For the last year or so, the Internet has been a-twitter (no pun intended) about Google’s Panda update and how it smacked down content mills and other low-quality sites. Well, you could be forgiven if you missed their latest named update — Penguin — because if you had a quality site and decent SEO in the first place, you wouldn’t have noticed it.
Penguin’s primary change to the Google algorithm was to penalize websites that were engaging in bad linking practices. Sites with unnatural link profiles, a pile of low-quality (spam) links and few decent ones, and sites that were obviously keyword stuffing got their rankings stripped from them, which opened up plenty of room for more legitimate (and user-friendly) sites to rise like cream to obtain themselves first page placements.
If you talk to your SEO company and they don’t have a clean, crisp response about Penguin, you might want to consider a new SEO company. They should say something to this effect:
All of our content is reviewed by English-native humans. This is what Penguin seems to be doing — their algorithm seems to be picking out potential spammy sites and sending them somewhere for human review. Sites that pass are left alone — so make sure everything they’re posting on your behalf anywhere online makes perfect sense to a native English speaker.
We are creating links, not buying them. Links purchased from 3rd-party sources are the root of the entire problem, because they tend to be lower-quality than links created by a team of genuine SEO experts. If they have to outsource some links to another SEO company because they overbooked themselves, that’s OK — just no bulk links from Nigerian princes.
Natural link profiles are the goal. Over-optimized anchor text is just the newest in a long list of ‘unnatural link profile qualities’ that Penguin has started sniffing out. Links should come to your site at all times of day and night, from all over the world, with a wide spread of anchor texts (the majority of which are your business name or URL.)
If your website’s SEO company isn’t making your site Penguin-sensitive, you may get left out in the cold.
28 thoughts on “Penguin — What Does It Mean For Your Website’s SEO?”
I currently have a AdWords account with Google and want to advertise my website. Is there a specific plan that I have to buy in order for my ads to show up in the yellow sponsored links at the top of the page (I’m pretty sure you’ve all seen them) or are the ads just randomly generated up there?
Thanks
I’ve been trying to figure out how some of the more appealing Websites pull off their look. It appears that it’s well placed gifs (with text/links within the gifs). I’ve been trying to create an appealing site with just html and jpgs, with little results.
Am I on the right track with this?
I’m a little confused about pen names. I assume you use your real name when giving contact details and your pen name when saying who the novel has been written by, but which do you put in the heading that appears at the top of each page?
Also, does it matter if the page number is at the top of the page or should it be at the bottom?
Please only respond if you have experience in this matter.
I own a small computer repair business in a Dallas area suburb. I have seen fast, noticeable results with my Google rankings from my new SEO campaign. But so far, I have not seen any results in call volume. We are, for now, only using key words that correspond to my suburb. Soon, we will spread to other neighboring suburbs and then eventually to Dallas.
My company is already among the top two results in the first page for computer repair, virus removal, and laptop removal for my suburb. But still no phone calls. Should I be patient and wait for the SEO campaign to spread? Or should I back out now? It’s costing me 800. a month. About to begin the third month.
I want to set up a offshore development center for a SEO and social media company that’s located in UK or US. I’m from India. How should I proceed? How to get information about those companies and how to approach them?
I am trying to place an adsense ad on an html page. I want it to be at the top left, but when I place the adsense code, all other elements get pushed down below the ad. Help?
A Complete SEO Service Increase your bottom line with SEO with guaranteed rankings 1 SEO
Services Company In India, Web Promotion , On page & off page optimization, etc
http://www.complete-seo-services.com/
My homepage is distorted…the pictures seem crunched, and the ads that were on the right side of the page, are now below the “sites” column. How do I fix this?
There are so many out there and I need a recommendation.
I can only get one
not in the album, but on the page =]
I am trying to find a search engine optimization company for months. The problem is, is that there are many promises but they are unreliable. I spend a lot of money without any results. How to find a company you can rely and trust ?
I am doing a business plan for a school project, and I need to know how much I am going to spend for advertisement.
Thank you.
Hi,
I’m an italian student and I’m looking for a company in which I could do an internship as press office assistant, pr assistant, event organiser or similar…Can someone help me? I won a scholarship so I don’t try a company that will grant me a salary
A friend and I are having a discussion about car seat placement. She says that a car seat can go in the front passenger seat. I am sure it is not safe. Can you help me find more info to inform my friend? Thanks.
I just got a MacBook Pro, but I don’t have a work processor installed on it yet.
Should I get Microsoft Word, or buy Pages off the app store?
Explanation of answer too please.
Hi – even though I try to do seo work myself I was wondering if anyone could recommend a seo company to me. Its to help one of my websites which has big competition
cheers
I think that it would be more convenient to have the Mail block of information in the middle of the page and the Featured block to the right of the page. I want to switch these two.
I’m looking for SEO company that can help me in increasing my traffic..
Hi!
I would like to know Which is Top 5 SEO Company in India?
We all know that big companies have specialized teams which take care of site’s popularity, link exchange process and other aspects to get websites higher positions on search engines.but now i want top SEO services companies in India based they do work handle globally client service and billings.
I am paying $140 for first page google placement but I never find myself there, the company that I am paying is now accusing me of being the reason “loosing my rank” as they say that I am the one that is responsible for looking to often, is this true or are they scamming me?
How do I place a program I made in visual studio to my web page?
shud i drop 1yr for prep for iit or aieee or shud i join ipu college wat abut it placements…and campus environment…wat about comp sc course(b.tech) in ipu…
Does it mean place the ad in the first few pages on the right hand corner or…?
I am revamping a website with an OK Google ranking to try and improve page rank. I run the site with PHP with SE friendly links (no query strings). The base-names of the URLs were “index.html”, but I can call them anything, and I need to know if I have some of the pages marked as “index.html” and other named “video_dvd.html” that bring up the same page will be considered SE spam. Example:
http://www.site.com/catalog/122/index.html
http://www.site.com/catalog/122/video_dvd.html
http://www.site.com/catalog/122/video_dvd_featuring_widgets.html
All three of these links would go to the same page, as the PHP only reads the ‘catalog’ and ‘122’ part of the URL to lookup the information from the DB. I’ve kept things uniform by having the same types of links on one page (for example, the index page has index.html links, and the product directory has the ‘video_dvd.html’ links.
Is this type of SEO kosher for Google and the like, or should I keep one uniform link for each page?
Can some one guide me. How can I place an image say vertical banner on my web page adjacent to the body text. It comes beneath the text every time I copy and paste the HTML code..
Can any body tell me the name of leading SEO companies which provide a good website Search Engine Optimization Service in Melbourne Australia.
can any body explain me the page rank and how its effect a website ranking