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When people perform searches, Google sifts through a flood of online content and ranks it by relevance and popularity. Over 90% of visitors click on first-page Google results because those websites are synonymous with quality content.
How does Google keep its top results high quality?
In 2012, Google introduced Google Penguin – a complex algorithm for detecting and penalizing websites that try and cheat the system through fake links and keyword stuffing.
What Is Google Penguin?
Ranking high on Google search isn’t a matter of luck.
Google is very clear about what they expect from websites. It posts its Webmaster guidelines publicly for everyone to read. Websites that follow these guidelines have a higher chance of ranking near the top of results.
What happens when website creators break these guidelines?
That’s a question Google wanted to address in their 2012 search algorithm update. Developers designed Google Penguin’s algorithm to search for indicators of websites manipulating the system to steal top result spots – then penalized those websites by pushing them further down in search results.
[bctt tweet=”Developers designed Google Penguin ? to search for indicators of websites manipulating the system to steal top result spots – then penalized those websites by de-ranking them. Learn why it still matters for SEO today.” username=”ExpWriters”]
Some of the indicators Google Penguin looked for were poor-quality links. These are spam links or links that people purchased with the sole purpose of making a website appear higher quality than it is.
The last Google Penguin update, Google Penguin 4.0, brought an end to separate updates. Instead, Google Penguin became part of the core algorithm.
The algorithm itself didn’t change. What changed is how Google connected to Penguin. With Google Penguin as part of the core algorithm, websites saw immediate results in their search rankings.
Website content creators no longer look at Google Penguin updates for the latest guidelines on website content, but at Google’s algorithms as a whole, since they’re now the same.
Another change that took place with Google Penguin 4.0 is how Google punished websites that cheated the system.
The new update doesn’t punish websites as severely as previous versions. The first Google Penguin updates penalized whole domains for spam links – causing webpages to sometimes drop out of results entirely. Penguin 4.0 only penalizes subpages and specific URLs.
The new Penguin update also allows websites to regain their rankings faster by correcting faulty links.
The 5 Steps of Google’s Search Algorithm Today
What does Google’s algorithm look like today – and how can your website rank on the first page?
Google lists five steps that it takes every time someone performs a search. Using these five steps to customize your content, you can gain high rankings while avoiding penalties from Google Penguin.
1. Interprets a Person’s Meaning
When you enter a search into Google, the search engine analyzes not just the individual words – but the semantics of your search.
This analysis consists of correcting misspellings, including synonyms in results, and identifying the context of the search.
Content creators benefit from this algorithm because it means you don’t have to know the exact words people are searching for. Your blog post on “The 5 Best Ways to Clean Your Car” also has a chance to rank when people search “best ways to clean your vehicle”.
2. Finds the Most Relevant Results
Have you ever heard of keywords? They’re one of the two most important ranking factors.
A keyword is a term or phrase that’s used repeatedly on a page. Repeating a keyword helps Google identify that page as a relevant result for a topic.
For example, this post’s keyword is “Google Penguin”. When people search for information on Google Penguin, Google will see how often this post mentions their algorithm and is more likely to suggest a reader visit our website.
Not all keywords are equal. Over 92% of keywords get fewer than ten monthly searches. That’s because people don’t always search for the keywords content creators use.
If you want to know what keywords people search for, try two easy methods:
1. Begin a search query on Google and write down Google’s suggested searches.
2. Search your page’s topic – then scroll down to the bottom of your search results for related searches.
[bctt tweet=”Want to find out what keywords people actually use? ? 1) Search for a topic on Google. ? 2) Write down Google’s suggested searches (the autocomplete text that pops under the search box) and related searches (at the bottom of the page).” username=”ExpWriters”]
First, Google’s algorithm looks for popular websites. As people visit, comment, and interact with your site – your site moves up in rankings.
Second, Google looks at inbound and outbound links. When other websites link back to your content, Google sees this as a sign that you produce high-quality content. The more sites that link to your website, the higher you will rank in Google.
When you also link to reliable websites, you show Google that you value other quality content. Alexa’s tool for analyzing websites and their quality can help you find reliable sources for your outbound links.
Quality linking is the third most important part of SEO. Over 51% of content creators who use quality links start seeing better results in less than three months.
Internal linking is just as important as external linking. By adding a link to another page on your website, you’re connecting all the pages of your website as one. This connection shows search engines that each of your website’s pages is equally reliable.
