Google’s war on lovable critters escalated on April 24th with the release of the “Penguin” update (originally dubbed the “webspam update” by Google). While every major algorithm update causes some protest, post-Penguin panic seems to be at near record levels, worsened by weeks of speculation about an “over-optimization” penalty. Webmasters and SEOs are understandably worried, and many have legitimately lost traffic and revenue. Before you go out and burn your website to the ground for fear of a penguin in the pantry, I want to offer some advice on how to handle life after an algorithm update.
1. What We Know
First, let’s review what we know. I’m going to break the rules of blogging and recommend that you stop and read this level-headed Penguin post by Danny Sullivan. It covers some of the basics and is the most speculation-free post I’ve read on the subject so far. Glenn Gabe also had a good post on potential Penguin factors. There’s still a lot of speculation, but likely culprits include:
- Aggressive exact-match anchor text
- Overuse of exact-match domains
- Low-quality article marketing & blog spam
- Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links
Many people have suggested low-quality link profiles in general, but analysis of Panda has been complicated by Google’s recent attack on link networks, which seems to have been manual and has probably been going on for weeks. The overlap has made analysis difficult, so let’s take a quick look at the timeline.
What’s the Timeline?
The official roll-out date for Penguin was April 24th, and it seems to have rolled out, for the most part, in a single day. Unfortunately, it came on the heels of other events. On April 19th, Panda 3.5 rolled out (most likely a data update). On April 16th, a data glitch caused a number of sites to be mistakenly tagged as parked domains. Throughout April (and weeks before Penguin), Google started sending out a large number of unnatural link notices via Google Webmaster Tools. Sadly, it seems that April really was the cruelest month.
How Bad Was It?
Google officially claimed that Penguin impacted about 3.1% of English queries, compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%. Since rankings change daily – even hourly – even with no updates, these numbers are nearly impossible to confirm, but it does appear that the impact of Penguin was immediate and substantial. This is an internal SEOmoz graph of Top 10 ranking changes around April 24th (please note that the Y-axis is scaled to accentuate changes):
Pardon the slightly cryptic nature of this graph – it’s for an upcoming project – but the core point is that the impact of Penguin dwarfed either Panda 3.5 or Google’s 4/16 glitch.
Is It Going Away?
In a word: no. Penguin wasn’t accidental, and Google is clearly serious about combatting spam tactics that have been lingering for too long. As you can see from the graph, it doesn’t appear that there were any major reversals in the few days since Penguin rolled out. Does that mean Google won’t make ANY adjustments? Of course not – it’s entirely likely that they’ll continue to tweak Penguin.
For comparison’s sake, remember that Panda 3.5 came 14 months after the initial launch of Panda 1.0. We’ve come a long way since the monthly “Google Dances” of 2003. Keep in mind, though, that Panda was somewhat unique – we believe that it feeds multiple variables into a single ranking factor that gets updated outside of the real-time index. There’s currently no compelling evidence to suggest that Penguin works in the same way. The Penguin update appears to be integrated directly into the main algorithm, like a more traditional Google update.
Update (May 11, 2012): Google seems to have confirmed that Penguin is operating similarly to Panda, with data updates occuring outside of the main index. It appears that my initial assumptions on that were incorrect. Danny Sullivan has a good follow-up piece on Penguin today, with some direct feedback from Google. It's not good news, for the most part, but it's a very useful read.
2. What to Do
Given the overlapping timelines, this advice applies to any Google update, and not just Penguin. The algorithm is changing constantly (Google reported 516 changes in 2010, and that rate seems to be accelerating), and I want to give you the tools to survive not just Penguin, but Zebra, Skunk, Orca, and any other black-and-white animals Google can ruin…
DO Take a Deep Breath
I’m not trying to be condescending or to minimize any losses you may have suffered. Over 17 years of working with clients, I’ve learned that panic almost never makes things better. No matter how hard Penguin hit you, you need to stop, take a breath, and assess the damage. Dig into your analytics and find out exactly where you sustained losses. Segment your data (by channel, engine, keyword, and page) as much as possible. It’s not enough to know that you lost traffic – you need to be an expert on exactly which traffic you lost.
DO Check the Timeline
Even though the overlapping timelines make analyzing the core Penguin factors difficult, the actual timeline when Penguin rolled out is clear. If you saw major traffic losses between Tuesday, April 24th and Wednesday, April 25th, odds are good that Penguin is at least part of the problem.
DO Double-check IT Issues
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been involved in a Q&A or consulting situation where a website owner was 100% sure they had been hit by an algorithm update, only to have their 17th message to me go something like this:
Oh, by the way, our site was down for 3 days a couple of weeks ago, right before our rankings dropped. I’m sure this wasn’t the problem, but I just thought I’d let you know.
Um, erp, what?! I’ve died a little inside so many times from messages like this that I’m not sure that I’m technically still human. Especially if your losses weren’t sudden or don’t match the algorithm timeline precisely, make absolutely sure that nothing happened to your site or changed that could impact Google’s crawlers. One of the worst things you can do in SEO is to spend a small fortune solving the wrong problem.
DO Quickly Audit Your SEO
Likewise, make sure that you know exactly what SEO efforts are underway, not just within your own team but across any 3rd-party contractors. I’ve had clients swear up and down that everything they did was completely white-hat only to find out weeks later that they hired an outside link-building firm and let them loose with no accountability. Make absolutely sure you know what every agent under your control did in the weeks leading up to the algorithm update.
3. What Not to Do
Panic leads to drastic action, and while I don’t think you should sit on your hands, bad choices made under uninformed hysteria can make a bad situation much, much worse. I’m not speaking hypothetically – I’ve seen businesses destroyed by overreacting to an algorithm change. Here are a few words of advice, once you’ve taken that deep breath (don’t forget to start breathing again)…
DON’T Take a Hatchet to Your Links
It’s unclear how Penguin may have penalized links, or if recent reports of link-related issues are tied to other April changes, but regardless of the cause, the worst thing you can do is to start simply hacking at your back-links. Even low-quality back-links can, in theory, help you, and if you start cutting links that aren’t causing you problems, you could see your rankings drop even farther.
I highly recommend this recent interview with Jim Boykin, because Jim has freely admitted to dabbling in the gray arts and he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to risky link-building. Tackling your problem links is incredibly tough, but start with the worst culprits:
- Known, obvious paid links
- Links in networks Google has recently delisted
- Footer links with exact-match anchor text
- Other site-wide links with exact-match anchors
Whenever possible, deal with low-authority links first. If a link is passing very little authority AND it’s suspicious, it’s a no-brainer. Cutting links is tough (see my tips on removing bad links) – if you don’t have control over a link, you may have to let it go and focus on positive link-building going forward.
DON’T “De-optimize” Without a Plan
One complaint I hear a lot in Q&A is that the “wrong” page is ranking for a term. So, to get the “right” page to rank, the well-meaning SEO starts de-optimizing the page that’s currently ranking. This usually means turning a decent TITLE tag into a mess and cutting out keywords to leave behind Swiss-cheese copy. Sometimes, the “right” page starts ranking again. Other times, they lose both pages and their traffic.
“Over-optimize” is a terrible phrase, and that alone has people in a panic. There’s nothing “optimal” about jamming a keyword 87 times into 500 words of copy and linking it to the same affiliate site. “Over-gaming” would be a better word. You think you figured out the rules of the game, so you pounded on them until there was nothing but a pile of dust on the board.
If you think you’ve played the game too aggressively, step back and look at the big picture. Does your content serve a purpose? Does your anchor text match the intent of the target? Do your pages exist because they need to or only to target one more long-tail variations of a term? Don’t de-optimize your on-page SEO – re-optimize it into something better.
DON’T Submit a Reconsideration Request
While I don’t think reconsideration will doom you, Penguin is an algorithmic change, not a manual penalty, and reconsideration is not an appropriate avenue. If you think you were impacted by the recent crackdown on link networks, IF you have removed those links, and IF you aren’t engaged in other suspicious link-building, you might consider requesting reconsideration. Just make sure your house is in order first.
Google has created a form for sites unfairly hit by Penguin, but it’s unclear at this point whether that form will result in manual action, or if Google is just collecting broad quality data. If you sincerely believe that you’re an accidental victim, then feel free to fill the form out, but don’t base your entire recovery strategy on clicking [Submit].
Fix What You Can Fix
Recently, I had a long debate with a client about whether or not they had been hit by a specific algorithm update. In the end, it was a pointless debate (for both of us), because we had two clear facts: (1) organic traffic had fallen precipitously, and (2) there were clear, solvable problems with the site. From a diagnostic standpoint, it definitely helps to know whether you were hit by Penguin or another update, but after that, you have to fix what's in your power to fix. Don't spend weeks trying to prove to management that this was all Google's fault. Isolate the damage, find the problems you can fix, and get to work fixing them.
My small website was hit by Penguin April 25, lost 85% of Google search traffic. Down from 3,000 visitors to 800. I immediately removed 3 site wide links to my other websites from the header and that website recovered completely on the 27th.
Some hope for those still suffering......
Interesting - thanks for sharing that information. There were some reports of sudden recoveries, as if Google pulled back some part of the initial update, but it's really hard to separate those reports from other changes. I think it's safe to say that an 85% traffic loss is rarely a fluke - hopefully, this helps someone else.
I wonder if most of the sites that were hit either had "spammy" outbound links on their site, or had most of their inbound links from sites like this. This certainly would make more sense if Google is at all concerned about negative SEO.
If links are involved, the idea of Google checking also for "bad outbound links" on your own site is interesting. In fact, if you yourself are placing links to other sites and with exact matching in footers and sidebars, then it is probably that you have also try to obtain the same on other sites. And the old reciprocal link tactic was one of the "over optimization" issues Google talked about (if I remember well).
