There has been a lot of talk for over SEO optimization in the past few months and that Google Algorithm update is here as Penguin update. The update has hit many sites and they have suffered by losing their traffic.
Whenever Google make any changes in their algorithms it creates a buzz and with this update many blogs have lost their search engine rankings.
SEO optimization is good but using those practices to gain unfair advantage or using paid resources to gain advantage in search results can be harmful now. So how should you adjust your link building with this Google Penguin update.
Here are few resources which will help you understand and take corrective action. The first thing which you need to understand is how Google Search works and how they incorporate human raters in their algorithm. Let’s hear it from Matt Cutts:
How Google Search Works:
[youtube src=”KyCYyoGusqs”]
How Google include human raters in Search Algorithms:
[youtube src=”nmo3z8pHX1E”]
1. Google Penguin Update
The update is targeted to support white-hat SEO techniques or promote no SEO optimization for your sites. According to Google you should be working on creating content for readers rather than for search engines.
Hear it from the horse’s mouth: Another step to reward high-quality sites
Providing a great user experience is always a goal for Google and with this update they have made it clear that they want to provide user friendly results rather than search engine friendly ones.
Read More at: The Google Penguin Update
2. Things Which Can Help You Recover From Penguin Update
The first thing which is human nature is panic of unknown. If you feel some panic than go ahead and read the below article from SEOmoz.
Read More at: Penguins, Pandas, and Panic at the Zoo
There can be chances that you have lost traffic after the update and may want to check what are the recovery option you have. Many people are searching with ways they can fight back with the drop of traffic.
There can be many ways you can remove your dependency on Google and generate traffic for your business.
Read More at: 17 Ways SMBs Can Survive the Google Penguin Update Effect
But does this means that old SEO techniques are dead and you need to start over. It might not be true, it is just that you need to act smarter.
Read more at: Penguin Analysis: SEO Isn’t Dead, But You Need to Act Smarter
So have you got any impact and what are you doing to recover from this Google Penguin update?
Nice info. Thanks:) But i can’t understand theat why google is given sweet candies to sites like live strong and ehow. These sites have many 100 words articles accross the web n they are still on the top. while on other hand, sites likve about.com, buzzle are going down.:banghead:
Drop of 30% in search traffic since Penguin, looks like we have to go back to the drawing board and reoptimise the site for users.
The recent Penguin update creates a major headache for some web masters and marketers online due to the use of black hat techniques and spamming. This is true that the use of quality and relevant link can save your website by the panelized.
I appreciate some tips and ideas that you have shared on how to recover from penguin updates. Thanks a lot for sharing this here.
It scares me a bit to realize how much control Google actually has. I know many people who were hit very hard with Penguin. A large portion of income was lost.
Yes, they control a major portion of net..and almost everything in search engines…there are few who are trying to compete but still far behind…
Hi Sanjiv,
One of my site badly hit due to penguin update. This post will help me a lot to fight back again. Now I am concentrating on authority link building like web 2.0 blog posting, Guest posting, Wiki site posting, Press Releases, blog commenting, social bookmarking etc.
Thanks brother,
Abhijit
Hi Abhijit, Many people has hit hard by this update and there is lot of effort which has gone…Hope your site will recover soon….
