Google Penguin Update ? You might be thinking, Google must be an animal lover as they keep most of their Algorithm Updates name as that of Animal Names. The most renowned and threatening name is Panda. You must got goosebumps by hearing this name  It’s a nightmare to all the Bloggers and Webmasters. Google Panda Update is a change to the Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of low-quality sites, and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

Now in the recent pastime, Google came up with their new algorithm update which was named as Google Penguin Update. This update was launched on April 24, 2012 with the purpose to encounter “Web Spam” in the SERP’s.

When we search for a typical keyword we find a bunch of results in the search page and from which half contain no information or don’t have any content on the topic. But how did they rank so high ? It is because they have strong internal keywords in their blog for the specific search query. In order to minimize these spammed results, this update was introduced.

Google Penguin Update will be applicable to all the languages simultaneously and approximately it will affect 3% of the search queries. But anyhow the percentage could be higher in those languages in which more Web Spam is used.

How to know if you’re a Victim ?

Well, that’s a big question to find out whether you have been affected by the Google Penguin Update or not. As the update was instantaneous on April 24th, 2012 then the best way to check out is through your Google Analytics Tool. Always remember that getting affected by the Google Algorithm Updates doesn’t only harm your blog but can also reward your blog.Simply check the traffic stats of your blog from April 24th 2012. If it’s sudden fall then you’re badly affected by the update. Try to follow the tips which are provided below after the jump. If you find it increasing then Congrats! You have been rewarded due to fair performance by following all good practices which made you a deserving one in front of Google 

Tips to Survive from Google Penguin Update

1. Eliminate SPAM

When you write your post, you include some or many outbound links to particular keywords. This is good for SEO only when you confirm where are you linking too. Always avoid text links to pages with the exact keyword for positioning.

Actually it doesn’t looks natural. And yes, Eliminate what you believe could be considered as SPAM by Google. I hope you can judge it yourself!

2. Avoiding Excess KEYWORDS

Many people have a habit of adding more than 3-4 keywords into their posts. And that too long term keywords which is a bad practice. Google will jot your post down to the end if you’re using excessive keywords. It is advisable to target one particular keyword, may be short or long term and maintain a keyword density of 2% i.e. the keyword should appear 10-12 times inside the post. But always eliminate the excess junk from your page.

3. Take Down PLAGIARIZED Posts

Plagiarism is the practice to take someone else’s work or ideas and passing or publishing them off as one’s own. In simple it’s called copying. Remember ? The thing we used to do in exams !  But doing the same over the internet on your blog can penalize you a lot.

“DO NOT PUBLISH COPIED CONTENT! I repeat, do not publish copied content.” This can pay you hard. Those who copy content through scrapping techniques will be badly affected by the Penguin. If you have some older copied contents, then modify them but don’t delete as you will loose lot of traffic by doing this. Creativity and Genuineness are the two vital factors that defines a Good Blogger.

4. Don’t Do Link FARMING

Sometimes while adding links into the post, people don’t make any sense with the links. For an example, a Telecommunication website linking or directing you to a NGO website! Does this make any sense ? An user will click on a link in order to know about a telecom product and they will be redirected to a NGO, a social service’s link. Always avoid such of type of linking practices.

If you’re purchasing links for your website make sure that their quality is strong and good. There should be any questions upon the quality. Getting poor quality links will take your site down.

5. Avoid HIDDEN Content/Invisible Texts

This is the worst practice which is to be badly avoided. Many people place hidden content and links in their posts with the goal of being favored by the search engines in order to rank higher without consideration of user experience. Clever minds hide the content and links using CSS and the non-coders hide it by making the text to white color.

Google has strictly revised their algorithms and those who play with this method would be severely penalized. This is the first and foremost change of Google Penguin Update. You can track the hidden content by selecting all the lines of the paragraph and the white color will be highlighted with the selection.

6. Don’t Even Think of Keyword STUFFING

In order to get Recovery from Google Penguin Update you have to stop keyword stuffing. Basically, Keyword Stuffing refers to creating pages and publishing posts with false and illogical content just to be positioned on a keyword. In short, fooling the users to get the wrong information. When an user arrives at a particular page, he/she is bought to an entirely different one.