Yeah I agree! It sounds like google are targetting "spammy" links inbound or outbound.
I am kind of glad to see google taking on these one page sites/blogs which have no real point apart from to get links! :-) I wrote a post on Warrior Forum about pointless blogs etc and it was funny how many people tried to defend them... lol
Is this update open a door for negative SEO? Inbound links are not in our hand anyone can link to our site even a P*** site.
Not necessarily, If there's a spike in negative activity. It will be very noticeable in your Webmaster tools. You will be able to report it and Google will help defend your site. IMO Google does not want to create public panic or better yet highlight the fact that negative SEO is possible. If something like this would happen, it would get out of control and people would attack each other’s sites relentlessly. Google will have no choice! Over the years Google has been tweaking quietly. When new problems arise new solutions are found. Google’s goals seem to have always been fixing issues before it gets to the media, taking the media's feedback and improvising. Like any successful business would.
I had heard that the update would target people with a network of sites that were all inter-linking together.
I could imagine that this is what you got penalised for.
We tested placing an internal sitewide link to the sitemap.html in the footer, and our positions dropped; then we removed that link an we regained the positions. It was a month ago. So watch for your internal link placement as well.
Read that there was a Panda update 3.6 on 27th April. It might also be possible that your traffic recovery is more Panda related instead of Penguin..
Hi Donthe- your comment on removing 3 site wide links- i am confused- we use a Joomla site, and the template has a footer wtih anchor text links to other inside pages (like a site map but with keywords) on every page of our site because of the way Joomla footers work - is that the type of "site wide" linking you are describing?
I suggest everyone read this post with some great analysis on sites that were penalized and their linking behavior: Penguin Analysis: SEO Isn’t Dead, But You Need to Act Smarter .
I'd love to see Moz do an analysis like this using the huge database of keywords that are being tracked in PRO. Combine that with Mozscape (still trying to get used to saying that) and you've got tons of great data. There will probably be some sample bias involved but it would make for a great post!
Good idea.
I actually linked to that post in my bullet point on exact-match anchor text, but I ended up with so many links in this one that it got a bit buried. I found their analysis very interesting. It's tough, because anchor text is correlated with other issues, but I think they established the connection about as well as anyone reasonably could.
We're definitely looking to do more "big data" kind of work, but are trying to balance customer privacy issues and general access.
If internal linking is also being hit, then what about Google penalizing .edu sites for internal linking? One of the .edu subdomains I've been working on has an excessive amount of internal links on every page due to menu navigation design(frustrating). But the site's rankings have not dropped, and in some cases have still been improving. any thoughts?
That article was great. I went and read it. thnkies
I read it but there were no conclusions I was happy to take away from it. There were no details about the study, how many keywords and sites were used, the niches etc., and from things I've seen and read at least one or two of the takeaways were either wrong or way overgeneralised. I would like to SEOmoz do a proper study along these lines because they are always extremely well set up and explained.
I highly recommend this article. Thanks to you and Dr. Pete for reminding us to read it.
Good idea witht the micro sites.
Great article, thanks for sharing the link!
I agree. Don't jerk your knees. You might just break your legs. I find that with any colossal algorithm change, like Penguin, it's better to sit back awhile and collect data on the change from reputable sources (you mentioned Danny Sullivan, Jim Boykin, those types). Wait for some revealing Matt Cutts tweets or interview or YouTube video. Wait for a few case studies from website owners or SEO professionals. What for Rand's upcoming Whiteboard Friday about Penguin which is almost sure to happen.
I do have one site affected by Penguin (-35% traffic), but the Avengers movies is this weekend, then Diablo III on May 15th, then Batman III at the beginning of June. After I return from my comic book / gaming binge, I bet there will be lots of credible information produced over that month for me to read, analyze, and finally act upon.
"My site lost 35% of its traffic, BUT DIABLO III IS FINALLY OUT! WOOT!"
Sorry, that made me laugh :)
I don't recall exactley who said this but this quote helps me often: When the motion comes in, take it and win!!!
Just got a PS3, MGS4 and LBA2, same thing. Sorry for the offtopic guys. ;)
I will give y'all a hint.
Act with your sites as if they are big brands. What are the qualities of brands? If you get how to do it right, you will never give a damn about another Google algo change again.
I posted this in the Q&A section the day after Penguin, but now this seems like the best place for it.
I've recently been focusing on SEO for two sites in particular for the same client. We used Netfirms SEO services to get links--he insisted--which basically consists of writing articles in broken English and placing them all over blog networks with our desired anchor text.
On the other site, I simply refused to employ those services. This was the client's main site, and was way too important to mess around with. I built links myself, the legit way.
Long story short, for months I watched the shady, black hat site climb and climb in the SERPs, while the white hat one kept falling.
The morning after Penguin, I checked my SEOmoz campaigns and my white hat site went from #8 to #2 and my black hat site went from page 2 to no longer being in the top 50!
Good to hear positive stories of the Penguin update having the desired and correct affect. Goes to show that it's worth sticking with ethical practices and waiting it out.
Approximately the same thing happened to our website.
Blackhat is just stupid - Thanks for proving it!
That's really great. It's nice reading that someone saw something good come from it!
From my analysis I feel people who have been hit the worst by Penguin are any one who has been spamming like crazy on Article websites, so using 1000's of article sites with spun content, this is from direct analysis on various terms in my market and also the US market.
The thing is you need to know what your agency is up to, if they are not sending you link building reports and been transparent then start asking what is happening.
I agree with James! Just one more thing that I want to include is the links that are coming from the network sites…
But still it’s hard to say what exactly the problem is because I have seen few websites that have tons of links coming from article websites and stuff but they didn’t lose their rankings… not even a bit!
I like the idea of safely removing low quality links from the system by Dr. Pete… remove the obvious SPAM links and then move to links that might look spammy and passing low value to the system and start removing them!...
So you're saying negative SEO exists then?
For me it certainly does! Ive seen enough evidence to believe it.
I really dont hope that spammers dont jump on this and create a business based on this, that would really hurt the online community!
I'd check out Rand's WBF on negative SEO. Lots of discussion in those comments too.
I spoke to a guy earlier this week who has just got a new SEO to carry out work for him and has been told by the SEO that he won't receive a link building report because it's the SEOs intellectual property!! Raises alarms bells straight away. Not sure how people can keep getting away with this.
Wow! Tell that guy to cut and run right now. Call me old fashioned, but I like to show clients the work that we've done for them...after all it is our job.
It was actually worse than that - I was at a business networking event and I was talking to this guy, when told me (without asking what I did) he'd got a new SEO. This SEO only builds websites in his own software, apparently because he's developed the most sophisticated CMS out there for SEO - no you're right I've never heard of it - so not only will he not give him the details of the links he's building he's also tying the guy into using his software which I guarantee no one else will be allowed to work on! Scray stuff is still going on in the name of SEO.
What's with the relation between homepage/front-page und deeplinks? I think this could also be a part of the little pinguin.
We see no evidence for that. We have not done a scientific research. But we see our own portfolio, those of our consulting customers and have checked many competitors with OSE.
Even though I've had rankings drop on some of my sites, I'm seeing this more as a great opportunity.
If you can analyse the things that work, the things that don't, and focus on what you know works, then this could be the chance that you need to climb ranks quickly, and get number 1's where you couldn't previously. It could be something that really opens it up again.
Its been a good chance to analyse all sites thoroughly, and start thinking, "hmmm, i really didn't pay enough attention when I put this site together" etc. Time to move forward, fix what we can, and take big steps forward.
Let's hope I'm still positive in a month or two. :)
Keyword density 2.5 %, mixed anchortext, internal and external ( as we were told to do 2 years ago , so I did it ) , broad linkprofile, no networks, lots of comments and social shares, not a single article, no nothing = destroyed by Google. Spamblogs = better rankings
Im not saying this to whine, just to be heard as of many many thousand site great websites that have now been destroyed. I can`t fix what is not broken. Sorry. Took my 2 years to build, it was my life and my income and you can all see which sites have been promoted to higher rankings . EMD`s , sites with no content at all, MFA sites and so on. I have never studied blackhat, but now is time, more than ever
Ouch.
Although I have to say, there is often more than meets the eye with a lot of website's link profile. It only takes a couple of backlinks from other sites part of a bigger ring for this to pass bad association to your website and if the positives aren't outweighing the negative signals then it's likely you'll be sucked into the algorithm update hits.
I'm looking forward to the day Google devalue EMD's in their entirety though. It will be this year I reckon, this will fix many page one results for thousands of queries alone.
The only " bad " thing I can say, is that the site is not that old and it is not that strong. It hasn`t been " seo`ed " that heavily. So yes what you say might be true = weak site catching a few bad links , and you are gone. Pretty heavy stuff, and a wide open door for blackhatters.
I`ve been working with seo for more than 4 years and has never been hit, because I play by the rules. I`m in utter chock, and I`ve never seen so many good clean sites being hit. Actually I haven`t seen any bad sites being hit, lots of EMD`s, MFA`s, high keyword density sites ( 15-20 % ) being rewarded. What`s wrong ?
I've seen a relatively large shift in first page rankings across a number of industries but haven't seen any hands on evidence of low quality garbage ranking well (although am hearing plenty of other people noticing this).
With regards to your own situation, I would perhaps start first by analyising https://www.linkdatabase.dk/ and how this domain has been affected since the Panda/Penguin updates - it accounts for almost 73% of your website's backlinks, almost all with the same anchor text I believe. The website screams low quality and the content is close to article directory blog/link network type junk that the Penguin update went after. If the backlinks are followed too, this is exactly the kind of scenario's that Google will be checking for when identifying website's to hit.
