April 24th was a significant day within the world of SEO. It was the day of the penguin. Normally cuddly, cute little creatures, beloved by all, this was a penguin on a mission. A penguin on the warpath. He was dispatched with one intention: obliterate anyone in his path that utilised ‘black hat’ SEO techniques.
There were significant casualties. A huge number of sites. You may have awoken on the morning of the 25th to find a site that sat on high at #1 in the google rankings for your main keywords now languishing on the 7th page of google. Sites were blown out of the water over night.
The penguin had a favoured prey, specifically poor quality sites that used spam content and delivered information that was of little use to anyone. Content that was over-filled with keyword search terms seemed to give off a smell, a smell that the penguin’s nose was well tuned to pick up.
The most ironic thing about the penguin update, in the initial aftermath at least, was the fact that it appeared to have backfired. Google searches for particular terms ended up filled with spam, and SEO bosses everywhere were in outrage. Websites that offered a service and had decent, if not great content were turning up eight pages in, whilst junk advertising sites had actually moved up the rankings. This was not to last however. These sites would fall away, almost like the snow melting after a harsh winter to reveal the green shoots of life poking through. The penguin had sent a clear message; it was more than willing to sacrifice it’s quality in the short term if it led to ‘cleaner’ results in the long term.
So What Now?
The main damage of the penguin update was done in April. A second penguin update was release in May (Penguin 1.1) but this was said to only affect less than a tenth of a percent of English searches according to Matt Cutts, head of Google Webspam.
Google recognises and rewards sites with high quality, useful and engaging content. The best way to improve your site and aids its recovery if it has been affected is to produce content that the user will find useful. When producing content, think about it as though you were the end user. Would you want to read it? Would you find it useful?
Avoid stuffing your content full of keywords. Whilst keywords remain important (how else are you supposed to rank?) filling any content with every single possible variation of a particular phrase or keyword search term will make the content seem spammy, and as a result less useful. Which makes it penguin fodder. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to get some keywords in the title of a piece of content. Obviously don’t overfill it, but the importance of titles remains just as high. As long as the title sounds natural you should be fine.
Any links within your content should have a high level of relevancy. If they do not enable a reader to gain more knowledge and understanding of a particular subject then they are of no use and should be removed. Otherwise your site becomes penguin fodder.
This might sound obvious, but ensure that all of your content is proof read. Poor grammar and spelling will be penalised.
Social media has never been more important. Facebook has over 900 million active users, and over 340 million tweets are sent everyday on Twitter. Google recognises the importance of social media, rewarding content that has received a high number of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’. And how do you achieve this? By writing content that people like and that they want to retweet.
Who knows? There could be another crushing update somewhere along the lines. But as long as you are following ‘white hat’ SEO principles you should manage to avoid becoming fodder. Whether that be Penguin 2.0 fodder, Rhino fodder, Elephant fodder or even Fish fodder.