Just think of it, when you’re in a new city and you’re seeking the address of a particular place and someone misleads you to a wrong address, how will you feel ? The same feeling will be evolved within your readers when they land on a  and might be they won’t come back to your site the next time. So in order to play fair in the other way don’t provide false keywords and confuse your readers.

7. Stop Black Hat Linking/SEO Strategies

Black Hat SEO Techniques are notorious ways to get the ranking results you want i.e. getting higher search rankings in an unethical manner. These strategies usually breaks the Rules and Regulations of Search Engines and creates poor user experience directly as they are utilized on the websites. Google Penguin Update is mainly targeted to minimize the ‘Web Spam’ so the sites indulging in these activities will be knock down.

The strong websites containing high quality contents will be rewarded to the top positions as the black hat sites will be penalized for their activities which differs from their main page. Black hat SEO basically is a short-sighted solution to a long-term problem, which is creating a Website that provides both a great user experience and all that goes with that. These black hat SEO practices will actually provide short-term gains in terms of rankings, but if you are discovered utilizing these spammy techniques on your Web site, you run the risk of being penalized by search engines.

8. Keep the Doorway Pages outside the DOORS

A Doorway page is basically a fake page that the user will never see. It is purely for search engine spiders, and attempts to trick them into indexing the site higher. Some of the webmasters play with this technique to impress the search engines and for targeting specific keywords by creating low quality or poor pages. The content generated in the Doorway pages is automated especially scrapped content which are not convenient for the users.

By creating such pages and kind off cheating the search engines, they do end up getting higher search rankings,  that is until these same sites get banned for using unethical practices. It’s just not worth the risk! It doesn’t provide a sign of good practices. So better stay outta it.

9. Check for LOW Inbound Links

Inbound links or Backlinks are the incoming links to a website or webpage. Inbound links are used by Google and other search engines as a main factor in determining the relevance of your site. The more the number of links, the more good will be your site at link building. People become happy when they receive a backlink but the happiness should matter only when the backlink is from a High PR/Reputed Website.

Check on your GWT (Google Webmasters Tool) if you’re receiving low quality website links like from Blog Commenting, Article Directory Submissions etc. It determines that your site is more renowned among the low quality atmosphere and you won’t rank to high. After the strict revisions of Google Algorithms, your high quality backlinks determines the stability and endurance of your site. So chuck the poor incoming links.

10. Dump the Use of CHEAP SEO Services

In order to perform Strong On-Page SEO, People use some Premium SEO Services (here premium refers to the cheapest price) to boost their sites in the search engines. They are unaware that using these services are a practice of Black Hat SEO and are strictly against Google’s Terms of Service.

SEO Services includes a package of DoFollow Backlinks like from .edu and .gov sites which may sound good for your site but are not worth it. Once Google tracked that you’re using third party methods to boost your search engine rankings, then it will severely penalize you in their next update. And once you’re badly hit with Panda or Penguin it will take you hell  a lot of time to regain your blog’s stability and performance. So always be fair at your plays in front of Google in order to get rewarded in their updates and not get affected!

Read more from here : 10 Majestic Ways to Combat & Recover from Google Penguin Update http://www.technocruze.com/google-penguin-update-recovery/#ixzz1vXdKghLC

Google is a big organization. In fact it is one of the big organizations and is impossibly influential on the net. For this reason it’s fair to say that Google would never admit it made a mistake, that’s just the unfortunate nature of big business.

But despite the fact that they aren’t coming clean on this matter, most of us can still see fairly clearly that they’ve not done things perfectly lately and that they’ve put their foot wrong a few times. And in fact the current condition of the search engine is one of the worst it’s been in well… ever and there are plenty of bloggers currently picking up on the problems.

Think I’m just moaning? Here are just a few of the reasons that Google could do with taking a step back and having a bit of rethink.

