Google Penguin 5

Forget the furry animals. Forget all that has to do with the word “fuzzy,” “animal,” or “cute” —all adjectives to describe the Google Panda and Penguin, names Google has given their recent & biggest algorithm updates. The latest one, Google Penguin 5, has nothing to do with cute. The newest and latest algorithm update is a vicious version of the old Penguin, cutting down on spam and causing a lot of grief to website owners who are now experiencing a heavy loss in traffic from Google Penguin 5 as a result of the algorithm updates taking place. If that includes you, there’s one comfort: you’re not alone. Even the best of the best, including copywriting websites, were affected by the change and lost rankings inside the space of one night. Google’s baby, original content, wasn’t overlooked in the battle—it was affected too. How bad were the effects? A simple hyperlink that Google didn’t approve of could mean entire de-ranking for a quality content article, which could consequently mean an entire keyword ranking loss. Matt Cutts Confirms Matt Cutts officially confirmed the latest Penguin update on October 4 with a simple tweet: Penguin 2.1 launching today. Affects ~1% of searches to a noticeable degree. While he says it will affect 1% of searches, search engine gurus are saying it has affected more than 3% of all websites. That’s a LOT of websites when it comes down to the count. Literally thousands of websites with some investment in SEO tactics will feel the change, with an expected fluctuation in their rankings—with more people experiencing loss of rankings than an increase. Why is it Penguin 5, Not Penguin 2.1? Cutts calls it Penguin 2.1, but SEO blogs, forums and hubs around the Internet are putting it better by titling it Penguin 5. There have been so many numerous “mini”, “large” and “add-on” updates to Penguin. But if the researcher pays attention, this is the fifth most impactful one and so it just makes sense to call it that. (Sorry, Cutts.) What’s Happening to Others? Many concerned conversations between website owners occurred all over the web, after Google Penguin 5 hit. The updated Penguin de-rankings cost a living for many. National website owners lost 70% of their traffic, commenting on the Webmaster World thread concerning their misfortunes. Many felt they had no reason to experience the drop in rankings—they just suddenly lost all their traffic and rankings, even after practicing methods (like disavowing bad links) that Google seemed to favor and restore rankings because of, prior. So What Really Is Google Penguin 5 Targeting? OK, so what really happened that night where 3% of website owners felt their rankings affected? Here’s a lowdown from some experts. Biggest tweak ever made to Penguin. Chris Crum of WebProNews is saying that Penguin 2.0/5 is the biggest tweak ever made to the entire Penguin algorithm since it launched, and the word is a lot of webmasters were affected. The entire algorithm is a penalty. Bruce Clay, of Bruce Clay, INC, is calling it Google’s Angry Bird. (We love it, Bruce!) He says a dip in traffic could indicate you were hit by the new Penguin, even if no keyword rankings could appear to be lost. He also clarifies that the new algorithm is a penalty. (Really, Google? Your entire latest update is a penalty?) It’s an attempt to devalue all “manipulative links” in Google’s search engine ranking algorithm. The purpose of Penguin 5 is to eliminate spam. Sage Lewis of Clickz recounts some sad stories of entire livings lost because of the update, and confirms that the purpose of the mean new bird was to eliminate as much “spam” as possible. Paid links are the target of the heaviest penalizations. Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand says that the new Google update particularly goes after websites that bought “paid links” to gain their rankings. This is what Google defines as spam-filtering, in this particular algorithm change. All the link types that can be de-ranked by Google: Links achieved quickly on a short time period, imbalanced anchor text, a paid link with exact match anchor text, spammy blog comments, questionable guest blogs, and article marketing links are now all disqualified. Danny Goodwin of SearchEngineWatch delved even deeper on the link issues that Google’s algorithm affected to describe this. What Can I Do Right Now (and Later)? Now that you know the entire Penguin 5 is a “penalty” targeting any kind of links that Google thinks are spammy, here are some good practices you can start implementing yesterday to get better rankings and satisfy the angry monster savvy Google Penguin 5. Step 1. Understand you cannot trick the algorithm any more with paid cultivation of backlinks. This is a knowledge thing, and can take 5 minutes to 5 weeks to get over, depending on how close to your emotions this principle lies. Simply understand that you cannot—cannot use paid cultivation of links to rank anymore. You cannot game Google and pay an Indian SEO company pennies for thousands of links. Google will know…and catch you in your sleep. (Not really, but it will hurt you, bad.) Step 2. Fix Your Links. Now that you’re smart and have taken away all psychological barriers and last pretenses that paid links have any value, it’s time to fix the links that are potentially killing your rankings. How do you do this? The Google Disavow tool can be a lifesaver. It is a way to tell Google Penguin 5 to stop counting bad links pointing to your site. If you want to get really nitty-gritty, the SearchEngineJournal resource article on how to know which links to disavow is a huge help. Remember, once you’ve disavowed, you’ll need to wait till Google updates again for the links to be disqualified. Step 3. Practice Good SEO Methods. Diversify. If all you did was organic SEO tactics, invest in Adwords. Look into Facebook ads. Consider email marketing and more regular/scheduled/routine content marketing with a social plan as … Read more