Dear sirMy name is Javid and I launched my site about 8 months ago. (www.apam.ir)We started with 30 articles in a day and we have 7thousands of them by now.Lately (about first of December) I have read in some websites and weblogs that if you make the tags No index you will obtain much better traffic from Google, so with Robot and No index tags I removed our tags.It was about December 20 that there were no tags from our site in Google anymore.Then about 2 days later our visit and ranking fell down suddenly.I also took a few photos that show our decline in visiting in December 25 and December 26.And there were no change in this situation for about one month, for instance we publish an article for the first time and after some hours the other websites which copied our article get a better ranking than us and apparently all of our input is from Google images.We faced a great fell in word searching either.Now here is the question, what can I do with this?Is it happened because of making No index all of the tags in my site?Is it happen because of Google Penguin?We had about 10 thousands tags that were removed from Google even though it is normal to have so many tags in Persian websites.I have sent a revised form but it is not answered yet.Some weblogs says Matt cutts recommended to launch a new siteHow if I set up a new domain and take a back up from my site there?What is your suggestion for me?If you need any more information please just let me know.I have find your blog from Google and looking forward for your answering.Here is some pictures from us in Google Webmaster ToolsI added too our site name in all of titles of the articles.Our content were like this before:TitleBut I’ve changed it to:Article Title- Title of SiteAnd 6-7thousands a more of these changesmy droped trafick from google is Quarter or Third
I would not suggest to go for a new domain, you need to rebuild the trust..If you think its because of Tags, you can change it back to dofollow and in a short time Google will again index everything..You can check that way….If you think it is because of penguin, you can start looking into webmaster tool and see if your keywords has lost significant rankings than you need to change the link building strategies…
My site’s recently badly affected by Google Panda. Very tired to see my efforts broken. So thanks for your tips, I’ll try to see if there’s any change.
Sure, Do share your findings with us…
Great post Sanjeev. Loved the youtube vids, i hadnt seen those before!
I believe that Google is looking to reward positive (read unique and engaging content) over backlinked content. However i see that the trend is different depending on what part of the globe you are from.
Our company based in NZ have dealt with several companies who were penalised in the penguin update. 3 were for keyword stuffing, the other had their links removed. Tellingly the backlink problem was from .co.uk tlds.
It seems that across Australasia the online industry it us filled with ‘keyword = good’ amateur webmasters. This has lead to poor quality sites and results, which makes justifying the good work SEO professionals do, that much harder.
I hope that this update scares the “keyword = good’ mentality out of the industry, but im fearful for all those companies who have no idea about the ongoing management of their site and the penguin effects that they havent even noticed yet.
In terms of black hat backlinkers, i applaude Googles efforts to fix the issue!
Thanks for the post!
Thanks Jeff, Its a great attempt to recover from black-hat SEO techniques. We still need to see how successful this update go but looks promising.
Great post, and I’m just going to continuing writing quality content and not stress too much about the rest.
A best way to ignore all the development surrounding Penguin…and it is also a best way to increase rankings after penguin update…
I’ve decided that I will concentrate on content for my bog for the most part. That’s the part I like anyway! SEO is important to those who have a business, but I just like to write. Sally
I agree Sally, concentrating on the content is the best thing after all blogs are for readers not for bots…
Many big sites are hit hard by this changes, so these updates can be an opportunity to rank for some profitable keyword which seem to be impossible before.
I love the idea of finding positives from everything…Its a good opportunity if we can grab it…
Sanjeev, i loved this post, It was really VERY helpful for me, as I have been trying hard to read and explore about the ways to get out of the Penguin disaster for few of my friends.
What I really loved about this post is that you explained it from the SE”s point of view.. 90% of the content floating around the web says that build ethical links and blah blah..
Thank you mate!
Thanks Mat, I always believe that if we understand the process it will be easy to follow it. So I always try to explain the way things works and than solution…Gald you like the post..
My website has not get more effect by Penguin and I don’t need to recover website from Google Penguin but I will start to increase natural traffic on website because only link building technique provides bad effect to website. Thanks for sharing recover techniques about Google Penguin.
I think most of the websites got banned or penalized because of using same anchor text for all of their incoming a backlinks, one must build some backlinks with general keywords as well to make things diversify a bit.
One of my website is hit by Penguin and I was looking to get my site back. This post will really help me now, I am expecting it come back within 2-3 weeks, lets have the fingers crossed.
Best of luck…hope you will recover soon…
Hi Sanjeev,
My site was also hit by the update, while I am thinking how and why I am working some updates on my site so it won’t happen again. I am focusing more on readers rather than SEO now, thanks for the tip 🙂
I want to suggest to all the readers and the SEO people – you can recover from its SLAP by using authentic SEO method. Don’t use keyword stuffing, relevant link building, avoid hidden text, relevant blog commenting – don’t use any gimpy words, avoid link buy-sell – by using these methods you can recover from the effect of Penguin
I think with Penguin Update, it’s important to diversify the anchor text we use on our content as well as on the anchor text we use for our link building by also using partial match keywords. and not just the exact keywords.
