Has your website suddenly dropped in the search engine results over the last week? Then you might have been affected by the latest Google algorithm update – Penguin 2.0.
Penguin 2.0 was released on 22nd May, and it is still early days to give a precise breakdown of what the update has covered.
You have to bear in mind as you are researching and trying to recover your rank that it will take time for SEO experts to collect the necessary data to determine exactly what Penguin 2.0 has targeted.
Why you shouldn’t be worried unless you’re a Black Hat artist
In theory, Penguin 2.0 is designed to target Black Hat SEO practitioners – people who use loopholes in Google’s algorithm to make their site rank highly without actually being an authoritative, relevant or useful website
Have you optimised or over-optimised?
Google’s algorithms are not perfect (that is one of the reasons why SEO exists). Most savvy business owners know that they need to think about keywords they want to be found for, and to use SEO knowledge to make sure they get onto page 1 for them.
However, Penguin 2.0 updates could hurt your website if Google thinks that your website is ‘over-optimised’ in some way – it could be thinking that it looks spammy and punish your site (even if you are perfectly legitimate and your site is user friendly).
What to do if you think you’ve been affected?
First steps
1) Look over your Google Analytics in detail – make sure the drop happened after 22nd of May and look to see if there are any obvious clues as to what you can do to fix your ranking
2) Check Google Webmaster Tools –
- Check & fix any crawl errors
- Check all elements under ‘Health’
- Check the quality of the links coming to your site. Are spammers linking to your site? Use the disavow tool to disavow these links.
Any changes will take up to a few weeks to come through in the rankings. A few simple changes could make a big difference so you could wait to see what effect it has.
Next steps
- Contact SEO experts and ask for advice
- Read up on Penguin 2.0 as the information continues to roll out.
- Make sure that you are following SEO best practice guidelines
More articles on Penguin 2.0
There is a lot of vague and contradictory information floating about at the moment. As a general rule of thumb, the more recently the article was updated the more you can trust the validity of the data behind it.
- http://www.chillizone.com/blog/internet-marketing/penguin-2-0-is-live-are-you-prepared/
- http://www.dotponto.com/online-marketing/seo-tips/penguin-2-0-and-penguin-4-rolling-out-together/
- http://moz.com/blog/penguin-2-were-you-jarred-and-or-jolted
- http://searchengineland.com/penguin-2-0-losers-porn-sites-game-sites-big-brands-like-dish-com-the-salvation-army-160744
- http://kaiserthesage.com/post-penguin-link-building/
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