Penguin Hasn’t Worked

Google Penguin was the most recent algorithm change that was supposed to punish sites that were using black hat techniques and over optimization in a similar way that Panda did and to this end it targeted spun content as well as large numbers of links from unworthy sources. The problem with this is that it removed a bunch of sites from the top spots that were simply trying to use SEO the way they’d been taught, and that then meant that nothing but dross was left over. Do a search for ‘make money online’ for instance and the top few results include empty blogs and cyber squatters. That’s hardly a sign of success and it’s not what Google’s visitors want to see. For this reason alone then, Google needs to rethink its algorithm.

Negative SEO

Negative SEO means that you do bad SEO for another site so that it gets penalized by Google, and so that you then have less competition for the terms you’re trying to rank for. That’s not really Google’s fault, but unfortunately Google’s recent Penguin update has only served to make these negative SEO strategies that much more effective. In other words at the moment Google is unable to differentiate between the sites that deserve penalizing and those that are victims of malicious attacks – and of course that’s not really ideal. This is something that Google is going to have to change as more and more people start cottoning on to negative SEO as an immoral yet effective way to boost their site.

Competition from Bing

I doubt right now that Google is losing sleep over the competition, but that doesn’t change the fact that Bing is gaining ground while Google is losing it. At the moment the gap is still rather large, but slips like the Penguin update could help to close that gap for Bing which means Google needs to be on its best behaviour over the next couple of years to avoid a search Engine with a company that has more resources and money.

Privacy Policy Issues

Google’s recent changes to their privacy policy saw them coming under fire from European authorities that saw them as a breach of their privacy laws. This isn’t only of course a worry in itself, but also bad publicity for Google who have been steering themselves toward some ‘market monopoly’ style strategies lately. If they want to reverse their fortunes in this regard then giving users back some of their privacy could be a good move.

Allen Beery runs an online business and has recently started branching out on an education related business by taking a Kumon Franchise. He writes about SEO, business opportunity and education.

Source: http://site-reference.com/articles/should-google-rethink-its-algorithms-and-policies/

This is a piggyback article that I’m posting on the heels of How to Get Links Without Trying to Get Links, so make sure to give it a read if you haven’t already. For me, the takeaway was this:

What I mean is that by focusing on linking, sometimes we will unknowingly offer less-than-stellar content because our focus is off kilter. And I think our readers can smell it a mile away.

What Jenna’s saying here is that we, as SEOs and webmasters, have become so entrenched in metrics and measurements and charts and mega-graphs that we seem to have lost sight of the fundamentals upon which the Web was built.

Stellar content.

For a Minute There, We Lost Ourselves

Think about it. If you’ve been doing this Internet thing for a while, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Let’s take a poll, shall we?

Do you do any of the following? Select from the list below:

• Do you use any software with a title that begins with an explosive adjective (mega/massive/jet-propelled/turbo-fueled) and is immediately followed by the words “niche finder”?

• Do you devote more time to keyword research than you do to sleep?

• Have you optimized each and every page of your beloved website with your best cherry-picked “money” keywords?

• Do you watch your rankings for said keywords in the SERPs with bated breath, expecting movement… any… second… now…

• Do you own some sort of paid traffic tool?

• Do you know exactly when to expect the Googlebot to come crawling?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, then don’t panic. You are still a good person. I swear. And these traits aren’t inherently bad, even though the Big G sometimes seems to want us to think otherwise.

On the contrary, it’s GOOD to monitor your sites and traffic. It’s GOOD to do research if your ultimate objective is to rank. But the problem is that the desire to rank has outweighed the desire to produce quality content, which then becomes a chicken-and-egg argument. The true metric is whether you enjoy the subject of the site you’re creating. Is it something you’re passionate about? Enthusiastic, even? Do you like it even just a teensy little smidge? If not, you’re doing this for all the wrong reasons, and that “less-than-stellar” content Jenna was harping on will soon begin gracing your sad, over-optimized pages – if it’s not there already.

Instead, why don’t you try following the Site-Reference method?