4. Weeds out Unusable Content
Have you ever left a website that loaded too slowly? Do you find yourself immediately closing pages on your phone that are difficult to read?
Google wants to make your search experience as pleasant as possible by weeding out sites that load slowly, navigate awkwardly, or format incorrectly on your device.
68% of visitors use their mobile device to access websites – while only 29% of visitors access websites through their desktop. Google wants top-level content accessible and readable across all devices.
If your website only looks good on your computer, you may find yourself losing out on top page rankings. To ensure your website runs smoothly and works on all devices, hire a website developer to design your site.
5. Analyzes Personal Preferences
Does this situation sound familiar?
You tell your friend about a treadmill you’ve been eyeing up. Next thing you know, Facebook has ads for that treadmill plastered everywhere! Even random websites you visit on Google somehow know you want that treadmill.
Most people have accepted that technology tracks what you do. While being tracked may make you uncomfortable, it also has its benefits.
Google uses the data it collects on you – where you are, what you search, websites you frequent – to tailor search results to your lifestyle.
If you search for coffee shops – Google can use its location tracking to know you’re in Virginia and show results for your area.
As a content creator, you can use this feature to tailor your content to specific audiences. By adding locations to your website, you show Google that you are a relevant search result for anyone in the area.
How Websites Avoid Penalties with Google Penguin
What you learned about Google’s five steps in finding search results is meant to help you create quality content. If you try and cheat the system – Google Penguin will drastically drop your ranking.
“White hat SEO” refers to websites tactics that follow search engine guidelines – while “black hat SEO” are underhanded tactics meant to manipulate the system.
Here are the two most common black hat SEO practices and how you can avoid Google Penguin penalties through proper white hat SEO.
Feeling overwhelmed by all the content rules? Hire a content writer to create quality content for your website.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
The second step in Google’s search process is to locate relevant websites through keywords. If you fill a page with keywords without adding quality content in-between the keywords, you are keyword stuffing.
Quality content includes content that is authoritative, informative, and engaging.
Most first-page results have close to 1,500 words. If you do try and meet that average, don’t compromise your quality to meet a word count, or else viewers will discard you as full of fluff instead of a leader in your industry.
Make every word on your website count.
Use Quality Links
You can buy almost anything online – including links.
Buying links is a practice a web builder does to gain higher rankings. When people buy links, they exchange money or equal links for a link to their website– making their website appear more reliable than it is.
Another link scheme is using unnatural links. These are links that are hidden on a page to try and trick Google search – but don’t add any value to the page.
To avoid Google flagging your links as spam, intersperse them in quality content. If you do have an ad link, label it in the link attributes.
Avoid Penalties from Google Penguin through Quality Content
Google has over 200 factors that influence ranking. That is a lot to keep straight while simultaneously avoiding penalties from Google Penguin.
We at Express Writers offer content writing services that hit on the main factors affecting your website’s ranking: creating quality content, adding reliable links, and customizing your keywords.
Check out our content shop and start publishing quality content on your website today.
Have you experienced big ranking changes? So have we. Apparently, one of the biggest updates to Google Penguin in over one year happened just a few weeks ago. (The last major update to Penguin was just over a full year ago, on October 3, 2013.)Dubbed Penguin 3.0, this new one was a worldwide update, not just a local hit. It was a refresh or update of the original Penguin. This means that the sites affected negatively wrongly by the last Penguin were freed of their penalties, if they had taken the recommended Google steps for recovery. (Not sure about this? See my section detailing Google recovery towards the end.)
Express Writers Dominates The SERPS
We were stopped dead in our tracks when we had 400 unique visitors in one day during a recent weekend, on Saturday. Then, four contact requests occurred Sunday evening. That never happens on a weekend! We took a deeper look and saw that our overall ranking had increased majorly. We already had several dozen keywords dominating search: but today, we have rankings like we have never had before.
We’re ranking in the top 3 results of Google for 37 keywords
We have 88 keywords in the first page of Google
We have 136 keywords in the first 2 pages
Here are the stats in screenshots, from our SEO tool of choice, SEMRush.
What happened during the weekend of October 18:
We are outranking some of our major competitors with keywords in the first results of Google.
We increased in rankings on a few keywords: and we held strong on keywords where some of our competitors lost more than 50 positions. This is awesome news for our company! We are staffing and hiring more team members this week due to the workload increase.
What Were The Biggest Recent Google Updates?
