars, toy cars for sale
- 30% generic anchor text-click here, learn more about toy cars here, buy your first toy car now
- 20% descriptive anchor text-would you like to buy your first toy car today, get your first toy car at 20% discount
- 20% exact match-toy cars
Wrapping Up
Remember not to take shortcuts when doing seo for your website. It is not worth it in the end as Google will sooner or later find out about them and you will be back in square one.
If your website has been penalized by Google, it is not the end of the world. Other websites have already recovered and you can reverse the penalty too by starting out with the 3 seo tactics above.
Be patient in your seo and you will be constantly rewarded by Google with their stream of traffic.
