June 13, 2012

Some of you may think that it’s a zoo out there in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) field with all of Google’s animal-named algorithm updates like Panda, and now, Penguin. But is it a zoo, or even bad at all?

The Google Penguin update to the Panda algorithm was originally announced on April 24, 2012 in a blog post on Inside Search by Matt Cutts, who works for the Search Quality team in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. Then on May 25th, there was an update to Penguin.

We look at it as something designed to tackle low-quality content. It started out with Panda, and then we noticed that there was still a lot of spam and Penguin was designed to tackle that. It’s an algorithmic change, but when we use a word like ‘penalty,’ we’re talking about a manual action taken by the web spam team — it wasn’t that.” — Matt Cutts

E-Web Marketing created a great overview in the infographic below on how the Penguin update currently works, and some “ways to stay OUT of the Penguin’s diet!“

Infographic by E-Web Marketing

Top Ten Things you Can Do to be Penguin Compliant

1. Provide quality and varied content that your customers/users are interested in.
2. Don’t over optimize your quality content.
3. Make sure that your external links are relevant to your business/service.
4. Don’t buy links or use link-building schemes.
5. Build your reputation in your field by participating in “white hat” commenting (providing valuable info in your comment) on other relevant blogs.
6. Get social. Use social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. to engage users with quality content. Share your content on two or three social sites.
7. Create a blog for your website and position yourself as an expert in your field and post press releases on your site.
8. Advertise with Google ads or Facebook ads.
9. Make sure that your site is fast to load.
10. Use Responsive Design for your site since Google and Bing recommend this over having a website and a mobile version, since it might be looked at as duplicate content.

What we can Learn from Penguin

Basically, what the Penguin update to the Google ranking algorithm means to most of us is to always use good practices and provide high-quality content on your website or blog. If you question a certain SEO tactic, you probably shouldn’t be using it. So, it’s a good thing after all.

Google’s number one job (besides driving around in people-less cars) is to return results that are relevant with the term being searched. Period. When the results become less and less relevant, so does Google…just ask Yahoo! (Ohhhhh snap!)” — Marc Ensign

Resources

• Penguin, Panda, it’s not that black and white..
• IRCE 2012 Report: Yesterday’s SEO tricks may hurt retailers today: Quality content, consumer engagement and speed are what Google wants.
• Finding more high-quality sites in search
• Bing & Google Recommend Responsive Web Design
• Post – Google Penguin Update Content Tips Endorsed By Matt Cutts
• Recovering from an Over Optimization Penalty – A True Story
• How WPMU.org Recovered From The Penguin Update
• Webmaster Guidelines: Best practices to help Google find, crawl, and index your site
• Matt Cutts Gives An Update On Penguin
• Google Shakeup: Coming to a Website Near You
• How a Google Search Travels Around the World [INFOGRAPHIC]