As you are probably aware Google is and has always upgraded its algorithm to improve the searcher’s experience. Over the last year or so we have seen two major upgrades that have later been regularly updated. I am of course talking about Panda and Penguin.

Matt Cutts – Google Software Engineer

Matt Cutts – Google Software Engineer

With these changes constantly being made lots of SEO techniques that were okay a year ago are now potentially harmful to your website. This is not a big problem if the Panda update has affected your website because this will simply be a case of amending and improving your website content and structure.

However the Penguin updates are not quite as simple because these focus on the links coming into (and out of) your website. So this isn’t a simple change but a complete analysis of how your website is viewed and linked to across the web.

Penguin Update – What’s changed

More of the same. Google is looking into improving the methods they use to stop adverts passing equity, link spammers, keyword anchor text stuffing and overall Black Hat SEO techniques. However they are also going to penalise websites that have paid directories and article submissions.

Paid Directories

Paid directories have always been a problem and from day one we have always recommended that people don’t pay for links because it was obvious that this would hinder progress in the future. However a lot of directories started off with free listings such as www.ezilon.com but now charge for submissions, so we are not quite sure yet how Google is going to monitor this.

Article Websites

Back in the day article submission websites seemed great. You could send your well written content across a wide range of websites for all to enjoy and for your time and effort you would have links back to your website to let everyone know who wrote this great article. However over time these websites have become smothered in ads and articles that only exist to get a link back to a website. So it is understandable why Google are penalising these and it looks like the select few (the select few being thousands) have ruined this for all of us.

Link Structure

It also appears that Google is looking deeper into the structure of the links coming into a website. So if you have a large number of low quality links coming into your website or simply a few high quality links and nothing else then Google is deeming this as bad and wants to see a nice even spread of links. Showing a natural reach across the web.

domain-authority

Here we can see an ideal situation where there are a few links with high domain authority (between 60 and 90). The majority are between 20 and 60 and there are a few low quality (below 20). This shows an even spread across the web.

Keyword Stuffing

We have also seen Penguin look into both links to inner pages and keyword stuffing. So if there are 100 links coming into an inner page with the exact same phrase then Google is deeming this as unnatural or even spammy.

anchor-text

Above is an even spread of Anchor text for links (with Anchor Text 1) being a website domain name.

Again this is something that was okay in the past to a certain degree (there would be obvious variations on the keywords so they wouldn’t be exactly the same). However due to spammers and Black Hat SEO specialists there is a lot of collateral damage here.

Coming Soon To Google

If you haven’t already, sign up for our newsletter because soon we will write a post to help you if you have been affected by Google Penguin 2.0