Hey Sanjeev
Indeed Google difficult the SEO and marketers work with latest changed specially over optimized sites and link farmed optimized sites hit back by Google also impact traffic impact for bloggers only content quality give great impact on Penguin Google give importance to quality not quantity.
Hi!
I think, optimizing is really great a solution for getting the best… But over optimizing is not the good either…
I can just imagine how hard it is to see your efforts going away but consider it a great learning…diversify your link building and traffic generation strategies. Thanks for sharing.
I am not that familiar with google penguin update but thank you for the information and the video here as well..
This update is more like a joke. I am seeing parked domains on the first pages for certain keywords.
It stinks to lose all the sweat work after the latest Google update, but at least Google is promoting content made for users rather than search engines. In a way, the push for white-hat SEO and no-SEO is also good for those of us in the business of making content: It’s less about the quest for the search engine holy grail and more about creating the content that people can share and enjoy. And what’s more, sitting down to write up good information can be cheaper than monthly subscriptions to some of the popular ‘link blasting’ software out there.
One of my sites was affected by Google Panda a couple months ago, but I started coming out with newer and better content. And I’m finding ways to diversify my traffic, and it seems the traffic is starting to increase this month. I’m slowly, but surely taking steps to find ways around this unforunate ordeal.
Hi John, Many sites are hit by this update and it has changed a way we were doing the SEO…Now quality is more important than quantity. I have few pages which has started ranking on top 5 results in google with 4-5 quality backlinks and good content which was hard to imagine before…So hopefully this will bring positive change…
Hope you will also recover fast and start getting traffic back…
Thanks for your posts on Penguin update. My blog is just new and I hope it’ll be good with the Penguin update. Trying to do all the things correctly.
It’s Good time to streamline your strategy with the Penguin, you might get lot of information over net regarding old techniques but most of them are out now, quality content and links are in rather than quantity of content and links….
Hello Sanjeev, I was searching for Penguin update related article in the net, suddenly I have found your article. 1st of all I must appreciate your writing ability – great write up with some awesome tips and video clips. Thanks for sharing. Now coming to the point – Penguin Update – the latest update of Google. I want to suggest to all the readers and the SEO people – you can recover from its SLAP by using authentic SEO method. Don’t use keyword stuffing, relevant link building, avoid hidden text, relevant blog commenting – don’t use any gimpy words, avoid link buy-sell – by using these methods you can recover from the effect of Penguin. best of luck and keep it up Sanjeev!
Hi Steve, Thanks for liking the post..I agree with you now we need to look for SEO methods and make sure we avoid excess use and keyword stuffing.
I was one of the webmasters that were hit with this Penguin update. Some of my blogs were eliminated by Google for some reasons, that’s why I started checking my blogs carefully especially the content and the comments. I hope I wont get hit again. By the way thanks for the information from this post.
Hi Kristine, I am really sorry to hear that..There are many blogs who has got a hit and trying yo recover. Now we need to give special attention to link building techniques and the way you promote your blog…I would hope that it won’t happen for you again..
Thanks Sanjeev its really very useful for who are affected by Penguin.
I would love to share this with my friends.
Thanks for the Video too.
Glad you like it and thanks for the tweet.
Unfortunately my blog is hit by Pengiun and now i am trying my way out from this trouble. But the traffic is going downwards day by day and it seems that all my hard work is gone now.
Hi Mohsin, I can just imagine how hard it is to see your efforts going away but consider it a great learning…diversify your link building and traffic generation strategies…
Google updates hit a co-worker’s blog really hard. It is actually a nice blog but he had overused SEO and link-building.. He learned his lesson the hard way.
Also I think you might have a grammar mistake “What to do If you hit by Penguin”.
Thank you!
Thanks Jim for pointing that out, Corrected that..Many people are facing issues with over optimization and it will take time to recover…Its time to provide value then links…
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