Yes that sitewide-link from Linkdatabase.dk is out my control. But I will e-mail the guy ( og girl ) and ask for a remowal. If that is all it takes, boy is there gonna be trouble with negative-seo.
I have asked one my collegeaues ( writer of 2 bestselling SEO Books here in Scandinavia ), he said that the links from linkdatabase.dk with 99 % percent certainty couldn`t be the problem. Im still looking for the problem.
Thank you for digging in to it :)
Of course, it could be any number of factors that caused the drop, or maybe a combination of multiple factors.
No problem though :) Best of luck getting the issue fixed.
I don't want to minimize the impact on anyone - I've seen people lose their livelihoods due to algorithm updates, and I sincerely sympathize with that. I do think, though, that it can be very dangerous to take any Google change too personally and to decide to shift gears entirely. Effective black-hat (whether or not I believe in it, some people do it well) is very difficult, and if you try to go that route over night, you're likely to do it badly and cause even more problems. I've seen that too often, too.
I am actually seeing EMDs hit and devalued (since many of them abuse anchor text), but here's the problem. Especially in industries full of spam, if you knock out a couple of questionable sites, the sites behind them (that get bumped up) are often just as bad, or even worse. So, sometimes, even if Google takes out a bad site, they end up with a worse set of search results.
From your follow-up comment, I do have to say that new sites with weak link profiles are especially vulnerable. If you can turn around some solid link-building (authoritatitive stuff, not blog comments and other low-hanging fruit), you could see a big impact even from just a few trusted links. I know it's easy (and understandable) to take these things personally, but do yourself a favor and dig in deep. View your site as an outsider would and make sure you're not missing something.
I will never do blackhat, I just got angry. Im 40 years old and has never got a speeding ticket. Being criminal is not my game.
I will do the rest of what you have said Pete, thank you. And thank you for your great post about strategy in seo. In that field I consider you one to follow.
Visibile if you want to send me the domain, I'd be interested in taking a look. Maybe a spare set of eyes will find something.
https://visibile.dk
Thank you :)
Dr. Pete,
Here is a fairly simple data point for you to use in your analysis.
About three years ago I experimented with a couple of mini-sites. I created a 2 page .com exact match domain name site with fairly robust informational content for a minor term in my industry. The text is keyword-aware but no keyword stuffing.
The only link building I did was an exact keyword (domain name) site-wide link in my main site footer (about 90 pages) and a link from my private site. The only out-links were several in-content links plus resource links at the bottom of the main page (about 20 links in all). All links were to my main site. All links were related topically and the anchor text was keyword-aware (not stuffed) page headings/titles.
I then left the site to cure, to see what would happen. I never really got around to doing anything with the site. The site settled in at a bit under 2,000 visitors a month from google organic. Almost half of the visitors were clicking thru to my main site. It was ranking on page one (mostly at the top of the page) for about 20 terms. The terms varied from exact match to related terms.
On Penguin day about 70% of the traffic disappeared. The exact match and near match terms dropped from the top of page one to the bottom of page one. The other terms disappeared.
My main site improved slightly.
Thanks - I think we have to be careful with anecdotes, but that's certainly an interesting example. I saw exact-match domains (EMDs) being hit in some cases, but it seemed to be mixed with other factors, like what you describe. For example, if you have an EMD AND too much exact-match anchor text AND a low-quality or just weak link profile, your Penguin risk is much, much higher (IMO).
In Germany we belive that 90% of the penalties are about anchor link text.
How do you NOT stuff keywords in German? All of your words are just 10 other words smashed together ;) I'm 1/8 German, so I can make these jokes, right?
hahahahah :-) megaaffentittengeil!!!!
Dr Pete, excellent article. I read one earleir today (another blog) and my head spun. Too much speculation that was way off. With that said I do have one comment on your list:
I feel Penguin has nothing to do with anchor text. Over using anchor text was already built into algo for years. Too much of the same anchor sends you back a few pages. If they wanted to they can turn the dial and probably have over the years.
Instread I fully believe this update had to do with the quality of your links. It appears to me websites that have XX% of links coming from blog networks or websites with spun content got hit.
Panda cleaned up thin crappy content. Penguin cleaned up crappy links.
Hear, hear! I'm glad someone else has pointed this out.
I've inherited websites that have had 40%+ of one exact match anchor text phrase that hasn't been able to rank on page 1, so their thought was "hmm, if it's still not ranking, then let's fire more links with this anchor text at it!" In this example, I diversified the anchor text, stopping all work to that keyword for months (i.e. from an inbound anchor text POV), and eventually got them onto page 1 for it. Could've been another issue perhaps, but I'm adamant that it turned around when Google considered the inbound anchor text profile to be natural enough for it to show on page 1.
Over-cooking the anchor text has most certainly been a long-term issue IMO. The only issue now is that Google's saying that they're now getting more serious about it now (maybe they've lowered the threshold even further and now even a lower percentage is too much).
I honestly think the anchor-text connection probably has the most data to back it up right now. The link got buried, but see this study. Granted, there are a lot of correlations between aggressive anchor text, spammy link-building, and exact-match domains (EMDs), but their analysis is very interesting.
Also, look closely at Google's original announcement. Many people took the example they gave as being one of keyword stuffing, but their second example seems more focused on artificial anchor text in the outbound links on that page, and they say:
"Notice that if you try to read the text aloud you’ll discover that the outgoing links are completely unrelated to the actual content."
Of course, these are links, so you can't cleanly separate the two, and I think they may be looking at BOTH the anchor text and linking factors. Overall, however, I strongly believe the anchor text is part of the equation. Even though it's been part of the algo for years, they're either changing the way they analyze it or the threshold of what consitutes spammy text.
This definitely puts the emphasis on backlinking site relevancy more so than before. Utilizing a relevant anchor text alone no longer cuts it.
There's been a lot of talk of negative SEO lately, tied mostly to Xrumer and some other link blasting tools. What we've seen, however, is more negative SEO in targeted at the part of Penguin you reference here. Specifically, competitors are writing articles about a specific topic relevant to our client's websites, linking to their (competitor) website with relevant anchors and linking to our client with completely unrelated anchors, thus making it look like our client is the one spamming links.
The first comment on this post in combination with this press release really have me wondering if this update was primarily a penalization for sites with outbound spammy links, and that everybody else who took a hit is just suffering from the loss of links from those sites.
I've just inherited a client who doesn't fit our typical client profile, and their dated SEO strategy raises all kinds of tricky questions that are new for me. Their site uses an ugly exact match domain in a spammy industry, something like home-owners-insurance-advisors.com and they've lost about 2/3s of their traffic. Links using their "brand name" (if you can call it that) start looking pretty spammy. I think good, diversified links are the ticket out of this, and I'm thinking of suggesting that they "rebrand" the site to be "HOI Advisors" to help diversify their anchor text away from the keywords, along with a bunch of click here/here/more/etc. Any thoughts or other strategies for softening the blow from exact match domains?
Thanks for the great post!
My question about anchor text is what if someone was using a wide variety of 3 word phrases, but not a lot of branded phrases to a page? I'm guessing this is still inorganic? So what's the right ratio? 60% Branded 40% exact?
Also how does one target different longtail versions of keywords if you aren't able to use exact anchor and also shouldn't create individual pages that seem to have no user value and are only created for keyword targeting? I hope that makes since lol.
Very nice post Dr. Pete.
A friend of mine had a very small site hit by Penguin. He was using a private blog network. I've suggested removing these and staying put for a while (as you said, don't "start simply hacking at your back-links"). We'll revisit the issue in a week or two when everything has calmed down a bit.
Yep! We were hit hard starting around late march and on another site april 17th. Same notice that many people got in their webmaster tools. I am following advise and resisting the urge to back umm...10 years worth of links and start trying to get rid of them. Instead I've hired a few select people and am working on on page issues, satelite sites interlinking too often, really really bad networks I may have inadvertanly joined back in "the day".. and especially giving some variety to my key phrases. We have picked up a great deal of important natarual links over the years..like the washtington post..etc. So our profile is not that dim..but this really gives me pause to reconsider how I have been building links and how better to go about it now. Its easy when you are riding over 30 top term on the front page for over a year to slack and not build more natural links or ask for them.. I think that is my main problem to be honest :)
So my strategy is
1. dont over react
2. seek advise of wise council(s)
3. have my sites looked at by non biased people who know what they are doing
4. fix any problems
5. march ahead confidently with slightly different strategies ..hopfully into a great sunrise
A good summary Ginger. I am not quite done wining but soon we will dust off the lemonde machine and get to making the best lemonde you can get from a lemon provided by a Penguin.
I just did a wholesale face lift on key page meta data..... and we are also working hard to fix ever single little technical issue found in the Moz campagin (thanks Moz) and Webmaster tools. Like you said it is a good place to start and perhaps long overdue.
I will report back if it seems to help. We also went to our satalite sites (yes all EDMs) and cut the link back tot he mother ship. I debated about nuking these satalite sites but decided it is premature to do that. They are all legitimate market segments fo the products sold on the mother site.
All the more reason to not have all of your eggs in the Google basket!
NewClientsEachMonth : Agreed but what do you do if your site is say Real Estate in Florida - how are you really going to make that Socially viral even in a modest way? What happens if your site is Wymoming Free Classifieds? There are so many markets which do not lend themselves to being social or even local for that matter.
Very good article! Thank you.
In our small world of local SEO for Local sites, we haven't seen any impact on over 100 clients. That said, we are still crossing our fingers that the next black and white animal update from our good friends at Google doesn't make this comment completely void. We all have are indiscretions in the past.
