There was a time when Google updates used to come out at infrequent intervals, and websites had more or less stable ranking in the Search Engine Rankings. Well that’s a thing of bygone era now. Today Google sprouts updates every few days. You have to just have a look at the Google Webmaster blog to know how dynamic Google Algorithm is. Here is the latest.
Penguin 2.0 Update: 22nd May 2013
What is it?
Penguin 2.0 is a follow up on Penguin 1.0 released in May 2012. Penguin 1.0 was termed as Webspam update. It was designed to eliminate spammy link building. Penguin 2.0 takes this ahead and it has delved deeper into your link profile. Also keep in mind that Penguin 2.0 is not a manual penalty, it’s a entire algorithmic update, which makes it a tougher beast to take on.
Why am I hit?
While analysis is still on to better understand Penguin 2.0, if you have been hit by it, here a list of couple of probable causes that might have got you down:
Problem 1: Heavy usage of exact match anchor text, also referred to as ‘Money keywords’
Check it: Get your anchor text distribution figures. Compare this against industry average/ few of your competitor’s data. If you are overshooting the industry average on ‘money keywords’ you have your culprit.
Solution: Build quality links with more generic anchor text. Instead of using exact match keyword, use
- Related words/ phrases from your industry
- Brand name/ Business name
- Website URL
- Common words like ‘check this link’, ‘my website’
Problem 2: Poor quality Links
Check it : Download your website’s backlinks from as many tools as possible to get maximum number of links. Analyze these links for:
- Topic of the website/ page – Stay far from porn, gambling, exclusive SEO only sites, Offensive content, slanderous content
- Health of the website/page – Stay away from pages with malware, spyware and other infections
- Indexation – Get rid of links from pages no longer indexed
- Relevance of the website/page to your website/ niche
- Quality of other outbound links on this website/page
- Pagerank of the website/page
Solution: Make a list of the poor quality links, get working on them. Contact the webmasters of the sites linking to you, and request them to takedown the link. 5-10% of such request will be honored. Upload the remaining links to Google disavow tool and wait for them to respond. Make sure when uploading the disavow request ,that you are disavowing the entire domain, this will get your request processed faster. Meanwhile get on with building relevant high quality links from websites that inspire trust and confidence.
Problem 3: Clean homepage, fudged up inner pages
Check it: Check the anchor text and inbounds links for the inner pages of your website. Many website had a clean homepage but messy inner pages. While the Penguin 1.0 focused more on homepage, Penguin 2.0 has moved in deeper and the link profile of your website’s inner pages is equally important.
Solution: Clean up the mess. If the inbound link quality is low/ spammy refer to solution for problem 2 For anchor text problem with inbound links refer to solution for problem 1
Bottomline:
Penguin 2.0 is a algorithmic update, this means that Google algorithm has rearranged your website automatically on the SERP’s depending on how your website scored on the Penguin 2.0 algo changes. If it were a manual penalty, you could have done the clean up act, and then a manual review would have satisfied Google and got you back on track. However for a algo update line Penguin 2.0, only clean up of the problem area will not help you recover. You need to:
- Get on with building a healthy link profile.
- Whatever is the problem are, clean it up and then take action to strengthen the problem area, by building the right type of links.
- Build & strengthen your social signals. These will get your website genuine natural links
- Build quality content, which will attract comments and sharing by others in your niche
Older Updates 2012:
Of the bunch of updates and changes Google has rolled out this year, we have picked up a few, which were specifically rolled out by Google to tackle certain black hat SEO techniques that were being used indiscriminately.
So let’s have a look at what these black hat techniques are, and the updates rolled out to target them.
Google Update | Black Hat Technique |
Penguin Update![]() |
Cloaking– Refers to the practice of serving different content to user and Search engine, with the intent to deceive the Search engine Example:1. Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users.2. Serving different content to search engines than to users.3. Using JavaScript but not providing its textual content |
Penguin Update![]() |
Doorway Pages Indicates serving low quality content for different keywords to users with the intent of finally leading the users to 1 main website. Example:1. Doorway Page 1 – Keyword – Homemade bread in Texas2. Doorway Page 2 – Keyword – Homemade bread in California3.Doorway Page 3 – Keyword – Homemade bread in Kentucky
All the 3 pages will have nearly same content, written in poor format. And all the pages will have a link pointing towards 1 main website. |
Penguin Update![]() |
Keyword Stuffing– Using the keywords indiscriminately, with the intent to increase its density and manipulate the page rank of the website.Example: Bread Recipes website targeting keyword – Homemade bread Content – Homemade bread are the freshest bread. Using homemade bread allows for better health. Homemade bread can be prepared easily at home using ingredients available at home. Basic baking skills go long way in making the perfect homemade bread. |
Penguin Update![]() |
Link Farming– Paid/Reciprocal links created with the intention to manipulate Page Rank Example:
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Panda Update![]() |
Poor Content Quality: Content that did not fit in with the Google content guidelines. Example:
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Page Layout Update![]() |
Stuffing advertisements above the fold– In this context fold refers to the normal browser window size. While this technique is not strictly a black hat one, it does detract from the user experience. Hence Google brought out this update to improve user experience.
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Some other Black Hat techniques, which are used commonly, but have no specific Google update associated with them in recent times. |
Hidden Text/ Link – Using such text or links to build links or stuff keywords results in poor user experience, and is considered bad by Google.Examples:
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Meta Keyword Stuffing – Using Keyword in the right manner is crucial. Exploiting Meta descriptions and meta data by indiscriminately using keywords in them to gain higher ranking is considered violation of Google guidelines. Example: A bread recipe site’s meta data
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Sneaky JavaScript Redirects – Use of JavaScript with the intent to deceive search engines by showing a page to SE and taking the user to another page via the redirect.Example:
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We will continue this series with a few more crucial updates that you need to keep in touch with. And since Matt Cutts had mentioned that Google expects to roll out approx 500 updates this year. So there lots more in store for all of us to explore as Google keeps up with its changes, updates and tweaking.
Related:
How to get most out of Panda Update
Things to know about Penguin Update
Page Layout Algorithm and Penalties
Cloaking – Black Hat Technique
Doorway Pages – Understanding them
We will continue this series with a few more crucial updates that you need to keep in touch with. And since Matt Cutts had mentioned that Google expects to roll out approx 500 updates this year. So there lots more in store for all of us to explore as Google keeps up with its changes, updates and tweaking.
Hi there Shashank , I was playing with google and just searched SEO. I was amazed to see your website on the 1st page because I keep on checking google with commonly used terms. However the basic reason I am leaving a comment is to get your view on “Does p0rn websites backlinks hurt SEO or help SEO ?”