Since the Google Penguin update, some site owners are are feeling the pinch of the updated algorithm. Although Google’s intentions are seemingly good, claiming that the whole purpose is to improve the quality of information on the Internet, many innocent sites were hit by the cold-hearted Penguin. Let’s see what Google changed this time and what we can do to fix our sites.
They’re After Web Spammers
Google will hit sites that don’t comply with official guidelines and participate in what they call web spamming. This includes techniques like excessive link building, keyword stuffing and deceptive doorway pages. Publishing meaningless content will not get you anywhere either.
Google has also made two major improvements to its search: related search suggestions and words association. The first one means that when you will type terms like SEO in the search box, you will get related suggestions like SEO Strategies or SEO companies. Basically, the Penguin can tell how your content fits into the bigger picture.
A second important improvement in Penguin says that the content is not exclusively defined only by your keywords, but also by the related terms surrounding the intended keywords.
Let’s see an example. The word “apple” could refer to the fruit or to the well-known company. Google will analyze your content and if it will find terms like “fruit”, “trees”, “healthy diet” it will know that you are talking about the fruit. On the other hand, if the keyword is surrounded by “computer”, “iPhone”, “iPad”, Google will associate it with the computer and electronics maker.
How Do I Cope With This Update?
In order to avoid getting hit by these changes, you may need to adjust your practices and processes, too. You can start by using keywords only when they are needed. Don’t include them every three lines when they are obviously not relevant to the content.
Also, and this goes without saying, make your content engaging and very useful for the reader. They’ll always come back to your site if what they find is useful for them. Relevancy, quality and value are key points.
Focus on a diversity of anchor texts. Most sites that were penalized had inbound links with anchor texts matching keywords with an unusually high frequency. In other words, it wasn’t natural. Try to have a natural-looking mix of anchor texts. Here are some suggestions: the name ‘brand’ of your website, yoursite.com, “click here”, “visit this”, “check out” and similar anchor texts should be mixed in with your keywords.
Google also penalized sites with few links from domains in the same niche. It’s much more difficult to manipulate a link from a relevant site in the same niche than manipulating anchor text.
The Google Penguin update doesn’t have to be that scary. Stay updated with all the changes and act according to what you learn. Knowledge without action is useless.