The one rule we have put in place ( about a year ago) is never do anything for a site that you wouldn't do if Google didn't exist. Think about it for a moment. Would you really add that link, or write that blog if it would have no effect on a sites rankings. If your only motive is to bring more quality traffic to your clients site and you have reasonable evidence that the new action will accomplish that, then it's probably a good tactic. If your main purpose is to get a site ranked higher, you may want to reconsider doing it.
Great timeline of events, as well as a consolidation of what we know. I haven't seen much of a reaction from big brand SEO managers yet, but what I keep seeing over and over again on a number of different threads, is that Penguin has primarily affected sites with too much exact match anchor text.
From what I've seen, Google hasn't changed what they're looking for, they're just dialing up the sensitivity in detecting link profiles that are too synthetic. We all know that you should vary anchor text and get links from contextually relevant, good neighborhoods. Nothing's changed in that sense, it just seems like Penguin is making the algorithm tighter and more conservative.
Hey really nice post for thoese whoare affected by penguin and other googlwe update.
Thanks for Sharing
Thanks for reminding everyone that sometimes The Best Course Of Action Is INACTION. That trying to quickly "fix" or "apologize" for the past may be a fool's errand. Simply move forward in smarter ways with better content. Realize that the direct Cause-and-Effect lever-pushing of SEO is fading fast, and that some things are BEYOND your control. Simply raise the bar on your end: Google will either reward, ignore or (now, unfortuately) punish it as they see fit.
Thank you for all the research and thoughts presented in your post.
I do find myself in situation you described - great reminder just in time.
Thank you again!
We started removing "Links Exchange" page on websites here. I haven't seen any major impact yet, nor negative or positive. Let's wait a little more. Its been about 3 weeks now.
re >" Penguin update appears to be integrated directly into the main algorithm, "
FYI I asked specifically about this in a webmaster Hangout with Pierre (Rusty Brick was also present, as I recall). Pierre confirmed that Penguin is like Panda in that it gets periodically updated. So I don't see how anyone could have recovered from this as yet?
I lost over 90% of google traffic and have no clue what to suspect as yet - never got any warnings about links etc in GWT.
Was there a thread/page that reflected that (and do you have a link)? I generally trust Pierre and that would be very helpful to confirm. I haven't heard anyone say that yet. We've hear reports of spontaneous and/or quick recoveries, but it's nearly impossible to tell if those were actually sites hit by Penguin or if something else was going on. It's also possible Google made an algorithmic tweak or did a quick data update. As always, we're writing the story as we get new information.
The hangouts are not recorded, nor are the chat sessions saved, from what I know.
I realize this info seems to conflict the accounts of quick recoveries, and it's also possible Pierre mis-heard the question or gave incorrect answer, but I was pretty clear about what I asked.
Here is a link to the G+ post "pierre hung out" which shows both barry and myself in attendance
https://plus.google.com/115984868678744352358/posts/eXVxRNbCzGh
and the link to my G+ autopost confirming my attendance
https://plus.google.com/114258465436630278971/posts
So I guess you could contact Barry or any others and ask if they recall the same thing... I'd be eager to hear that I do NOT have to wait for a manual refresh to know if I can heal from penguin attack..
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that I thought you were making this up - just wanted to see if you had a link/resource that we could share with the audience. I'll reach out to Pierre and Barry and see what I can find out. Definitely appreciate the heads up.
no offense taken at all! It's wise to vet sources on these things and as I say I'd love for this (periodic refresh alg model) to be disproved. Seems like a fair thing for google to clarify, since the amount of collateral damage to the economy will increase until unfairly-hit or repaired sites have a chance to recover.
Looks like you were right. See Danny's post on SEL today:
https://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-recover-negative-seo-120463
I heard back from Barry - he said he cannot confirm that penguin was said to be run periodically in the hangout - I assume that means he cannot recall?
Simple question: Can a site with a large number of links which cannot be controlled (i.e. modified) be rescued? Here is one type of metric that I think Google are using : number of links / daily visits , number of visits per link - the biggest spy in the world has been Google Analytics. It is easy to say over a number of links that those liks do not drive traffic and therefore they are there for another reason. The reason why we thought we needed them. What is so frustrating is there is no way to really come back if you have thousands of links pointing at yoour site regardless of whether you did it, a competitor did it or they arrived by the misdaventure of blogrolls, tagclouds and tag results that people introduce on their sites. Let alone people that have indexed therir search results pages. The only solution is a system where the site owner can tell Google (like in a sitemap) that they do not recognise those inbound links and that they should be completely discounted. WHY CAN'T WE HAVE A SOLUTION LIKE THAT?
It it's really an attack (so-called "negative SEO"), the impact is usually short term, because generally your competitor will build those links quickly and possibly even through hacking. In some cases, Google gets it wrong and penalizes the target, but they tend to devalue those links over time. If sites linking to you were hacked, then webmasters tend to remove those links, etc.
There's a lot of "it depends", unfortuantely. If you have a new site with no link profile and you go crazy on blog comments and article marketing AND those sites give you a bunch of sitewide links with exact-match anchors, then yes, it's possible Google could see it as manipulative. A weak link profile is much more vulnerable. A powerful site with a solid base can get away with a lot more and take more of an attack.
That's why I think it's critical to start your link-building on the right foot and focus on quality in the beginning. Once you have a base you're a lot safer.
What does this mean for SEOMoz's "On-Page Analysis" tool? That's the tool that's giving you a grade based partly on keyword density and other on-page SEO factors? Could trying to get an A with that tool lead to 'over optimization.'
Yes, I'm talking about that tool which is available in SEOmoz toolbar.
I think the phrase "over optimization" has scared a lot of people unnecessarily. Our on-page analysis is really just meant to make sure you cover the basics. For example, a page on Topic X should naturally have keywords that represent Topic X. Otherwise, you have to question the topic relevance. Once you start counting those keywords and trying to create copy just for SEO, though, you start pushing the envelope. So, there's always a balance.
You're not going to be hit by Penguin because you got an "A" in our on-page analysis. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that every page that gets an "A" is risk-free or even spam-free. This is just one part of the algorithm and of building a solid site.
You are right. Maximum SEO tools are helping us to achieve top quality. Can anyone get guarantee about performance? Honestly not! SEOmoz tool is working with similar concept and existance of tool is far better than non-existance. Atleast, that tool help us to drill down one good subject and expand our view to improve quality of page.
@Dr.Pete I always look forward for your valuable reply on my comment! Why should your reply get 1 thumb down... :) Your reply is very clear towards definition of tool and improvement area of landin page. BTW: Thanks for your reply.
To several: The real skinny is stop wasting time and write to a man that is investigating. It is upto you. Do you want change or not? I have written to him. I know what I am talking about as I used to be a senior exce of a major U.S corporation. I know the games people play - read a little Shakespeare (it is his birthday and reverence is due) , a little Niccolò Machiavelli as well. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccolò_Machiavelli . The frustrating bit for me is that everyone is banging on technically and missing the real issue. We have a fffffffffffing monoply using a very old marketing technique. Look for MyFatPenguin . https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-tips-15093.html or short cut to who you need to be writing to https://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/almunia/index_en.htm There is so much money involved you need to talk to a person that has a very fat pension and he is not going to care. If you hit him enough this ass may wake up.
I've called for a way to remove back-links in the past (see the end of this post), but as some have fairly noted, enterprising black-hats could use that to create risk links, knowing they could quickly and easily be killed off. Good black-hats can already pull that switch, but it could create more "lazy" link spam, for lack of a better word ("I'll try it, and if it bites me in the ass, I'll pull the plug").
There's always the issue of scale, too. It's easy for us to suggest that link removal is simple, but on the scale of the global link-graph and Google's massively distributed system, it's possible that change could take incredible computing power.
That's not to disagree with you, but I think there's a lot between believing Google is sparkly-white and Google is embroiled in a global Conspiracy. I suspect the truth is usually in-between, and I do think their motivations (IMO) with Penguin were sincere. Whether the resulting actions were good or bad is a different question (and can be very subjective).
Dear Pete - I am a Dr too in mathmetics and computer sciennce (albeit 25 years ago). Sorry this is not technical and I am sure you may decide to remove it. This is just an opinion but a few old friends are saying - wow! on the money again. The fact that Google play a game of winners and losers on their free space is clever but I doubt it will hold water under serious scrutiny. Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud, most commonly used in retail sales but also applicable to other contexts. First, customers are "baited" by advertising for a product or service at a low price; second, the customers discover that the advertised good is not available and are "switched" to a costlier product. Now if that is not whtat has happened in slow motion I beg to differ. 1. The Facebook IPO is coming up and one major objective of Google is that the the Facebook IPO does not go well. What beter way than to create waves, distractions and diversions. Divide it up a bit and rule. Takes me back to Maggie Thatcher - par excellence. 2. Google will want to publish financial results which draw attention away from any good news that Facebook publishes. I am no fan either. How would you do these things exactly? I know what I would do. It is called post a big result and be the darling of the stock market. Now can I panic you into buying some advertising - you don't have not a lot -you never even made much but I beg of thee try buying some ad space - you never know your luck - HOPE https://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_last_thing_in_'pandora's_box' was the last thing that came out of Pandora's box. Problem is they know the real players have more money than you. It is worse than a poker game clearing out the hangers on and this is why you need to write to the FCC or this guy https://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/almunia/index_en.htm Really it has to stop. Ordinary people are being conned out of their livelihoods for something called 'hope'.
