A simple guide to the new Google update called Penguin

Those of you out there with an interest in keeping your site performing well on Google will probably have seen the announcement of the new update called Penguin on the 24th April.

Penguin is really a fine tune of the previous major update called Panda, seems more like Edinburgh Zoo every minute.

Panda was created to stop content farms and duplicate content getting good search engine rankings and to allow the original creators of the content to get the benefit of their work. That’s just the gist but basically Google is trying to reward those of us creating good quality content by giving us good rankings.

As those of you that have spoken to me will know content and keywords and my “banging my drum” subjects.  Google’s role in life is to deliver us as users the results that are most relevant to our search, and it can only do that if we are creating good quality content based on keyword phrases that are being search for.

If your site has seen a drop in its ranking over the last 3 weeks you might want to review the pages that have dropped based on the information below.

SUMMARY

It’s hard to know exactly what Google have changed but here’s what our research has shown are the issues Google are penalising:

• Internal links. If you are using internal links on your site (we all are and should be) based on keywords then you should consider adding more variety to the keywords you are using as the anchor text.
• Internal links. Keep keyword linking down to around 60% of your overall links.  Use words like “Click here” or the URL for the other 40%.
• Social relevance now has a higher importance to Google. If you are in a business that benefits from social media now is the time to take this more seriously.
• Web sites that are over optimised will be penalised.  This means if you have done any of the following:
  • Stuffing keywords in your titles
  • Overusing keywords in your headings
  • Overusing keywords in your content
  • Content that is designed for Google and not people
  • Hiding keywords in text that can’t be seen
  • Using ALT tags that are keyword stuffed
  • Inbound links from poor quality sources like link farms will have a detrimental effect on your ranking. Google has removed many of these link farms used by cheap generic link building services from its index.

ACTIONS FOR YOU

1)      Review your web site for the points above and rectify them immediately.

2)      Start to create new content for our site.  This can be new pages or blog posts.

3)      Consider Article Marketing to develop good quality inbound links.

Need help?  Just give me a call on 07860 659076 or email me at alan.tomkins@alpha-tango.co.uk