What is Google's Penguin effect on SEO?
-
I want to know about Google's Penguin. Specially, how it works to protect spam links <seo>or other jobs. </seo>
How I can protect this problem.
Kind Regards
John
-
Hi John,
Penguin is the over-optimization update which is looking for sites that are engaging in tactics purely to rank highly in Google. Google are always looking at ways that they can improve the quality of their search results to keep them ahead of the game and penguin has been designed to look for webspam or those that are overtly SEOing their websites to rank better, tactics include keyword stuffing, link schemes, doorway pages and more. In relation to link profiles they are under more scrutiny than ever and link schemes can be creating link networks to boost your site, using low quality link tactics such as forum and blog comments and having a high concentration of links with exact match anchor text. Also link profiles with lots of links from sites that aren't in their niche as this is clearly unnatural.
SEOs need to concentrate on building quality sites which serve the purpose they are intended for and have excellent usability. Here is Googles take on Penguin in their own words - http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
Also for more details on Penguin and the specific tactics it is looking at in relation to SEO and over-optimization take a look here - http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-update-targeting-webspam-in-search-results-119295
I hope this helps answer your question - concentrate on building great content with relevant on page optimization clearly using best practice and not keyword stuffing, then make sure you are getting this content exposure using tactics such as social media, but not dodgy tactics to gains links such as forum, blog comments and anywhere else that allows people to create any link for a links sake and you will be fine, in my opinion. A few reciprocal links are fine and natural but don't engage in a practice where you are reciprocal linking to unrelated sites which giving a link to won't enrich the users browsing experience.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'
A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results. Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/ Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page. I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed. Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?
Technical SEO | | d.bird0 -
Google's Omitted Results - Attempt to De-Index
We're trying to get webpages from our QA site out of Google's index. We've inserted the NOINDEX tags. Google now shows only 3 results (down from 196,000), however, they offer a link to "show omitted results" at the bottom of the page. (A) Did we do something wrong? or (B) were we successful with our NOINDEX but Google will offer to show omitted results anyway? Please advise! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Inconsistent page titles in SERP's
I encountered a strange phenomenon lately and I’d like to hear if you have any idea what’s causing it. For the past couple of weeks I’ve seen some our Google rankings getting unstable. While looking for a cause, I found that for some pages, Google results display another page title than the actual meta title of the page. Examples http://www.atexopleiding.nl Meta title: Atex cursus opleider met ruim 40 jaar ervaring - Atexopleiding.nl Title in SERP: Atexopleiding.nl: Atex cursus opleider met ruim 40 jaar ervaring http://www.reedbusinessopleidingen.nl/opleidingen/veiligheid/veiligheidskunde Meta title: Opleiding Veiligheidskunde, MBO & HBO - Reed Business Opleidingen Title in SERP: Veiligheidskunde - Reed Business Opleidingen http://www.pbna.com/vca-examens/ Meta title: Behaal uw VCA diploma bij de grootste van Nederland - PBNA Title in SERP: VCA Examens – PBNA I’ve looked in the source code, fetched some pages as Googlebot in WMT, but the title shown in the SERP doesn’t even exist in the source code. Now I suspect this might have something to do with the “cookiewall” implemented on our sites. Here’s why: Cookiewall was implemented end of January The problem didn’t exist until recently, though I can’t pinpoint an exact date. Problem exists on both rbo.nl, atexopleiding.nl & pbna.com, the latter running on Silverstripe CMS instead of WP. This rules out CMS specific causes. The image preview in the SERPS of many pages show the cookie alert overlay However, I’m not able to technically prove that the cookiescript causes this and I’d like to rule out other any obvious causes before I "blame it on the cookies" :). What do you think?
Technical SEO | | RBO0 -
What's the rules on overly dynamic URLs ?
Developer says "Overly-Dynamic URL. Developer says that this is the hardest and complex part. It will be possible to change all of the search criterias to use ( / )
Technical SEO | | stewbuch1872
But in this case each of the pages will be indexed and every time listing gets added, content will get changed. Which for example Google will start blocking what is the best way to address this and will google block as suggested ? thanks0 -
What's the issue?
Hi, We have a client who dropped in the rankings (initially from bottom of the first page to page to page 3, and now page 5) for a single keyword (their most important one - targeted on their homepage) back in the middle of March. So far, we've found that the issue isn't the following: Keyword stuffing on the page External anchor text pointing to the page Internal anchor text pointing to the page In addition to the above, the drop didn't coincide with panda or penguin. Any other ideas as to what could cause such a drop for a single keyword (other related rankings haven't moved). We're starting to think that this may just have been another small change in the algorithm but it seems like too big of a drop in a short space of time for that to be the case. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Ranking on google.com.au but not google.com
Hi there, we (www.refundfx.com.au) rank on google.com.au for some keywords that we target, but we do not rank at all on google.com, is that because we only use a .com.au domain and not a .com domain? We are an Australian company but our customers come from all over the world so we don't want to miss out on the google.com searches. Any help in this regard is appreciated. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RefundFX0 -
From your perspective, what's wrong with this site such that it has a Panda Penalty?
www.duhaime.org For more background, please see: http://www.seomoz.org/q/advice-regarding-panda http://www.seomoz.org/q/when-panda-s-attack (hoping the third time's the charm here)
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0 -
Are URL's with trailing slash seen as two different URLs
Hello, http://www.example.com and http://ww.example.com/ Are these seen as two different URL's ? Just as with www or non www ? Or it doesn't make any difference ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050