The proposal you make at the end of https://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-ways-to-recover-from-bad-links is what needs to happen from a technical standpoint and its a great suggestion. It hands some power and responsbility back to the web master by allowing them to mark bad links. It also helps Google to quickly thin out their link grapghs or atleast devalue low quality sites which have been built just for the purpose of link spamming.
There should be a way to mark incoming links as spam in the robot.txt. It should then work like people marking email as spam. Once enough people mark a site as a spam link then Google should simply de-index that site and not punish the innocent site the link points to.
Dr. Pete,
Anyone worried about every Google update, is likely doing SEO wrong.Keeping things simple should go a long way to protect against crazy Google updates. What else can there be done anyway.
Problem: A large amount of backlinks come from accidents or misadventure. For example, you may list your site once in a trade directory and then 3 months later the site owner decides to index thousands of tag results pages. Same applies when you comment on a blog. Naive web masters think that giving you site wide links is a nice thing to do. etc etc. You request they remove your site but the damage is already done. Welcome to 5000 links pointing at your site in a blog roll and 15000 tag results pages. The rules have changed over the years when once it was fine to write articles and you were encouraged to use anchor text in links which were an exact match of your site. It was called promotion. Now they are scraped, respun and repulbished ad infintum. Again, owners of these sites even if they do respond say, "look I have credited you with a link to your site - go away - they are in the public domain because you published them on ezines or whatever". When you are faced with 200 sites linking at you with a similar article, how do you get those links taken down. They all look like self-promotion or paid links. And the tit bit is invariably those sites are plastered with adsense. The naivety that negative SEO is not a big business is astounding. It is more than that it is SHOCKING. What is even more shocking is it should be criminal but not much is regulated including Google. You can't go and throw paint on a competitor's door every day but that is exactly what happens. Any market where there is serious money will attract it. It is cheap to do and very effective. I am tempted to even publish what I think the main techniques are and some of them may be quite suprising. Solution to the problem: There needs to be a simple tool available where domanis which point links at your site can be discounted. Either a tickbox in web master tools or a file like a sitemap saying these domains are not trusted (like a nofollow but on the recieving end aimed at the referer). I thnk it beggars belief that Google could not implement such a tool and use it against any link profile that they calculate or carry. Instead, they push the mess onto webmasters who will now spend useless hours trying to have links taken down etc. Great for the economy don't you think? Real social friendliness with the providers of their content too. Again, any business is allowed to trade at the grace of society and not the other way around. It is the reason why govenrments look closely at the behaviour of monopolies. I say Google is playing games with peoples livelihoods and it is not on. They look like a corporation that only cares about is adwords acreage on the internet and the CTR of those adword blocks. Any small rise in CTR or increase in ad space means they keep reporting massive profits which are ever growing. A goal they really need to focus on given the forthcoming IPO of Facebook. There is is the cynic in me but it is probably close to the truth. The only way it appears that web masters can stiop all this nonsense is to educate the searcher and petiton government to regulate/legislate. Without those actions, I look forward to the skunk update.
Nice post Dr. Pete! Im glad you included the paragraph towards the end, instructing people not to De-optimize but just to re-optimize, otherwise you could be axing a few white-hat techniques that that are currently getting you ranking on the first page of google for example. Which could cause you more harm that good!
Shall I really take the effort and delete low authority links. I thought they they do not harm.The ony thing with them is that they are not considered by Google. Or am I wrong?
I would always invest in the future (means new links) and not in the past (debuilding old links).
Thanks Peter for this post, which answers to a need I felt while reading many post Penguin Q&As.
You pointed to the Danny Sullivan post and Glenn Gabe ones, two great posts indeed.
I'll simply add one more link, a Storify collection of tweets our friend Rishi Lakani (@rishil) launched just 2 days ago, and which is substantially telling the same you write here. And from someone who is quite an expert especially in the affiliate field, I believe it is a strong prove of what you have to do and don't.
Said that, remember what our Master SEO jedi Yoda was used to say:
When you look at the dark side, careful you must be ... for the dark side looks back.
(Yoda, Dark Rendezvous)
Hey Gianluca
I referenced Rishi's storify in my post: https://seogadget.co.uk/so-your-sites-been-penalised-now-what/
We're seeing very clear signals that the technical elements of a site can really let you down after penguin. It's a very "complete" update - we've been having a great time wading through the data!
Great post Pete!
I agreee with you, I too have seen tech issues being more relevant than before, i.e.: very slow page speed metrics.
And I'm glad you linked to your post, as it is a really good one (I've cited it in some Penguin related Q&A).
I take the occasion and cite another good post about this topic and published yesterday on Distilled: https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/penguin-pain-and-forward-planning/
It almost seems like Google tweaked a combination of factors or changed the way they analyze those factors. I don't think it's like Panda, where it was all fed into one mega-factor, but I wonder if Penguin is actually a change to dozens of existing factors.
One thing that I'm finding amazingly tricky is even figuring out which sites were affected. For example, I looked at a chunk of sites that fell out of the Top 10 between 4/24 and 4/25. The #1 cause of a dropped URL was that it was replaced by a URL on the same domain - might represent a site problem, but not necessarily Penguin. The #2 cause was sites that just were on the verge of problems or in volatile niches and had high rankings bounce. If I looked back over the previous week or two, they were constantly in and out of the Top 10. Again, probably not Penguin. Separating what happened on 4/24 vs. what happens every day and what Google did in the surrounding weeks is a real mess.
lol I agree with gfiorelli1 : )
Heres where I send someone who sends me a spammy automated link exchange email...
https://www.boastingbiz.com/blog/master-yoda/
One can still overcome if he treat his site according to the Penguin update means stop webspam and overcome from keyword stuffing and clocking. If anyone really wants to overcome from Penguin update he should remove links that are not from your niche or that are not relevant.
Good roundup. The perfect link to pass it to those people, who ask us for help ;-)
I like the penguin update, because I think it is more precise than panda. The collateral damage is much lesser.
With sunny regards from Germany,
Sebastian
Many Guys think after being penalize it is suggested that you change your domain! But is it cleaver idea to do it? Coming to your post it has added value in my knowledge
My, God, Penguin just made us #1 on Google! Well, I mean, it was my white hat strategies that made us #1. What I should say is Penguin bumped black hat sites down in the SERPs, allowing us to take the #1 spot.
Glad it worked out for you. The idea of nuking link farms is a great one. The idea of changing the rules completely about EDMs is nuts.
I think Google Penguin concerns more on the internal links and keyword stuffings. At this point, it is good because people will take care more on how their site should be in good quality. But it also changes the algorithm weight-scale on backlinks combined with the age of the domain, site activity and popularity. So, popular website like seomoz will not be affected when it gains a tons of backlink in short period.If this backlinks issue is true, then small site will face danger, that is negative SEO. In a few seo forums, Some bad people have promoted their service on degrading a site within a couple days, by blasting bad backlinks into it.
What I have started to notice post-24 April is that with some clients, their internal pages are ranking higher than their home pages for the home pages' target search terms. Could this be because:
I'm running a little experiment to see if duplicating the home page as an internal page and building a few quality links to it works. Will the new internal page outrank the home page for the same search term?
Worth a try?
Don´t do it, if you duplicate the content, you are competing against yourself with cannibalization of the corresponding keywords: https://www.bluefountainmedia.com/glossary/cannibalization/
Fantastic article (as always), luckily none of our clients got hit by this update, but for those that did this post is invaluable.
can anyone suggest me how to improve my website organic trafffic. the website is www.giftbig.com... pla do mail me ur suggesion at [email protected]
I don't really know that Penguin is to blame yet (not into 'blame'), but I did get an 8% 'wobble' when it was rolled out. The following days continued, giving my totally non-com site (Spirithome.com) its first sub-1000 use day since New Years (it always does so for that week, and only that week, lower by some 20% over each of the usual days of the week). It seems not to have fallen further so far, but the pattern with Panda was a slow drift after the BIG 25% drops. This past week, for the first time, Bing/Yahoo got me more users for the site as a whole than Google did, and direct rose slightly. (That's over 170 pages on hundreds of topics.) It's all about Google drops.
The thing is, I've done all the suggested stuff: new material, authorship verification to help combat dupes, shedding possible excess of a term on several pages (I never wrote to stuff, but to inform), change of look on some pages, page errors, Facebook group, blogosphere participation, etc., with no results. This should have turned around, but it isn't doing so.
Basically, I have to second the idea that this SEO stuff is addicting, but doesn't always yield results, and move on from there.
Common sense but usually ignored under the linkbuilding greed. I have recoveredo my site thanks to advice and a set of instructions from this guy:
https://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/593617-how-recover-your-site-penguin-panda-updates.html
It worked awesomely in under 12 days
I have a site with one key phrase that started declining in Feb. and has continued to steadily decline. The time line suggests Panda 3.3 or one of the other February changes, but why would it continue to decline ever since?
great article... good job!
What do you do if you have a site that has real products vs endless blogs about nothing which is way too much of the web anymore.
What if you have legitimate EDMs you have used for 15 years that have value. What if you have invested in these properties for 15 years and one day Google comes along and devalues your property overnight becuase other scummy preople use EDMs improperly. What if you are the baby and not the bath water.
We are making changes that will perhaps help but if they dont at some point I guess we appeal to Google on the Peguin unjust page. From everthing I have read appealing to google in any way is a last resort.
I have heard the argument that business do not name themsleves phrases but that it the brick and mortor world. This is the web. While the intention to weed out spam use of EDM's is a good one. When it it implemented unalateraly in a way that hurts small legitamate business then it sticks of big business influence.
To be fair, if you were soley relying on the weight of exact match domains to prop you up in the search results and now you are nowhere to be found, then the task of building up an authoritative domain and ensuring your the website at that location is optimised well, has not been met.
