Welcome Google Penguin Update
Based on the past google update schedule, it's likely to happen again in short time. During the last update in April, many webmasters' sites got affected. This update is well known as google penguin update which is the next generation technology to deal with web spam and low quality sites. We did not pay too much attention to this google tech since there's not any effect to our site, since the next update is coming soon, I would like to discuss it with real experience and share some ideas on how to co-work with it.
Google penguin introduction
Google penguin was firstly announced on April 24, 2012 when the last google update happened. It's all about a google algorithm update which is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO techniques.
How does google penguin help with SEO?
From google reports, the penguin affected approximately 3.1% of search queries in English. What does that mean? Basically the google cleaned at least 3% search results and made the search more accurate for people's requests. From the google's algorithm history, every update will force webmasters to follow their optimization guidance and improve their website quality. From the google panda to google penguin, it's actually improvement of google and the entire industry.
At the meanwhile, it's good news for people who are doing right SEO. Maybe your website ranked low because your competitors were using black hat SEO tricks on their websites. However, the penguin update simply dropped most of their rankings from search result and you will surprisely see that your keywords ranking got improved!
Don't be confused that penguin update is to abandon SEO. On the other hand, SEO is recommended by google and there's guidance on how to. It's designed to deal with those websites that are over optimized or doing bad ways.
How to recover if your site is affected by google penguin?
When your site got penalized by google penguin, the first though in mind would be how to recover the lost rankings. But before you make any change, make sure to understand where the problem is and how google think about, or else we're just doing work for nothing. Here're some important rules on how google penguin recognizes a quality website
Authority, Content, Natural Backlinks are actually the core ideas for white hat SEO. From the last update, the points are almost golden rules for google. It tells every webmaster to pay more attention on website content building and attrack more natual backlinks for better ranking. If our site are targeted to provide honest and useful info to visitors, the site authority will be improved automatically and potential high ranking is expected. In case our sites get penalized by google penguin, following actions would be useful to recover the lost.
Remove pages ready for search engines only — At the meanwhile, make sure your sitemap and robots file is correct and up to date, make sure to remove duplicate content and add more authority content.
Remove unrelated links to your website topic — Such links will simply decrease your site authority. Such case always happen on link selling sites. If you're selling links, you might stop now.
Content is still king — If you want to get recovered from penguin effect, content building would be the most important task. Fresh and user friendly content will help with the site ranking quickly.
Do not use low quality link directories — If your site is always submited to such directories for SEO purpose, stop it now.