Make the content, love the subject, get fired up, and the audience will follow. However, it is indeed true that you can create prolific content and still suffer traffic malfunctions. It happens. The Web has just as much amazing stuff as it does garbage, so it will take a whole heck of a lot of work, passion, and exposure to get your shot at the limelight.

Let’s Talk About Exposure

What defines exposure on the Web? Shh… It’s the four-letter word Google doesn’t want to hear you say. That’s right: It’s a link. And Google’s stance on backlinking is an ever-changing one. We’ll never know the true extent of the metrics used since we don’t have any way to find the Big G’s secret sauce for its algorithm.

In a post-Panda, post-Penguin world, what do we know about link building?

Well, we know negative SEO is on the rise. With all the controversy, that’s kind of a given. But it’s caused us to lose sight of something we’ve known for quite some time: That most sites have oodles of links which Google doesn’t count at all. Check out what Matt Cutts had to say about the matter ages ago.

We also know that Post-Penguin, quality links are the name of the game. That means that links from pages on sites that Google trusts are key to ranking. Trust from Google translates to PageRank (PR). Sites are ranked on a scale of zero to ten with zero being the least amount of trust and authority in Google’s eyes. Most sites have trouble breaking a two. The system’s tough, and Google employs an army of manual reviewers with the sole task of assigning PR to pages on websites (are you starting to understand why quality content is so vital yet? Hint: It’s bigger than just your traffic).

Before, the easy way to get some link juice from high-PR pages was simply to drop a few thousand blog comments on them, buy some paid guest posts, or purchase some sidebar links, right? Well, times have changed, and so must your strategy.

The New Way to Get Juice

Google’s changed. It will continue to change, and so will the Internet. It’s the nature of technology. Here’s what won’t: It will always be imperative to produce stellar content. I’m going to break the process into two steps:

1. Love your niche.

Loving your niche means being passionate about the subject of your site. It also means connecting with others in your niche and being part of the conversation, the recent events, the news. When you’re connected, you have your finger on the pulse of your industry, and by default your content will take the information and add to it in a meaningful way, which in turn will drive the conversation forward and make your voice matter.

2. Get involved with the leaders.

Once you have the first step in check, this next one should come naturally. The leaders in your niche likely have pages with decent (or great) PR already, otherwise they wouldn’t be leaders. When you connect with them, you may just end up with a presence on their site or blog – or even unprovoked mentions in their posts – after all, they’ll look to you for insight and the newest industry information, so the backlinking will come naturally.

Do you see what I did there? Once you’re hot and heavy in your niche’s ecosystem, the backlinking will grow from that involvement, and I think that’s precisely what Google is after.

Source: http://site-reference.com/articles/if-you-must-get-links-do-it-like-this/

You may be wondering how to handle some of the recent updates such as Panda and Penguin and whatever other black-and-white animal updates (Is the Zebra algorithm, next?) Google decides to throw at us website owners.

Here’s the basic answer: LINKS STILL WORK. And they work well. If links did not work, Google would not be so concerned about the effectiveness of them. Also, if Google banned every single person they thought were buying links then you could just point a bunch of links to every competitor ahead of you, get them all banned and move to #1. It just doesn’t work that way.

Now, with that being said, Google is getting “smarter” about link profiling. For instance, let’s say you have a site about car insurance quotes. Before these recent updates, you could just create the anchor text for ‘car insurance quotes’ and point a bunch of links to that anchor text and your rankings would typically rise over time (obviously this is a little over-simplified because there are hundreds of factors in Google’s algorithm like content, the age of your domain, your title tags, etc. but you get the idea). What’s happening now is that Google is also comparing these anchors relative to other anchors that your site is linked to. So if you have 1000 links with the anchor text ‘car insurance quotes’ and no other anchors or just anchors with other similar terms like ‘car quotes’, that looks very unnatural and typically Google will no longer count all 1000 links. They may only count a few hundred of those links now instead of 1000. This is why rankings have dropped for some people not because the site got banned or penalized. It was simply over-optimized and Google is readjusting for that over-optimization by discounting links they think are out of whack.