EMD's have long been over-rated and it's about time we saw the value of this metric on it's own devalued. That isn't to say, that if you have built up a fantastic website, well coded, awesome content, semantic, relevant, trustworthy and is generating decent social signals, that it would all be for nothing... All positive signals in the 200+ ranking factors that Google use, if outweigh the negatives, will still rank well, regardless of the domain.
It sounds as it you're blaming any change to how EMD's are considered as the sole reason to why a domain is no longer ranking but this is extremely unlikely to be the case, there will likey be plenty of other factors as to why it no longer has as good visibilty in the search results.
If I made it sound like EDM was the sole factor I overstated. The traffic did not disappear it was cut in half. It started on 4/24 and by 4/27 it was half of what it was.
So no we were not dependent on the EDM to carry us. We also have some issue with an ex-SEO who created lots of crap backlinks with exact match anchor text and I guess the only way I will be able to couter that is to work on legit backlinks. Good luck with that. Just think about how many legitamet backlinks there are for e-commerce sites. If you dont SEO e-commerce you have it easy by comparison.
I have just read a lot about the devaluing of EDMs and yes perhaps my opinion is screwed but it is just nonsense that EDMs are valuable and then get devalued. It is nonsenes. It is one position for each phrase and it should be easy for Google to tell if the phrase is being abused or not.
For sure I dont know if EDMs are the issue. Frankly the only thing I know for sure about SEO after studying it for years is the only people that really know how the changes you make will affect your site are the guys that design the algrythms.
Am I frustrated, YEP, tired of the cat and mouse of algrythm changes. I am sure that if you do it full time it might be a good game, but if you do it simply out of servival well then it is just WORK.
You should never have to chase the algorithm, with the right designers/developers and creative individuals, just code and build a great website pushing unique quality content. Always focus on the end user, your customer. That's all Google care about too.
Sounds like great advice and that is EXACTLY what we do. 100% white hat. Traffic still cut in half. All the black hat nonsense was done 5 years ago before I got involved with this customer.
Well, or we have been exact anchor text backlink spammed. I am trying to investigate that. Someone told me that Majesticseo could tell me the age of a backlink. Know any other ways for me to tell if these old BAD links are bad judgement on the part of the site owner back 5 years ago or recent milicious tampering.
Really with regard to e-commerce we have alwyays simply focued on the products and providing useful info to customers (on-page) and it has worked fine right up until April 24th.
Right now I am fixing every tiny technical issue the webmaster is reporting that never seemed to be an issue in the past.
A few of my satellite EDM site are back on page 1 when you search for that exact phrase. The only change I made on them was I removed the link back to the main site.
I doubt that that made any diff for the satellite site and instead I think a tweak in the EDM alarythm and perhaps Google can tell legitimate use of EDMs from spammy uses.
I wonder if I should put the link to the main site back in place.
For those sites that have been hit by the pan-guin or pen-da update, it may be worth looking for new referrers. If Google is your only source of traffic then mistakes in the past are going to take a while to recover from. That being the case you need to get links/banners on pages where users are likely to click and visit your site. Whilst your employing a "referrer building" strategy you should start to remove spam links.
I wish google would just devalue these types of links becuase I have a couple of niche website not that important to me but there isn't much hope of these recovering because I have hundreds of website pointing to them and most of them are not monitored, so good luck getting those links fix.. OH well spamming SEO doesn't work =(
Time to convert to Purely White Hat =)
Thanks for yet another informative post. SEO runs in your blood.
Will have to review this careful so that there are no knee-jerk reactions. We do quite alot of charity work and festival work which both have a fair amount of sponsor links on - might have to work on that.
I was searching for something else across the web when I skimmed over an article on a site that I realized was VERY familiar. It's about half way down the page, but they have re-posted your article without any reference or credit.
https://www.blurbpoint.com/blog/2012/05/
This is too good of work to have it left to anonymity on a page like this.
LOL - is it just me, or does it look like they translated it into some other language and then back into English with Google Translate?
Yeah I think they tried to hack it up just enough to not get caught, and did a really lame job of it.
my dating site also lost tremendously PR and google organic search position which was dropped from top 3 to 45. how do find out what link is harming this drop or causing this PR drop.
Great post. We were lucky that none of our sites were hit by Penguin but it's nice to know what to do anyway!
Say someone purchased the submission of 3 articles to 100 article submission sites (1 article to 33 article sites). What do they do now:
A) have them removed completely
B) have the anchor text edited
C) Wait and see
Penguins!!! Oh my god
My website was hit by Penguin too, but I had made some smaller changes to the website - removed the over optimization basically. And everything is back to normal now.
What was your over optimisation? Links from your own network?
+1 What over optimizations did you change?
When dealing with SEO techniques to get high ranking and to get a long term advantage , its highly recommended to have an open eye on the panda, penguin updates. Your described points regarding better optimization and de-optimization is very much important to deal with panda and penguin updates for maintaining ranking .
If you own a EDM you own beach front property. Changing the rules for EDMs is like a city moving your beach house inland 5 blocks while you were on vacation.
This is crazy. There is only one EDM for each term so what is the big deal of letting that EDM be on page 1. In our case we have a number of EDMs related to market segment and this was done many years ago. These are e-comerce sites selling legitamate prouducts not some spam laden usless site (the majority of the web anymore). If you purchase a domain you should have the right to promote it. Period.
I am afraid these EDMs now are hurting us. Do I shut down the 5 EDMs that point back to the main site or just delink them?
We have never done black hat but are getting killed with Penguin. We have bad anchor rich backlinks and we had nothing to do with creating any of them.
You can try to follow the rules and still get killed.
Sorry for my insufficient english, what do mean with EDM?
Greetings from Hamburg, Germany.
They mean EMD which stands for Exact Match Domain.
Ok, thanks, now i understand the above comment.
Can anyone explain to me why I have 3 pages all which are very similar. When I say very similar I just mean that they are simple pages with unique content and are all about different subjects. I have used the same SEO tactics on all 3 sites. However after the update 2 of them are doing better than ever and 1 of them has fallen off the map. No idea why this has happened? I actually wrote about the Panda Update and talked about it a little bit. If you want to take a look and start a conversation about that on that thread rather than taking up space here that would be cool. Or just respond here. I am just curious if anyone else has seen this problem?
Great post Dr. Pete, Some awesome tips for damage control against the Penguin update. We've actually seen many of our sites and clients increase in their rankings and site traffic POST Penguin!
Thanks Doc, awesome post! Do you or does anyone know when the big bad penguin is going to hit Europe?
I haven't seen a ton of European data, but according to Google, Penguin went live all at once: "The change will go live for all languages at the same time." Definitely seeing Penguin cases from my UK friends.
Thanks for the info! Was wondering about it since Panda rolled out in Europe a few weeks after. I didn't see any changes except for a slight growth in organic search, so I guess that's a good sign :)
Thank gawd. I'd have no traffic by the time they did the European release if that were the case.
LOL.
Sob
??
:)
Actually it rolled out the same day all over the world, as Google wrote and as many SEOs and Webmasters noticed.
First off Haha! Love the title!
I had some questions for you on these updates.
I understand that its best to keep things looking natural. I understand that all links should lead from relevant content to relevant content (or somewhat adding value to a user). About the exact link penalty, from what you have seen so far... How many exact links do people point at one page for it to be punished? (30% and up?)
In order to rank for a specific keyword, will I need to use some exact phrases? To let the Search Engine know what I am about, or will the search engine be able to determine this from just having the content on the page and multiple usage of variations? (No exact phrases)
What would be the best practices for anchoring? Saving the exact phrases for the better authoritative pages?
Also, I hear your working on a tool we can use to check sites prior to linking to them... (look forward to this)
Thanks Doc. :D
Hello Everyone,
Near about 10 days ago Google penguins update which i am lost my website ranking (total 100 keyword top #3 position go down waiting).
So My totally business go down, I am still waiting, what i do for my website ranking. It can possible my website ranking come back that same place . If no than what i do for it ? What i do change on my website on page or off page ?
Please Explain how to face it?
Website : https://www.sginteractive.com.sg/
Looks like you promoted your site through article sites and directories. Also looks like you have not promoted your domain name as the anchor text anywhere. Looks like you bought some spammy links either directly or indirectly (perhaps even a compeitor did that for you). A random selection of links does not look like those links are in context of your site's context. Pages linking to you have very high numbers of links in them with little real content. https://www.opensiteexplorer.org/domains?site=www.sginteractive.com.sg%2F Have you also checked for duplicate content using copyscape. And your question is right on - what to do about it? I am not saying to do this but I am seriously thinking of ditching one site of mine and relaunching it under a new domain name, new IP address and even registering it in a family members name in a different country. Then pulling what "good" links I had and repurposing them slowly over a few months. The only problem in doing this is lost revenue meantime and that there is nothing to stop my competitors pointing links at me and people scraping the site as they have been doing. I am not whiter than white (most have paid to list in one directory or another or published in an article directory - it was the done thing - hell even yahoo charges for a directory listing) but I am not dumb enough to have bought thousands of exat match anchor text links all over the planet. It strikes me that Google have ceated a model where your web site will only stand as a business if it gets traffic from other sources or you pay them. The busines model of using Google SERPS as 90% of your traffic is fast dissappearing and it is just too risky. I am playing with an idea in my market which is to make a private membership site with a moving public home and about page In other words as soon as that home or about page gets compromised then ditch it (let it 404) and offer a new home and about page at a different url. Then only use links that you know can be changed. So if anyone links in agressively I just move my home page and the links with it. The old home pages continually 404 and at the same time it stuffs the spammers a little bit with sites full of thousands of broken links. Google can clean up the mess. Again the ideal solution is that Google offers the webmaster a away of marking links that they wish to be discounted. Spammers become redundant and you can't say you have not been warned or you don't have control over whether you are being penalised. For example if that tool existed I would mark about 75% of your links to be discounted (please don't take offence - many people wil scoff but they have all done similar things - those that scoff are often those that have not been caught). However, all that being said, I am sure it is pi...ng in the wind. Google has no intention of giving us any right to police our own property or protect it in an efficient manner. Let's face it, it is not in its financial interest when poor results and desperate people turn to adwords as their only hope.
