Why You Were Penalized By Google’s Penguin 3.0 Update This Month, And The Changing Face Of SEO in 2014-2015
Introduction
Unless you’re living in the happy magical land where your business doesn’t rely on Organic Search Traffic for your revenue, you’ve probably spent the last couple of weeks tearing out your hair with anxiety and waking up compulsively in the middle of the night to check your Search Engine Rank and Traffic. Google has finally officially announced Penguin 3.0, long since hinted at by expert marketers, given the fluctuations on MozCast and AlGoroo.
Penguin 3.0 has seen mass hysteria, wild speculation, and tears being shed collectively over the Internet. Some experts have disappeared off the Internet, while new gurus who boast ranking increases for their websites have popped up, and are already laying claim to their follower cults. Here, at Information Street, we understand SEO, and will pull the curtains from the mystery, facts and hysteria behind this update – and provide you a solid SEO strategy that you can employ now, and through 2015.
“But What IS Penguin???”
We start by explaining in very clear terms – what exactly is Google Penguin? To put it very simply – Google periodically runs 2 major algorithmic updates that influence search results – Panda and Penguin. Panda looks at how well your website is optimized for search engine crawlers, and the relevance of your website to the search terms you target.
Penguin, however, has a crystal clear and laser sharp focus. It closely scrutinizes arguably the most influential factor in high rankings for your website – your inbound links.
So, it becomes very clear – all the websites that took major hits during Penguin 3.0 made mistakes with their backlinking strategy. Google Webmaster Guidelines clearly state that any types of links built specifically for the purpose of artificially manipulating PageRank (and subsequently, search rankings) are a violation of their policy.
Now, let’s just take a step back, and be completely honest here – no conscious web owner looking for search engine traffic, who understands SEO, is going to passively sit back and wait for websites to magically link to their business. As marketers, it’s our job to market our websites – to spread the word about the amazing services we offer, and reach as many potential customers as we can. Thankfully, backlinks should be a natural side effect of your marketing strategy. We’ll explain this concept further on.
Types of sites that got killed
We’ve been around to see a lot of Penguins and Pandas. There is, honestly speaking, a kind of savage gratification in watching competitors posting lamentations on Google Webmaster Forum about losing 90% of their search traffic, while your own Organic Traffic increases.
And more…
We’ve also managed to get a good idea about the kinds of webmasters that are consistently, and repetitively hit by Google Updates, and typically they are the same people who go into panic mode and disavow their entire backlink portfolio and send hysterical emails to Google staff. Here’s our list of people who ALWAYS fare the worst in an update:
- Blackhat Internet Marketers
Well, some would say they had it coming. When you build 10,000 spammy links by hacking into websites to promote your “male enhancement” pills and to offer shady payday loans to unsuspecting vulnerable buyers, and have the chutzpah to claim it as a business, you deserve to be kicked out of the Search Engine Rankings.
- SEO amateurs
These are the beginners who have just entered SEO, and have decided that organic traffic is a good fit for them. They read forums, follow advice blindly and fire up a software that builds 1000 links per day to their websites. Once in a while, if they do manage to start ranking through a miracle, they are quickly wiped out in the next Panda/Penguin refresh and then open threads on SEO Forums titled “HELP!”
- Local business owners who “outsource” their SEO
We feel genuinely bad for this category. Typically Mom & Pop stores, brick and mortar business, or genuinely good service providers offering great value make terrible decisions to outsource their SEO to a shady company in India or the Phillipines, are promised massive success and organic traffic that will crash their servers. All they get is disappointment, a nice penalty in Google Webmaster Tools, and the hassle of completely abandoning their domain name and firing their SEO guys.
- Affiliate Marketers
Typically people who have been lead to believe that getting rich on the Internet is simply a matter of creating a single page website with 500 words, selling Amazon and Clickbank products, and throwing questionable links at it till it ranks. We usually see these types getting decimated in Panda rather than Penguin – by getting thin/affiliate content penalties – but their link strategies are almost always as half baked as their on page content.
A New SEO strategy For 2015
Before we head into the depths of SEO strategy, here’s a way to pick a SEO strategy:
Pick one out of the following: fast rankings / long term rankings.
As a business owner, it’s very tempting to hand over your work to an SEO agency that promises top rankings in 1 month, or your money back. Equally tempting is to engage in link building schemes such as link farms, buying links for $100 a package of supposed “High PR” links, or to buy miracle “SEO Software” that builds your rankings while you sleep!
What doesn’t sound so appetizing: Building slow, powerful links consistently over a long period of time, and putting in requisite effort to make sure your backlink profile is squeaky clean and never fear a manual review again. As a responsible business owner, this latter strategy is the only way to go if you want Organic Traffic working for you.
Here is the last backlinking strategy you will ever need, as long as Google counts backlinks as ranking factors. Stick to this and be assured long term rankings and peace of mind during any and all Google Updates.