I know, there’s been a ton, and it’s hard to keep up. Here’s a brief recap of the recent Google change history, so you can see just how many major changes Google has gone through in the past few months:
Google Pirate update rolled out October 21. This affected torrent sites aka “pirating.”
Our Content Blueprint: A Blog Every Other Day Keeps The Doctor Away
Here’s our content schedule. I’m going to tell you EXACTLY what we do. This is a blueprint for anyone’s success, tailored to your level of services and amount of “news”, hot topics, and relevant pieces you can publish in a week or month. Remember, quality is most important. Never, ever force content. If you simply can’t get out a 3000 word blog three times a week without repeating yourself every week, drop down to once a week or twice at 1,000 words/blog. Change it up and find what works for you. The best days to publish are weekdays in the morning.
We publish 1,000-3,000 word blogs on our site three days a week with links to other quality sites, and visuals (screenshots/images). We post each blog to all our social media networks.
I publish one original blog a week (not too much more than 800 words) on my LinkedIn profile.
We post on social media multiple times every day, tweeting our industry peers, sharing industry content, and our own blogs multiple times. We also publish custom-made visuals with hashtags (like these).
We publish (on our blog) infographics about three times a year.
Our content blueprint is exclusive to Express Writers. I haven’t copied this strategy. As a copywriting company, centering on web-based content, we can say one thing: we know how to write content. And if content is the #1 thing that Google wants these days, well—we’re just going to keep being winners! And we want you to be too. What Can We Do For You From This List?We can write all your blog content, publish it with a monthly schedule, and coming up we’ll have revamped social media plans that INCLUDE custom visuals! We can also write and publish press releases on PRWeb and write/create infographics for you. Disclaimer: If you want guest blogs, we don’t find or do any network management. You have to get on your guest blog platform of choice; we only write your content. But, it will be stellar enough to uphold your reputation on an awesome guest blog site. Now, moving back to the Google update changes…
Were You Hit? If You Haven’t Already, Here Are The Google Steps For Recovering
If you’re experiencing a hit in rankings, then you probably haven’t done the necessary steps to recover from the Google Penguin penalties. Here’s a brief how-to.
Penguin focuses on penalizing anyone abusing links. Read the Google webmaster guidelines and find out if you’re violating any of them.
On the Google Penalty Recover site, scroll down to Troubleshooting and follow the directions for manual action recovery.
Have A Deeper Problem? Look At Panda And Fix Your Content (Now)
If you have a steady decline that goes past a sudden de-ranking from Penguin, time to take a look at Panda. Google is actually calling Panda a Quality Algorithm instead of a penalty. Panda was a site-wide penalty that affects all rankings for organic keywords, which will hit you if your site is featuring low quality content. Your entire site gets a lower quality score because of the problematic content, making it nearly impossible to rank at all till you fix the problem.
I hope this blog and real-life case study helps you. If you have any questions for me or if you think I’ve left out any information, let me know in the comments!
Photo credits SEMRush.com (Screenshots taken 11-5-14)
Who’s honestly not afraid of the Penguin? In 2012, Google decided to release one of the most terrifying algorithm updates that makes us watch our backs every single time we post or update content on our website. The Penguin, Google’s radical algorithm change targeted websites that featured overly optimized anchor texts stuffed with keywords, dubious link profiles and shady link building strategies. All in all, the not so cute Penguin made us change our perception of endorsement.
Penguin – The Algorithm Update That Makes Us Look at Endorsement from a Different Perspective
In online environments, we are actually permitted and sometimes even encouraged to pay a popular celeb to promote our products on his/her social media channels, but we aren’t allowed to beg, pray or pay for links coming from other sources. Now does this make any sense? It does, actually. Google has always been striving to ensure a flawless web experience for all Internet users.
According to Search Engine Watch, this is the main reason why it does everything in its power to sniff, signal and ban any kind of black hat strategy rolled out by webmasters whose sole purpose is to manipulate search engine results to their best advantage.