There is only on obvious thing with the Penguin update- it has nothing to do with your content and it has nothing to do with your links. How do I know this? I've read everything there is to read about this. I've seen many of my own websites and spoken with others. There is literally NOTHING in commong among sites hit or not hit.
But, there are only two things we can see about sites, their links and their content. Between what is visible to us, there is no common denominator here. It would appear to be totally random with some trends you might find but keep in mind, this is an ALGORITHM update. It is a computer formula. Trends mean nothing. Either it kills sites with 75% exact match anchors or it doesn't. It can't kill some and not others. If so, that's not part of the formula.
Clearly there is something connecting these sites which we cannot see but Google can. What does Google know that we do not? How about Chrome blocked results? How about traffic patterns? How about user data and signals? How about SERP click rates?
Only so much is available to the public on any domain. Some info is available to only you as the owner of the domain. Some info is only available to Google. Remember, they track you everywhere you go. They know where you go, how you get there, how long you stay, everything.
This update has to be about user signals and nothing else. Not enough in common between sites that got hit and those that escaped. There's a lot of data on these sites visible only to Google, and you better believe there is some common denominator in there.
I wrote an entire YouMoz about this that I hope is published soon. Think about Gmail spam filters. Google openly admits their strongest weapon here are the users who report spam. Google relies on user signals as a major part of determining spam in Gmail. I have to believe they do the same thing for websites as well.
I have to disagree - the evidence for an anchor text impact looks pretty strong. One thing I'd say is that I doubt it's as simple as just a cut-off/threshold. Google may be combining factors - 60%+ exact-match anchor text may only cause a problem IF the sites are low PR, etc. (not saying that's the rule, just that more complex rules could easily exist).
Look at Panda. You could say "Not all sites hit have aggressive advertising above-the-fold", and that's true. Not all sites with aggressive advertising got hit, either. That doesn't mean it's not a factor in the Panda updates. Panda especially looks to involve machine learning and is probably a very complex combination of factors. In other words, no single factor or simple rule explains it, but that doesn't mean you can rule those things out, either.
Ok well said, I shouldn't say content and links have nothing to do with this update, but I believe they have little to do with it. I have looked at just so many websites. Even a link referenced here on the Microsite Masters blog dispells this. They show sites getting hit having the same link problems as sites not getting it. This may be a combination of factors for sure.
I just think the overriding factor on all of this is going to be data Google has from users. They look at your traffic and where it is coming from. They see if you are getting +1's or not. They see if people click your results often in SERP's. They see if they hit the Back button immediately or browse around. They see if all your traffic is just coming from Google or if it comes from diverse places.
All I'm saying is that there is data we cannot see, and since all the data we can see is not lining up just yet, I think the data we cannot see is likely playing a huge role. Those with unusual user signals have their links looked at. So bad links don't hurt you per se. Sites with bad links moved up in this update. But those sites may have had positive user signals. Google tracks more than we all think, so no doubt they are putting that data to good use here.
I certainly can't prove it either way, at this point. I do think that user signals have been a solid part of the Panda updates, so my gut reaction is that they probably aren't doubling up on those with Penguin. It's possible, though, that they're considering user signals to modulate on-page/link signals. I think we may be looking at new technology applied to old ranking factors.
Perfectly put, "new technology applied ot old ranking factors." Couple that with Google's monthly "here's what we changed" blog posts saying they dramatically changed and dropped ways of looking at links, well, maybe they are looking at links through the user signal lens rather than the anchor text lens.
It was also only rolled out to 3% of the SERP's. I would say that is a factor why some haven't been hit.
I lost 90% of my traffic and spend ZERO time on link building and only have 1200 linking domains
My traffic started diving on the 13th Not 24th
I noticed all my url's had been taken out of the index so i changed from WordPress Seo by Yoast to XML Sitemap and now they have all been reindexed but still 90% down
My sites all WordPress tutorials with NO banners or ads
My links have doubled according to the MOZ Bar in 2 months
I only share my posts to my social networks once
Gone from 2400 pageviews on the 13th to 300 yesterday
I did ask Google and they replied no spam penalty
Maybe its technical but i'm on my site 16 hours a day 7 days a week and no problems
The only changes i have made is to remove repeat keywords from my titles which i did after the 24th. My anchor text is descriptive of the linked content.
Every Panda update has benefited me in the past and the content i see that has replaced my position is shallow
Any opinions?
If you were completely de-indexed, most likely you're either facing a massive technical issue (that's not just site availability, but could be crawler access, etc.) or a severe link-based penalty. Unfortunately, that's a very difficult thing to analyze without seeing the site. If you want to submit a private Q&A, we'd be happy to take a look.
Keep in mind that when Google replies that you have no penalty, all that means is that you have no manual penalty. You could still have an algorithmic penalty.
Hi Dr Pete
I have sent you a private message with all the details and will wait for your answers
How do you ask Google if a site has a penalty? Do you have a link to a form?
Can you explain a little more about why changing Wordpress SEO plugins mattered?
Yes, I'm curious about that removal.
Because, if it was only due to XML Sitemap function, then it was necessary just not to use the Wordpress SEO option and, instead, use the other plugin.
Not sure but all my url's where taken out and when i changed plugins they all reappeared. Not saying its the plugin, it maybe the robots txt in Webmaster Tools or another plugin conflicting with Yoasts plugin which normally i have been very happy with.
It maybe my own fault but i haven't changed any settings in the Yoast plugin so not sure why its so severe considering i don't have many links. I guess i was a spammer, i would have heaps but they're all natural and i have never asked anybody for links or built any.
SOEMoz actually linked to me last week in a blog post and i don't think they would link to a spammy site.
Looking forward to what Dr Pete and the experts at SEOMoz have to say.
Boy, it sure smells to me like a technical crawling issue, like when Googlebot was crawling your site at 3AM it got a pile of 500s or timeouts etc. Are you on shared hosting by any chance?
That could be the case as my host isn't the best and have been playing around with my account. I'm on VPS.
They wanted me to put a link on a page which did rank no.1 for wordpress yearly hosts and i didn't because of the problems with their service and thier server. Now my MX records have been deleted and i can't send email so maybe it has something to do with this.
Have you done any theme development or plugin development where a backlink to your site may be present? This appears to have been a target of Google also recently.
More info: https://www.seroundtable.com/wordpress-theme-links-15068.html
I've created several child themes which i give away for free which include a link to my site. I also include a link in some websites which i design for clients if the owner agrees. I never pay theme developers or anyone for links, they are automatically included in the child themes i give away and the child themes i use to build sites on. Could this be a problem?
I have noticed hosting companies like westhost have included footer links in WordPress default themes that are installed when new customers use thier one click installation tools.
A lot of companies have abused the popularity of WordPress to gain backlinks via theme footers, etc. so I would definitely look at that as a potential cause.
Thanks
I've got them on an email list so i emailed them and will see how many remove the link.
How about on the child themes i design for clients. Can't i put a link in the footer if i've designed the entire site?
I'd look at making that a homepage-only link or excluding it altogether, even on a child theme design. If the site is not relevant to your niche/market, then the link has low value to begin with. Sitewide link(s) even worse.
What we do when designing sites for clients - if we add a credit link in the footer (and often we don't), we write a script to make the link nofollow on all pages apart from the homepage.
Personally, I feel sitewide links are pretty much discounted anyhow other than the first instance but at least how we're doing it, we're letting Google know that we're not looking to pass link juice from the pages other than the homepage (which typically be their most authoritative page anyhow).
We run a social network with hundreds of thousands of pages indexed in Google, and we've had a sitewide link pointing to another one of our websites for the past 12 - 18 months or so, it doesn't hinder the performance of the website in question nor pose any negative results. It is evident that they are both part of the same company group however though.
Thats a good idea. Luckliy i have all the email addresses for everyone that downloaded the child themes and have asked them to remove the links however i don't think a footer link from a web designer would cause Google to wipe me out with the Penguin update. I could be wrong
I would tend to agree, Google are only too aware of credit links, typically in footers and I don't feel these will be playing a particularly significant factor in being flagged as part of the Penguin update. They could well have implemented a number of checks surrounding these to determine whether they are paid links too - in which case, is another story.
As long as they are nofollowed though, I wouldn't expect Google to even bat an eyelid at them anyhow.
I noticed a lot of sub.domains have been hit massively where the main domain might have taken a small hit. Sub domains were fab for conversion as you could be really specific for the KW.
I am waiting to see how the next few weeks pan out...
I am wondering by one case. I know one website lost trafic after Panda 3.4. The surprise is got back the traffic after Penguine update. I don't what they have done. No on-page changes I have found on the website. Trafic loss was big around 90%.
Dr. Pete Wonderful Article, i was redesigned my site befor penguins update and i lost my whole traffice from google search, then i was done some tactics to get traffice back onto my site but i'm not Succeed, i'm suffering from last month, my site is related to news, can you help me? here is a it's URL https://gg2.net
Still many giant websites like portals are getting benefitted with exact match footer links!!!!! Ah, nothing is sure for Google Updates...
