Google Penguin update has been released and it is affecting our ranks in Google SERP. We all remember that before the Penguin update all we had to do was: write a post, submit it to a few social networking sites and we would find our post somewhere on the second or third page of Google organic search results. Doing a little bit of search engine optimization would get us some quick high traffic in no time. But now the Penguin update has changed the rules of the game. So much so that previous search engine optimization methods may sometimes even hurt our site traffic.
Easily available links which can change Google's search results and give you a chance to feature your blog in the top organic search results are filtered out by Google Penguin update. Gone are the days where we just wrote an article and submitted it to Digg and Boom: our posts would appear on the second or third page of Google. Do that now and you find your post nowhere in the top hundred if you search for the search term. This has happened with me: submit the page to too many social bookmarking sites and the page is gone. At the most you may submit your site to two or three social networking sites. Because it is Google and it wants to keep its social networking site up and running Penguin allows you to upload your link on Google+. Penguin has no problem with that. If you submit your post URL to more than three social bookmarking sites Penguin may throw you out of Google's organic search results list.
Blog directories, social bookmarking sites, social networking sites, sites with blog posts and so many other places allow the webmasters to get some good amount of free links to boost their site visibility and site traffic. And Google's Penguin really hates that from the bottom of its heart. Penguin can harm you if it finds that you are building too many back-links to your site from any of these sources. But you may heave a sigh of relief: Penguin is here only to see whether the links are coming the normal way or have just boomeranged in a day or two. You may do link building through directories but you need to make sure that Penguin finds it natural else you are in for trouble. Think of it if SEO were really dead would there be any SEO firms living today. Even today Google loves links: remember Google introduced Google's Penguin update but did not out-date the PR formula. As long as page rank exists Google traffic can be very easily stolen!
Link farms created so much of trouble for Google that it had to tell its Penguin algorithm in very strict words: any such links and the site traffic shall fall crashing down to the ground. This has happened and many webmasters complained to their SEO contractors that their site traffic suddenly fell down. The results were sometimes so devastating that a site traffic of thousands of visitors came crashing down to merely a few hundreds. And yes I have seen the graphs. The real problem behind the sudden traffic fall was two back-links coming from unwanted sources where the bad guys always wandered. Once the links were removed from Google index using their newly released link removal Disavow tool the site traffic got higher. Doesn't that sound interesting.
This is a long known secret: Google does not like you to use the same anchor text in all the links you build. The good part is if the number of links pointing to your site are many Google Penguin ignores this fact. Remember that the primary keyword should be used for building links only for 50% of your anchor text. You just need to give a variety of anchor texts and keep the targeted anchor text to be pointing to your site for only 50% of the total number of back-links pointing to your site. Never give the Penguin a chance else your site is sure to bleed.
In simple words Google's Penguin update expects that you should not do whatever the black-hat search engine optimization experts are doing. Stay safe if you depend on a single site. The bad guys can build as many number of sites as they want without getting busted by Google. Their efforts are short and their success is also short. Penguin does punish the bad guys but by then the bad guys steal their part of the show. Think of a new site with no posts ranking 1st on the first page of Google and Google has to manually remove it out of its index when someone reminds them about it. The Penguin has done more harm to the good guys than the bad ones. Let us just hope that things get better and we get to see a smarter Penguin in the near future.
Penguin punishes easily available links:
Easily available links which can change Google's search results and give you a chance to feature your blog in the top organic search results are filtered out by Google Penguin update. Gone are the days where we just wrote an article and submitted it to Digg and Boom: our posts would appear on the second or third page of Google. Do that now and you find your post nowhere in the top hundred if you search for the search term. This has happened with me: submit the page to too many social bookmarking sites and the page is gone. At the most you may submit your site to two or three social networking sites. Because it is Google and it wants to keep its social networking site up and running Penguin allows you to upload your link on Google+. Penguin has no problem with that. If you submit your post URL to more than three social bookmarking sites Penguin may throw you out of Google's organic search results list.
Penguin knows where the links are easily available:
Blog directories, social bookmarking sites, social networking sites, sites with blog posts and so many other places allow the webmasters to get some good amount of free links to boost their site visibility and site traffic. And Google's Penguin really hates that from the bottom of its heart. Penguin can harm you if it finds that you are building too many back-links to your site from any of these sources. But you may heave a sigh of relief: Penguin is here only to see whether the links are coming the normal way or have just boomeranged in a day or two. You may do link building through directories but you need to make sure that Penguin finds it natural else you are in for trouble. Think of it if SEO were really dead would there be any SEO firms living today. Even today Google loves links: remember Google introduced Google's Penguin update but did not out-date the PR formula. As long as page rank exists Google traffic can be very easily stolen!
Penguin punishes you even if you have one illegal link:
Link farms created so much of trouble for Google that it had to tell its Penguin algorithm in very strict words: any such links and the site traffic shall fall crashing down to the ground. This has happened and many webmasters complained to their SEO contractors that their site traffic suddenly fell down. The results were sometimes so devastating that a site traffic of thousands of visitors came crashing down to merely a few hundreds. And yes I have seen the graphs. The real problem behind the sudden traffic fall was two back-links coming from unwanted sources where the bad guys always wandered. Once the links were removed from Google index using their newly released link removal Disavow tool the site traffic got higher. Doesn't that sound interesting.
This Penguin can read anchor text:
This is a long known secret: Google does not like you to use the same anchor text in all the links you build. The good part is if the number of links pointing to your site are many Google Penguin ignores this fact. Remember that the primary keyword should be used for building links only for 50% of your anchor text. You just need to give a variety of anchor texts and keep the targeted anchor text to be pointing to your site for only 50% of the total number of back-links pointing to your site. Never give the Penguin a chance else your site is sure to bleed.
Google's Penguin update is prepared to punish the bad guys:
In simple words Google's Penguin update expects that you should not do whatever the black-hat search engine optimization experts are doing. Stay safe if you depend on a single site. The bad guys can build as many number of sites as they want without getting busted by Google. Their efforts are short and their success is also short. Penguin does punish the bad guys but by then the bad guys steal their part of the show. Think of a new site with no posts ranking 1st on the first page of Google and Google has to manually remove it out of its index when someone reminds them about it. The Penguin has done more harm to the good guys than the bad ones. Let us just hope that things get better and we get to see a smarter Penguin in the near future.