Note: We are only talking about links here, we are assuming you’ve got a well optimized fast loading informative website that effectively targets the keywords you’re trying to rank.
The Four Qualities Of Backlinks:
[learn_more caption=”Quality”] Without a doubt the single most important factor for ranking. Google assigns a PageRank to all websites, the higher the PR, the higher the authority of a given website. Theoretically, a link from a High PR website is sure to powerfully juice up your own ranking power. It’s also a good idea to never rely on PR alone – make sure to run the website through third party analysis tools like Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer to check their CF, TF, DA and PA as well. Make sure you head in and take a look at their links through Ahrefs or Majestic SEO to verify that their own link profile is clean, and not artificially manipulated through shady techniques. This is because a penalized website linking to your website will quickly transfer over a penalty to you as well. But the question remains: How do you obtain High PR backlinks without resorting to buying links on “PBNs” or shady Russian SAPE link networks? By changing your attitude about backlinks. Think about this: A link from a REAL high quality website should bring you traffic as well as ranking power. This is where most webmasters go wrong. If a link on an authority website isn’t getting you real, targeted traffic and potential customers, you are doing it wrong. 3 Of Our Favorite Strategies For Obtaining Real High PR links:
- Write Great Content. It goes without saying if you’re offering cutting edge valuable material on your website that has people reading it, nodding their heads and telling their friends about it – they will link out to you. It’s as simple as that. People link to great content. They share it on their Social Media Pages, blog about it, and start threads in Forums discussing it. Clickbait is an effective, though distasteful example of this.
- Guest Posting is Not Dead. There are high quality websites in your niche looking for quality articles to add to their website. Contacting an exclusive webmaster of a PR5 website, and successfully negotiating a guest post and acquiring that PR5 link is worth more than 1000 PR0 links.
- Advertise. Contact websites in your niche to link out to you, in an advertisement (text or banner). Most traffic rich websites are more than happy to sell ad space. You can also contact professional bloggers to review your service. Both of these above techniques bolsters your site’s traffic and PageRank.
Obviously there are about a hundred other methods to get high quality links but the above 3 can be done right now, today, without too much effort.[/learn_more]
[learn_more caption=”Diversity”]
The Google Penguin Update carefully scrutinizes the type of links you’re building as well. You’re familiar with the concept of anchor text for your links. Here is the most important advice we need to give you about anchor diversity: The easiest way to get penalized is to build links with the same keyword again and again. For example, if you want to rank for “puppy training”, the easiest way to get knocked off the Search Results is to build 1000 links with the anchor text “puppy training”.
When you build links, make sure your “money” anchors are less than 5% of your links! So, if you’re building a 100 links to your website, less than 5 of those links will actually have the anchor text “puppy training”. What will the rest be? Here are some general ideas to give you a feel of your anchor text:
- Naked URLs (http://yourwebsite.com)
- Your Brand Name
- “click here”, “website”, “this blog”, “(your name)”
- “dog training tips for young dalmatians” (a relevant, long tail LSI keyword)
Make sure general anchors form the bulk of your anchor text, and restrict your “money anchors” as much as you can. Don’t worry, if your on page is great, and your authority is built right, you will rank for your keywords. [/learn_more]
[learn_more caption=”Context”]
Gone are the golden days of 2001 where you could get away with links for your dog training website from a e-store that sells pharmaceuticals online. Google is actively scrutinizing the relevance of your website to the sources of your links. This is an easy way to quickly pinpoint “paid links”, since unscrupulous webmasters who sell links on their website (for the right price) will almost always link out to any website whether they are in its niche or not.
On the flipside – if your dog training website gets a High PR powerful backlink from a top name in the Dog Training Business, then the power of your backlink is multiplied and Google loves these kind of links. You have a clean sheet, and you are now trusted more by the algorithm. This is another reason why it’s a good idea for you to link out to authority websites in your domain as well, trust is a 2 way street. [/learn_more]
[learn_more caption=”Velocity”]
Velocity is another ranking factor almost always always ignored by Webmasters, and a leading cause of penalties. Building 1000 links in 1 day, and then building no links for the next 1 month can and will trip algorithmic penalties. Following along the same idea, if you’re getting tons of high PR links very, very quickly, this may lead your website to be put in an alleged 30 day Sandbox till your links age.
Your responsibility as a webmaster is to acquire and build links at a slow, consistent rate. Devote some time every 2-3 days to your white label seo services, and don’t get complacent once you start ranking on the first page – while you’re enjoying your high rankings, your competitors are stepping up their game and building their own links – stay ahead of the curve. [/learn_more]
In closing, our advice for you is to build 1-2 High Quality links every week, with general anchor text, from niche relevant websites. Expect rankings in a time frame of 2-3 months depending on your competition, and always think long term. Sit back and watch your rankings and traffic explode, and leave worrying about Google Animal Updates to your competitors, you have nothing to be afraid about.