Wonderful post Dr Pete, you ve presented the views in a very comprehensive style representing the majority of SEO Community. Loves the post and your views on it. Keep it up!
We've seen no negative effects since the Penguin update thankfully across any of the sites we're involved with. It does appear that half the internet seems to have been affected though.
It's a welcome introduction that I really hope stamps out a lot of the affending contributors to garbage, junk and spam online. I think soon, many of those that have always adhered to "white-hat" practices will truly start reaping the rewards and those quick to shun ethical tactics by spouting that the only way to rank is to play dirty will be spending considerabe time trying to fix the negative effects that these latest updates will have on their sites.
So what should we do if we are the victim of spammed backlinks which were not our own doing. I believe that my competitor paid for spammy links to my site in terrible spam sites.
I received a warning about unnatural linking to our site.
What would recommend as a next step? I have a feeling that even if I email these sites, they will not take the links down.
My understanding is this would a crimial offense under existing computer fraud statutues. Depending on the damage done, it could be felony, class D or C, which means the guilty parties could easily wind up in prision. You should immediately contact the "Internet Crime Complaint Center" which works with the cyber crime department of the F.B.I:, https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx. If your competitor is in another state, you should contact the local police department and ask how you can file a complaint. Be as sure as you can before starting something like however. If you're pretty sure, the authorities will be obligated to investigate. If your competitor really did this, just imagine how a call or visit from their local police department or FBI will wipe any smile off their face.
Nice post Pete, but it really seems like you didn't give any explanation what the data in that bar graph. Sorry if I missed I missed it, but I really have no clue what it's referring to.
It's a measure of 24-hour fluctuation in Google's Top 10 across a representative sample of keywords. There's no direct meaning to the Y-value, but the relative values show how much the SERPs changed overnight, essentially. It was just intended to show that the Penguin "spike" was significant, especially compared to Panda 3.5. The full explanation of where these numbers come from is long and something we'll be revealing down the road.
This is a great post about forgetting the politics of why Google have made this change and just getting on with it.. I however want to just state why I am particularly frustrated by this update.. I dont like my tone so far but please bear with me.. So apparently the penguin update google has implemented is to try and cut out spammy tactics and make webmasters focus more on their websites. Up until now I have seen why each update has been done and agreed for the most part about the direction Google has been going in. This time however I think Google have contradicted themselves on this one. The reason being is because Google's aim (i believe) is to return results with more 'higher quality' websites that enhance the user experience - they clearly state in their guidelines Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. So as a summation of this paragraph I get is; Keep Googles basic prinicples and you can expect better rankings? Yes. Got it. What are the Basic Principles they endorse? 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." 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?" 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. 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. So which of these is most important to Google? I would have thought the user experience on your website? Apparently not. The top two guidelines say make pages primarily for users and ask does this help my users. Most companies I know that have online marketing teams worked very hard to achieve this. So lets deal with the next two. Don't participate in link schemes - lets come back to this one Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages etc. Something I know most companies I have dealt with dont do internally so this doesn't really apply. So with this recent update the real issue here is the backlinks and here is why I think Google are contradicting themselves. A very large number of websites that want an online presence have invested in backlinking of some sort and also spent a great deal of time creating a valuable user experience. Here's the thing, Google have penalised sites that have engaged in (what they consider) spammy techniques full stop. Their algorithm has NOT taken into consideration whether the site has a good user experience. Surely if Google wanted to make their results return more relevant and useful results they would have realised this first before such a blanket update. This is poor judgement in my opinion. Yes, granted many companies should not have engaged in backlink programs or dodgy linking, but i thought Google's aim was to return relevant results. I say if Google wants to penalise 10 great websites that have an excellent user focus and bring back 10 boring blogs then it really is not benefical for the user. Unfortunately keeping 3 out of 4 basic guidlines isnt enough. Anyways maybe I am a little bitter aswell because I can see a number of fantastic websites that have been hit by this update and Google obviously have not rewarded sites that have a good user experience but have also engaged in link building.
A couple of things to keep in mind (not that I'm completely disagreeing with you, but I think it helps to try to see Google's motivations - good and bad):
(1) Penguin represents just one small piece of 200+ ranking factors. It does appear that Panda was influenced by user factors, including (probably) click-through and dwell time - the time it takes people to retrun to SERPs from a page. Even if Penguin doesn't specifically include user factors, they're in the algorithm to some degree.
(2) Google takes a broad view of the user experience and that includes not just the quality of your website, but the quality of search results and the path to your site. They have their own interests granted, but look at it this way - if you had a perfectly user-friendly site, but your search snippets were deceptive and your anchor text and links were manipulative, would that be a good overall user experience? It's all part of the same package, in a sense.
Yes agreed Google does/has taken a broad view of the user expereince. But I say what is more important to the user? the quality of the search results or the path to a site? Again I agree - if you are engaging in spammy link building techniques you are creating a bad internet experience. The reason I pointed out Googles basic quality guidelines because they refer to 'making pages primarily for users' and to ask yourself questions about your website 'does this help your users?' These are really on page issues Google are asking you to focus on. Like I said my concern is that some companies who have put money on the table on-page and off-page have seemingly been punished for their whole campaign because of off-page IMO. I think there should (at the very least) be more help for recovery in the SERPs for sites that have at least tried to make a good site rather than treating spammy sites and good websites the same. Anyways I probably need to pipe down and simmer for a while as this update like you said probably isn't going away..
Further to my ramblings - I just noticed on the recent SEOmoz post Google HAVE actually offered a lifeline to sites that think they shouldn't be affected by the penguin update. Here's the link incase anyone else reads this.. goo.gl/nt3Pz I would be interested in knowing whether submitting this has seen a bounceback in rankings/traffic aswell..
I think what this all really highlights is the fact that so many businesses rely on an amazingly volatile search engine to capture sales/leads/etc.
How many posts have to be made for people to realise that is such an unproductive strategy?
@Dr.Pete
You have mentioned very good point about De-Optimization. Because, I have very big experience with Meta change to set up organic search result. I have doubt about onpage optimization grade! Some how, I'm not able to focus or improve on some factors like follow.
Why should I come to know about it? I'm using SEOmoz's grading tool and just raised mind bubble after read this blog post. Where is my landing page with on page section. My ultimate question about selection procedure of Google! If Google have no selection to display 100% accurate on page level page so, what will happen? Will Google focus on user experience or not?
Dr Pete, many thanks for the great post! Would you think then if a site gets hit with an obvious penalty of too much keyword anchor text, that by removing as many instaces as possible and then additionally building new links with more branded signals and variation, might fix things?
How about some fedback from SEOMOZ on all these comments.
Excuse my ignorance regarding google algo updates, but has penguin been rolled out across all google properties? only english engines? or only the US google.com? The reason I ask is because my niche industry (on UK google) has not seen any significant shake up even though the main players have been spamming/overoptimising for years.
It's confusing, because roll-out varies from update to update. In the case of Penguin, it seems to have rolled out internationally (and in all languages) all on the same day.
Thanx for this post. I wonder why "Seo's" in other forums crying cause of that little bird and waste the time with that. I do not wonder abour phrases like "Google wont quality any more cause i am hit by Google". This post remeber that Seo is an ongoing business. So i think.
I like Penguin update just like I liked Panda. I like the whole zoo!
Engagement is the key. You create and manage great site that benefits your visitors and Google will benefit you.
Google Penguin is really effective and working very well for them to remove spam sites. Most of the webmaster getting messages about the remove unnatural links which is affecting the ranking of keywords and traffic as well. Now we need to work on quality backlinks not on quantity of backlinks.
Google has taken a step and i could say a bold step as it knows that with such pace SEO activities can easily manipulate the search engine results. Plenty of things are changed now, keeping everything natural or at least keeping everything look natural is necessity of seo industry now...
Anyone worried about every Google update, is likely doing SEO wrong.Keeping things simple should go a long way to protect against crazy Google updates. What else can there be done anyway.
Only one site of mine has been hit by Penguin but I want to show you how keyword stuffing still works and can bring you to top 5 results for a competitive niche. Search for "best web hosting" on google.com and you will see bestwebhosting . com ranking in top 5. Now see how many times the "web hosting" phrase is in the page, 70 times with a keyword density of 20%! And this is not the only example.
This might be one of the rare instances wherein google screws up ranking without detecting keywords stuffed content.
Keyword stuffed domains are more common than keyword stuffed content in google SERP mishaps.
There are always negative examples, and I think we have to be careful about using them as proof. Google is adjusting these parameters across the entire web and balancing them with 200+ other ranking factors, so there are always going to be situations where it doesn't work. I think it's trickier, too, when you're dealing with an industry (like web hosting) that's overrun with spam. If you knock a couple of spammers out, the sites you bump up are just as likely to be spammy. I'm not saying Google got it right here, but I do think it's a very complex problem.
I can't think of any other more controversial issues on SEO than:
If you want to get the maximum traffic and comments write about these two :D
Geezaz! 170 comments??!! :)
So many comments! I had to give up and skim. ;)
Hi,
the penguin update is serious. I have collected some relevant blog posts about Pinguin, including this one here:
suchmaschinen-experte.de/pinguin-google/
The first one is in german, but if you go to the Sistrix article, you will find a collection of the 50 sites hidden by penguin in Germany. Interesting if you want find out, why these sites has lost search visibility.
If you have other resources to mention, please send me a note.
Thanks,
Could this then be the end of linkfarms ?
-Sanchit
sanchitkhera7.blogspot.com
I do hope so.
Have we been transported back to 2007?
no, because Google will never know of all the possible types of link farms, and black/grey hat guys will always stay creative; I would rather say it's an endless race.
One would hope.