As you may—or may not—have noticed, Google introduced their latest algorithm changes on April 24, 2012, nicknamed the Penguin. Then on May 26th, Google announced a “data refresh” for the Penguin. The latest algorithm is said to be aimed primarily at web spam and any sites which Google feels are violating its quality guidelines. When the initial Penguin came out Google stated that anyone who had been “hit” by the changes had been penalized, yet many sites which did not appear to be spamming in any way nevertheless suffered serious drops in traffic. Experts feel that the sites which saw a drop in traffic with absolutely no black hat SEO techniques going on were not actually penalized they merely failed to receive the same amount of credit as before since other sites were being penalized. While this doesn’t appear to make too much sense to those who faithfully follow Google’s stated guidelines, it could actually take a bit of time for the dust to settle, allowing you to see where your site stands.
How Do I Know If My Site Was Hit?
According to Google, there is no way to definitely know if your site has been slapped by the Penguin. If you noticed a major drop in traffic soon after the April 24th, you can figure you were probably hit. In the same vein, if you saw a rise in traffic, then it’s likely you benefitted from the update. However, there is a caveat here: On April 19th, Google also released an update to the Panda algorithm—while Penguin is targeting spam, Panda simply targets any pages which may not be spam, but are definitely poor quality. Take a hard look at your Google Analytics or any other program you use which analyzes your site’s traffic, looking closely at the dates. You should be able to determine whether you suffered a serious hit, benefitted, or saw relatively little change at all as well as whether the changes came from the Panda or the Penguin.
I Was Hit—Now What?
Since the Penguin was primarily targeting spam, you must remove anything that even hints of spam. Google may have flagged what they consider spam on your site and sent messages—if so, take their recommendations and make the changes immediately. If you’ve received no notices, then take a painstakingly careful look at your entire site. Is there any duplicate content at all? Have you engaged in any sort of low-quality article marketing or blog spam? Do the internal/outbound links on your firm’s pages indicate any type of keyword stuffing? Additionally, take a look at the following areas:
- Have you recently launched a very aggressive SEO campaign?
- Have you kept your most relevant content properly above the fold?
- Is your site slow as molasses in loading?
Any one of these issues can get your site penalized, so you will want to ensure your website is following all the guidelines and not engaging in sort of black hat SEO techniques.
Making SEO Work for You
Google believes that you can use SEO effectively in a positive and constructive manner to make your site more easily crawled and more accessible. Make sure you’ve done your keyword research rather than simply inserting your legal industry jargon here and there. Anything which lends credibility to your site as well as making it more compelling will help you with SEO as well as with social media. If you have cleaned up your site of anything even resembling spam, and consistently publish only high-quality content, there is little to worry about from Google’s latest changes or the ones to come.
