Over the next few week’s we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the
update to help businesses recover from a Penguin ranking hit and explore
how you can make your site less susceptible to an update ranking slide.
In this week’s blog post we’re going to be running through some of
the more common questions we’ve received from our newsletter community that will help you understand the basics of Google’s Penguin update.
What did Penguin target?
Penguin was Google’s latest algorithmic update in their war against spam, targeting websites using spammy, black-hat SEO techniques
to manipulate Google’s rankings. The primary target was ‘unnatural
links’ that were either bought or exchanged in order to artificially
inflate a website’s authority. Other reported targets included keyword
stuffing and comment spam, which Google also houses under the umbrella
term ‘webspam’.
How do I know if I’ve been hit?
Google took a more open approach to the Penguin update than they have
with previous updates, sending notices to website owners warning them
that Google had detected ‘unnatural links’ pointing to their site.
Website owners were then asked to submit a reconsideration request once
the links have been removed.
Aside from the email sitting in your Google Webmaster Tools account,
you’ll have seen a sharp decline for your rankings in late April. Many
businesses affected by Penguin tend to drop entirely off the first few
pages, losing a huge chunk of their visitors in one fell swoop. Taking a
look in your Google Analytics account for an irregular drop in search referral traffic is a good indicator that something’s gone wrong.
Doesn’t everyone buy links?
Truth is, many SEO providers do still buy links on behalf of their
clients, often without the client knowing and with the understanding
that it’s against Google’s guidelines. Many of the businesses we’ve
assisted post-Penguin were either entirely unaware that the link buying
was occurring via their SEO agency or were under the impression that
everything was above board.
The truth of the matter is that as with everything else in life, with
SEO you get what you pay for. Lower cost SEO usually means fewer
resources to perform the same job, leading to spammy black-hat
techniques in order to get your site ranked. Unfortunately you’ll end up
paying more in the long run to undo the damage done to your site with
cheap SEO.
So in short yes, many people buy links. But rolling the dice on
techniques that are a blatant violation of Google’s guidelines isn’t a
good way to go about earning Google’s trust.
Can my competitors take out my website by buying links for my site?
Google says it can’t be done, but we’ve never been one for trusting
Google blindly. Sure they’ve placed the necessary precautions in place
to ensure negative SEO doesn’t ran rampant post-Penguin but with the
right strategy it would be incredibly hard for Google to tell the
difference between legitimate spam and negative SEO.
To combat negative SEO make sure you keep an eye on your backlinks in
Google Webmaster Tools. If you start seeing unfamiliar spammy links
pointing to your site you may want to look into removing the link
manually and reporting the offending site to Google.
What’s the difference between Panda and Penguin?
While both updates targeted webspam, the targets and methods used by
the Panda and Penguin updates are vastly different. The Panda update
focused on article spam, duplicate content and websites with thin content whereas Penguin focuses on unnatural linking and spammy content.
Another point of difference is how Google enforces Panda and Penguin
offences. If you’re targeted by Panda, Google will place a manual
penalty against your entire site that drops your rankings across all key
phrases. Penguin however is an algorithmic update (meaning it runs
automatically) and only drops rankings for key phrases and pages that
have been artificially boosted by unnatural links or with spammy
content. This algorithmic approach means an easier recovery once a
Penguin issue is resolved as opposed to Panda’s wait-and-see approach.
Overall, Penguin is a much more tempered approach to fighting webspam
that only damages a site to the extent that they’ve been found to be
manipulating rankings. Panda on the other hand is almost like getting
placed on a Google blacklist that is very hard to get removed from.
Can I contact Google for reconsideration?
Unless you’re absolutely certain all your links are natural,
contacting Google will not yield any desirable outcomes. Get your house
in order and show Google you’re making an active effort to remove links
and they will look far more favourably upon your reconsideration
request.
And then there’s the most important question:
How do I fix it?
Stay tuned for next week’s post where we’ll take a look at how you
can help your website to recover from a Penguin beat down and how you
can make your website immune to Google’s algorithm changes!