To begin with, Google scared the SEO out of us with its Penguin algorithm update designed and implemented to penalize websites that promoted low-quality content. These websites did not do any favors to readers looking for quality information; they just represented a cheap and convenient moneymaking machine for most business owners who did not plan to optimize their content strategies anytime soon. Fortunately, the mighty Penguin made them reconsider. Shortly after Penguin buried many webmasters 6 feet under the ground, Google decided to focus its entire attention of manipulative, unnatural inbound links. According to Moz, the types of inbound links that can ruin your friendship with Google can be separated into different categories:
Paid links
Links with overly optimized anchor texts
Links coming from low-quality webpages
Links coming from sources that are not relevant to your business
Keyword stuffed links
3 Reasons Why Paid Links Are the Forbidden Fruit That Should Be Left in the Tree
If you don’t want to upset Google, it is highly recommended to invest time, money and energy in your content strategy, rather than trying to come up with a counterproductive tactic based on paid links. You may be wondering: why are paid links bad in the first place? Google doesn’t like them much for a number of reasons:
1) Paid Links Are a Form of Cheating. Basically, when you buy links, you pay to help your own page rank higher in search engine results. In other words, you defy Google’s rules and guidelines and put a certain amount of money on the table to see your website on page 1 in Google. Ultimately, you get bonus points from search engines that will consider you a relevant, popular, trustworthy source even if this is not the case.
2) Your Practice Stops Search Engines from Delivering Relevant Results. If all people were to pay to see their website occupy a privileged position in search engine results, how could Google, Bing and Yahoo manage to display relevant, quality results that users are actually interested in finding?
3) Bad Linking Strategies Don’t Help Your Readers. On the contrary, paid links that have no value whatsoever annoy and bore your readers to death, so this is one extra reason why you should avoid them.
5 Ways to Boost Your Website Traffic without Relying on Paid Links
Instead of investing your resources in deceptive optimization tactics, try to stay in Google’s good graces and increase your website traffic rapidly and risk-free. Here are 5 simple ways to attain your goal without jeopardizing your relationship with Google:
1) Maximize the Satisfaction of Your Readers. Moz points out that Google may measure satisfaction every single time users click on a certain page. So the question is this: does your website have what it takes to keep your readers on your side for the longest period of time? If the answer is no, find out what you have been doing wrong this whole time and discover the simplest method to correct your mishap. Update you content, add calls to action, change you tone/writing style, cultivate the feedback of your readers and make sure the topics that you expand one actually address their needs, demands and concerns.
Also, don’t neglect social media marketing opportunities. Improve your social media presence the easy way. Create and publish premium web content enabling you to interact with your fans and followers on some of the most important social media platforms.
2) Proper Video Optimization. A picture is worth a thousand words, but since the online environments have become increasingly competitive, you’ll need more than a great pic to convince users to click on your website. In this case, a video snippet could serve your best interest by stimulating the curiosity of your readers and proving that you are a first-class source of information that is counting on killer multimedia content to stay relevant.
3) Google Authorship (Plus an Awesome Photo of Yourself). Many webmasters are dealing with the same problem: they don’t know that online businesses have to establish real relationships with members of their targeted audience. Since not all the info available online is 100% accurate, users must find a way to separate quality content from written trash. To simplify their process, they take a closer look at the original source. Who is the mighty content creator? You are! In this case, highlight your authority and build credibility and trust by counting on Google Authorship. This way, a short, relevant description and a great photo of yourself will be listed at the beginning of you articles. While you’re going down this road, make sure you rely on a few basic elements guaranteeing your success:
Opt for a picture revealing a real face, not a cartoon character
Go for high-contrast hues that will make your pic noticeable
Post a photo that is audience-targeted: a photo of someone looking like a respectable financial advisor is certainly not the best pick if you want to convince teenage girls to click on your website and buy fashion jewelry.
4) Update Your Content. This is a good strategy that will also help you increase your website traffic. Create new, stellar content and update the old one regularly to attain your optimization goals. Google interprets freshness in different ways, based on several criteria, including your changes to important and unimportant web content, how many new pages you create over a certain period of time and how often you update your content.
5) Industry-Specific Websites. OK, so you have finally reached the conclusion that you shouldn’t buy links. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to get listed on industry-specific sites. Approach the webmasters and ask them to support your optimization efforts. They will most likely include you, especially if you are a relevant player in your industry and your content is fresh, engaging and rich in information.
These 5 simple methods can help you increase website traffic without relying on paid links. After all, why pay for something that will eventually go against you when you can redirect your resources towards a world class content strategy that will boost your profits, online visibility and your competitive edge without upsetting Google?
Download your Free copy of What Google Penguin Cracked Down On, and Why That Still Matters Today
and we held strong on keywords where some of our competitors lost more than 50 positions. 
This is awesome news for our company! We are staffing and hiring more team members this week due to the workload increase. 