Blog

Pandas and Penguins - Google Algorithm Updates

Each year, Google changes its search algorithm hundreds of times. While most of these changes are minor, every so often a major algorithmic update can affect search results in significant ways. ‘Panda’ and ‘Penguin’ are simply the names of 2 of these updates* of which have had unexpected impacts for many sites. Naturally, a lot of sites didn’t anticipate the updates affecting them have been caught off guard. Here are a few tips to help you overcome any unexpected changes. 

The latest Google Algorithm update ‘Penguin’ has been introduced to target over ‘optimised sites’. Google has been explicit with these updates - warning the webmaster of the website that they have ‘detected unnatural links to http://www.—————.com’. These updates reflect an on-going effort and intensified stance at Google against link-related and on-page over optimisation violations.

As specified by Google “Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in web spam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.”

As this update targets links, unlike previous Google algorithm changes, you can’t necessarily respond by changing your website.

Deeper analysis of a websites link profile (back link analysis) may unravel offending links (unnatural/unrelated linking content often being the giveaway). The speed of a link acquisition will also give away periods of activity during unnatural link - related optimisation.

History, is well history, and while identifying these problems will hint at why you have been penalised, you will only be able to learn from these mistakes. There are however quick things which may help you:

The long-term solution is the old adage of white hat SEO. Following SEO best practice from here on out and not breaching Google webmaster guidelines will aid recovery faster. Google will be looking to help sites recover from Penguin/over-optimization penalties that go forth and acquire links naturally, and behave naturally.

If you are also using PPC then there is value in increasing your activity whilst improving your SEO. However, as others also suffer in the rankings, they too may increase PPC activity and competition will inflate bids well past the cost per acquisition/lead of natural traffic.

• Pay attention for the ‘unnatural Links’ notice in your Google Webmaster Tools.  Use it as an indicator/notification to review any recent link activity or historical links, as they a flagging to Google unnatural behaviour.
• Identify/review those links which you know may have been paid for. Contact the webmaster or business contact of the linking site’s and ask for it to be removed.
• Try and get links to your site with different anchor texts; many sites were hit by Penguin because they used hundreds of identical anchor texts back linking to their sites. This is often caused by legitimate link building campaigns but this can now be seen as over optimisation.
• Less of [sector-name] company London and more of [business-name].com or just [business-name]. In cases of legitimate back links that are natural, ask to have the anchor text changed by the sites webmaster.

• Only source legitimate backlinks form sources of relevance, that ad value or provide great content in support of your subject matter or business area.• Does Your SEO activity result in better content for searchers? Or is it a self-serving tactic primarily aimed at making your site rank higher.

Multiple traffic sources is hugely important to a website, but over compensating SEO with PPC increases risk and is unsustainable solution to the real issue at hand.

To leave your site as it is and neglect SEO will only deprive recovery and may even worsen your positions. An initial link building campaign and review of your site content may provide some reprieve, but only on-going SEO/content marketing strategy will allow you to be competitive again in the search engines.

* A Google update is a change in the code (algorithm) in which the search engine evolves to improve its features such as instant search, the accuracy of keyword relevance and also to remove webspam.