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.
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
-
What's the best way to integrate off site inventory?
I can't seem to make any progress with my car dealership client in rankings or traffic. I feel like I've narrowed out most of the common problems, the only other thing I can see is that all their inventory is on a subdomain using a dedicated auto dealership software. Any suggestion of a better way to handle this situation? Am I missing something obvious? The url is rcautomotive.com Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Do Com Junct links affect your site with Google and Penguin
We received the dreaded letter from google in reference to "unnatural or artificial links" Our site has affiliate programs through Commission Junction and Link Share and between the two programs we have over 8000 affiliates or advertisers. Our site has been very successful, but our organic search traffic is down as our rankings in the search engines have dropped. My question is do the affiliate links have an effect on our site with Panda or Penguin?
Technical SEO | | Statrak0 -
Why are my URL's with a trailing slash still getting indexed even though they are redirected in the .htaccess file?
My .htaccess file is set up to redirect a URL with a trailing / to the URL without the /. However, my SEOmoz crawl diagnostics report is showing both URL's. I took a look at my Google Webmaster account and saw some duplicate META title issues. Same thing, Google Webmaster is showing the URL with the trailing /. My website was live for about 3 days before I added the code to the .htaccess file to remove the trailing /. Is it possible that in those 3 days that both versions were indexed and haven't been removed even though the .htaccess file has been updated?
Technical SEO | | mkhGT0 -
Web page is showing up on Google but doesn't show when it was cached, so is it indexed?
Hey everyone So I created a new page on a WordPress website, it was live for a few hours till I changed my mind & switched it back to a draft. Just out of curiosity I did the Site:www.example.com/Example search on Google to see if it had been indexed & apparently it had but when I click on cached to see what time it got indexed at exactly it's showing me an error. So does this mean it is indexed or not?
Technical SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Client's site dropped completely for all keywords, but not brand name - not manual penalty... help!
We just picked up a new search client a few weeks ago. They've been a customer (we're an automotive dealer website provider) since October of 2011. Their content was very generic (came from the previous provider), so we did a quick once-over as soon as he signed up. Beefed up his page content, made it more unique and relevant... tweaked title tags... wrote meta descriptions (he had none). In just over a week, he went from ranking on page 4 or 5 for his terms to ranking on page 2 or 3. My team was working on getting his social media set up, set up his blog, started competitor research... And then this last weekend, something happened and he dropped completely from the rankings... He still shows up if you do a site: search, or if you search his exact business name, but for everything else, he's nowhere to be found. His URL is www.ohioautowarehouse.com, business name is "Ohio Auto Warehouse" We filed a reconsideration request on Monday, and just got a reply today that there was no manual penalty. They suggested we check our content, but we know we didn't do anything spammy or blackhat. We hadn't even fully optimized his site yet - we were just finishing up his competitor research and were planning on a full site optimization next week... so we're at a complete loss as to what happened. Also, he's not ranking for any of the vehicles in his inventory. Our vehicle pages always rank on page 1 or 2, depending on how big the city is... you can always search "year make model city" and see our customers' sites (whether they're doing SEO or not). This guy's cars aren't showing up... so we know something is going on... Any help would be a lifesaver. We've been doing this for quite some time now, and we've never had a site get penalized. Since the reconsideration request didn't help, we're not sure what to do...
Technical SEO | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Domain Transfer Process / Bulk 301's Using IIS
Hi guys - I am getting ready to do a complete domain transfer from one domain to another completely different domain for a client due to a branding/name change. 2 things - first, I wanted to lay out a summary of my process and see if everyone agrees that its a good approach, and second, my client is using IIS, so I wanted to see if anyone out there knows a bulk tool that can be used to implement 301's on the hundreds of pages that the site contains? I have found the process to redirect each individual page, but over hundreds its a daunting task to look at. The nice thing about the domain transfer is that it is going to be a literal 1:1 transfer, with the only things changing being the logo and the name mentions. Everything else is going to stay exactly the same, for the most part. I will use dummy domain names in the explanation to keep things easy to follow: www.old-domain.com and www.new-domain.com. The client's existing home page has a 5/10 GPR, so of course, transferring Mojo is very important. The process: Clean up existing site 404's, duplicate tags and titles, etc. (good time to clean house). Create identical domain structure tree, changing all URL's (for instance) from www.old-domain.com/freestuff to www.newdomain.com/freestuff. Push several pages to a dev environment to test (dev.new-domain.com). Also, replace all instances of old brand name (images and text) with new brand name. Set up 301 redirects (here is where my IIS question comes in below). Each page will be set up to redirect to the new permanent destination with a 301. TEST a few. Choose lowest traffic time of week (from analytics data) to make the transfer ALL AT ONCE, including pushing new content live to the server for www.new-domain.com and implementing the 301's. As opposed to moving over parts of the site in chunks, moving the site over in one swoop avoids potential duplicate content issues, since the content on the new domain is essentially exactly the same as the old domain. Of course, all of the steps so far would apply to the existing sub-domains as well, IE video.new-domain.com. Check for errors and problems with resolution issues. Check again. Check again. Write to (as many as possible) link partners and inform them of new domain and ask links to be switched (for existing links) and updated (for future links) to the new domain. Even though 301's will redirect link juice, the actual link to the new domain page without the redirect is preferred. Track rank of targeted keywords, overall domain importance and GPR over time to ensure that you re-establish your Mojo quickly. That's it! Ok, so everyone, please give me your feedback on that process!! Secondly, as you can see in the middle of that process, the "implement 301's" section seems easier said than done, especially when you are redirecting each page individually (would take days). So, the question here is, does anyone know of a way to implement bulk 301's for each individual page using IIS? From what I understand, in an Apache environment .htaccess can be used, but I really have not been able to find any info regarding how to do this in bulk using IIS. Any help here would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0 -
How to handle URL's from removed products?
Hi All, I have a question about a fashion related webshop. Every month about 100 articles are removed and about the some amouth is added to the site. Most of the products are indexed on brandname and type (e.g. MyBrand t-shirt blue) My question is what to do with the URL / page after the product is removed. I'm thinking about a couple of solutions: 301 the page to the brand categorie page build a script which shows related articles on the old URL (and try to keep it indexed) 404 page optimized for search term with links to brand category any other suggestons? Thanks in advance, Sam
Technical SEO | | U-Digital0 -
What's the best way to transplant a blogger blog to another domain?
So I have this client who's got a killer blogger blog—tons of inbound links, great content, etc. He wants to move it onto his new website. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there isn't a single way to 301 the darn thing. I can do meta refresh and/or JavaScript redirects, but those won't transfer link juice, right? Is there a best practice here? I've considered truncating each post and adding a followed "continue reading…" link, which would of course link to the full post on the client's new site. It would take a while and I'm wondering if it would be worth it, and/or if there are any better ideas out there. Sock it to me.
Technical SEO | | TheEspresseo0