Nowadays, aside from the famous Google Panda babies, taking the rounds of SEO issues and concerns is Google’s newest ranking algorithm change, is the Penguin Update.
What is Penguin Update?
It’s an automatic algorithm filter designed to target those sites violating Google’s existing quality guidelines (those utilizing black hat techniques) by decreasing their search engine rankings.
“5 SEO Steps to Take to Protect your Site from More Penguin Updates”
Consider taking the following steps for you to find out if your site was hit, repair the damage or protect your site in the future from more Penguin Updates:
STEP 1: Conduct a Link Audit
Because Penguin really targets sites that have low-quality link portfolios with targeted anchor text, so it is essential to take a look at your link portfolio.
- Make sure to check anchor text distribution, link type distribution, domain authority, page authority distributions. This will help you find out what is currently going on in your site and where you should be going.
- Make use of Open Site Explorer / SEOMOZ Tool to provide yourself with an immediate snapshot of what’s going on. These are great tools in digging into some of the really spammy links.
STEP 2: Consider Anchor Text Diversity
According to most SEO Experts, over use of exact match and keyword heavy anchor text was a big cause for Penguin penalties in a lot of sites. So make sure to vary and mix up your exact match anchor text with non-exact keywords (by adding descriptive words on your anchor text) as much as possible. Making your anchor text appear as natural as possible is the key to defeating the Penguin.
STEP 3: Utilize Ethical SEO Strategies (Build Quality Links)
Google flat out forbids us to do link schemes as stated in their Webmaster Guidelines. So make sure that your outbound links on your site ask:
- come from respected brands as link exchanges and link networks are considered by Google as bad sources as well as any paid links on unrelated or low-quality websites
- provide value to users as Google’s series of updates is all about providing great user-experience
STEP 4: Continue Monitoring Your Traffic and Keyword Rankings
Here’s how to monitor your website:
- be alert for traffic drops with Google Analytics custom alerts
- Monitor the pages you noindex with meta tags or robots.txt
Here are also some more tools to help you keep an eye out for problems:
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Google Analytics Debugger
STEP 5: Keep up with the Latest SEO Trends
Knowing the latest SEO trends will provide you insights on what to do next to improve your site as well as make you alert on possible changes that can impact your site. So, read on SEO news and be alert of changes, updates and advices.
Here are also some reliable SEO News Blog most Search Engine Optimization Firms follow:
- SEOMOz Blog
- Search Engine Land
- SEO Round Table
- Google Webmaster Central Blog
- You may also read this article about 5 Common Issues Why Your Site is Affected by Penguin Update
Posted by Premium SEO Solutions:
“Has your site been affected by Penguin Update? We encourage you to take our SEO Audit for FREE to let us help you identify issues that may be preventing your site from ranking well in search engines! You may evaluate our SEO Portfolio and see how we deliver measurable results for our clients.
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