Google has once again updated its algorithms. Penguin 3.0 has officially waddled into the internet marketing world to chagrin of SEOs and webmasters everywhere…
What’s new with Penguin 3.0?
Ever since the first version of Penguin rolled out in 2012, Google has been on a continuous mission to eliminate spam in their search results. As the newest version starts to make waves worldwide over the next couple of weeks, a lot of internet marketers are wondering what new practices are going to come along with it.
The biggest speculation on how Penguin 3.0 will be changing the game is that it will be doing one of its frequent “refreshers.” This means if your site has been part of black-hat SEO tricks, you’re going to have to wait until they update again to make changes. The last time a refresher happened was October of last year with Penguin 2.1. And it affected about 1% of all Google queries. 1% doesn’t sound that bad but in the grand scheme of things that means millions of pages and countless businesses were damaged after the ranking systems changed.
However, if you were one of the companies that saw devastating change in October 2013, you may see significant improvements now. Unfortunately, it may take a little bit of time before you begin to notice. Gradually, Google will start lifting the ranks of sites that have since cleaned up their practices in the last update. But, be warned; if you haven’t yet cleaned up your site you may see an even worse dive in ratings. Site owners should keep a close eye on their analytics during the next few weeks to see how the new algorithm might change their rankings.
Overall, Penguin 3.0 shouldn’t cause much of an impact. But in general, it is going to promote additional measures to earn links as opposed to build links.
Major Things to Keep Avoiding
- Low-quality back links: If spammy sites are linking to you, it will put your rating lower just as when quality sites link to you it will boost your rank.
- Anchor-text too frequently: If you’re constantly linking back to the same keyword every time you post it, Google finds that a bit spammy.
- Paid links: This has been a major thing Google has been battling since they started using these algorithms. Paying for links will make your ranking plummet.
- Blog networks: Paying to guest blog is basically the same thing as paying for a link…
What are the best practices against Penguin 3.0?
If you want your site to fair well in light of the new Google updates simply don’t over-optimize for keywords and stay away from spammy practices in general. The best thing your site can do is produce frequent quality content that people will want to read. Bribing people for links is no way to practice these days. Instead, just do some organic outreach to bloggers and keep up with producing the kind of content that people will naturally want to share socially.
You can explore more of Google’s webmaster guidelines here.
As we see how Penguin 3.0 starts to shape SEO practices, I wish anyone that was penalized in the past gets redemption this time around.
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