Following the 24th of April 2012, tremors of shock erupted in the internet marketing community, as Google’s latest Penguin Update was set into motion.
With many of the websites and blogs still recovering from the Panda Update, the latest change installed by the search engine giant resulted in many websites getting de-indexed and consequently losing their organic search engine traffic.
Google has always been open about the fact that their top priority is to enhance a user’s browsing experience.
The Penguin update was directed specifically at those sites deliberately employing black hat SEO techniques to manipulate search engine rankings.
Some of the most heavily penalized black hat techniques include keyword stuffing and anchor text exploitation.
In the aftermath of this update 3.1% of search queries were affected by this update but the surprising part is where sites using strictly white hat SEO techniques were de-indexed from Google rankings.
This was the flaw in the update for which the Google technical team has apologized and has set up a feedback form where site owners can make a claim to be indexed in Google search results once again.
Despite the setback, the search engine technicians are back to the drawing board to improve the Penguin Update; to make the modifications required to weed out sites of low quality.
Following this chain of events, webmasters and internet marketers are scrambling to make the necessary changes to their existing SEO strategies; under no circumstance do they want to risk the search engine traffic that their site receives.
So here is what you should start doing and what you should avoid.
Quality Content
Make sure that you are not stuffing your site content with keywords. Make sure that your content has a natural flow and offers information to the visitor.
Post content regularly but not daily. It might look unnatural to the algorithm and this may have adverse effects on your SERPs.
Many SEO experts are advising the increased use of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). However, LSI keywords are still keywords and should not be used to an overwhelming extent.
Remember that keywords are only useful to the search engine robot and not the reader!
Back linking
A lot of people have carefully devised back linking campaigns but in light of the Penguin Update, you have to place more emphasis on making sure that the back links to your site do not appear unnatural.
Avoid linking from sites related to porn, gambling, torrents etc. Interacting in the blogs and forums, related to your niche is much more instrumental for generating organic back links.
Video Marketing
In some of the cases, it is rumored that Google engineers personally inspect the quality of your site. If there is anything that makes a lasting impression, then it is an informative video.
Whether you are a business owner or an affiliate marketer, you can always create videos and podcasts to inform people about your product.
You can market your videos on platforms like Youtube, feature them on your site and rely on social media to generate traffic.
Social Media
Instead of buying Facebook likes or twitter followers, make an effort to actually advertise on those social networking platforms.
They can be integral to a business’s social networking success and definitely have more long-term benefits as opposed to placing a solo ad on someone else’s mailing list. Maintain a healthy online reputation and a loyal client base.
Before making any sort of changes to your SEO campaign, do a simple acid test and ask yourself if doing this will be of any use to your user?
As long as you can keep your readers happy, Google will hold your site in high regard and thus you will be safe of any future updates made to the search engine algorithm.
If you use different SEO techniques, please feel free to comment!
About the Author
Syed Shadab Mahbub is a freelance writer at RnGWriter.com and his aim is to provide marketers and webmasters with professionals and cost-effective content solutions. Gravatar mail: sshadabmahbub@gmail.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/RnGWritercom Twitter: changing_shadab
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Hi Syed, you mention 2 important factors in “SEO” after Penguin” – social marketing and video marketing. Do you know any tips or tutorials, how to properly start video marketing?
BR, Chris
Chris recently posted..5 Best SEO Tools for Bloggers – They Will Help You Get More Traffic For Your Blog
Hi Chris,
if I can give you a suggestion,
Ileane from BasicBlogTips.com is very experienced in video marketing,
and Youtube optimization.
I suggest you to check her channel :
http://www.youtube.com/MsIleaneSpeaks
A lot of stuff to learn!
Hi Chris,
When you think about it, video marketing is a lot like article marketing. You create a video and hope that it receives a lot of exposure. There are a lot of ways you can market your videos. Your preferred depends on your budget and your video content.
The Penguin Update?! Google is moving too fast. I’m still trying to understand what the Venice Update implies. Great article, btw
Jennifer recently posted..Ways To Build A More Passionate Relationship
Hi Jennifer,
Google is moving at the rate technology is always moving; which will always be too fast for someone who has a hard getting the hang of it.
Not judging you !
Google Penguin update is actually one of the major problems of bloggers and site owners today.. Anyway, I am hope this is a help..
Hi Annie,
Thanks for sharing.
Google Penguin is basically to reduce spam on the internet. If you’re using original content plus getting links from relevant and high quality sites then you’re quite safe, would continue to rule the top ranking.
Hi Asma,
Thanks for rounding it up on a nutshell
I guess content is not going to be as important as it is, not about to be unique, but to be “relevant”. Link building is the king.
Good post, Erik!
Abel Pardo Fernandez recently posted..Link building with Google Penguin
Hi Abel,
Relevancy is definitely important for the search engines when it comes to relating to your anchor text but quality content is meant to communicate with your readers and to get a response in social media. Which has more importance in a search ranking algo than a couple of thousand links.
On the other hand i will not presume that content is all important. IM is coalition of different techniques and aspects isn’t it?
basically this update means the end of easy SEO… you can’t just order links from India, sit back and collect checks anymore you have to actually do things the right way. You have to work… and smart people who come up with new and better strategies for SEO firms will strive.
Chris recently posted..How Blogging is Beneficial to an SEO Campaign
HI Chris,
Definitely! If people spent more time on their work, they would not have to worry about algo changes!
Hallo there, just came thru a tweetie and even if I agree with the theory of the article, and that Penguin is effective in many ways, I must too admit that it isn’t perfect and that a lot of spammy webs are still around and ranking extremely well.
Maybe it’s that the threshold it’s still large, maybe that we haven’t seen yet the complete effects of Penguin or just a mix of that and all the other important updates which came along between Panda and Penguin.
Crossing fingers helps
Hi Pablo,
Google was just beta testing with this version of the Penguin Update. Don’t worry though…….they are tightening the net as we speak.