On April 24th, Google rolled out their “Penguin” update. Mass chaos has ensued in the SEO world, with much debate among the Internet marketing community.
Out of all the Google updates I’ve seen over the years, this one seems to have caused more anger and frustration than the others. So I figured I’d weigh in on the issue.
What is the Penguin Update?
This post by Matt Cutts on the official Google Webmaster Central Blog explains it pretty well:
Another step to reward high-quality sites
I’ve read numerous complaints around the web regarding the vagueness of Google’s explanation. Those seem to mostly be from SEO marketers who are making excuses for why their (and their clients) sites have fallen in the rankings. They say Google isn’t being clear enough, and isn’t revealing the details of the algorithm… which “isn’t fair”.
However, I think Google has given us plenty of information over the years about what they like and don’t like.
They don’t like efforts to manipulate search results. They don’t like spam. They don’t like low quality content. Pretty basic stuff, right?
Therefore the Penguin update shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. It’s basically an enforcement of what Google has been preaching over the past several years.
Now, before anyone labels me as a Google-hugger, or a pious white-hat puritan, let me explain where I’m coming from.
The majority of my traffic for most of my websites does not come from SEO. I decided a long time ago that SEO was not going to be my primary traffic strategy. I didn’t want to be dependent on Google, and I didn’t want to invest my time in the ever-changing SEO game.
In my Internet marketing lessons, I teach five main categories of web traffic generation. SEO is just one of those categories. I don’t have any SEO clients, and I’ve never sold any SEO products (although I have promoted several as an affiliate).
I’ve always held the viewpoint that Google does not own the Internet, nor do they have the right to exclusively define morality. Google is not God. Therefore I’m not inherently anti-blackhat. If what you’re doing is LEGAL, and doesn’t hurt anyone, that’s your prerogative.
Google built their business in part by “scraping” the web. An argument can be made that they took everyone’s content (without permission) and used it to build a search engine. When you do a search on Google, you’re not actually searching the web. You’re searching stuff that has been stored on Google’s computers.
Business is a war of sorts, and if your opinion is that gaming Google constitutes fair competition, so be it.
At the same time, I’ve held the viewpoint that Google does own Google, and they DO have the right to define their own ethics and to dictate how their search engine is used.
For that reason alone, I’m not a proponent of blackhat. I figure if you want to get web traffic from Google, why not work with them instead of against them?
Perhaps equally important, I believe that Google is smarter than me. Not better. Not wiser. But smarter.
I’ve never written a single line of code for a search engine algorithm, let alone create the most sophisticated one on the planet. I’ve never built a car that can drive itself (as Google has done), or built a multi-billion dollar company.
So I’ve always had a feeling that Google would eventually outsmart the blackhatters. Perhaps the Penguin is a partial manifestation of that eventuality.
I say “partial” because clearly there’s still a lot of spam at the top of the rankings.
For example, my previous blog post was a product review of a product called “One Minute Commissions”. Since my review is one of only a handful of unbiased reviews that I’ve seen, I would have hoped to see it near the top of the results for the search term one minute commissions review.
However, the ENTIRE first page and most of the second page of results are populated by bogus reviews (ie. reviews intended only to promote the product).
On the other hand, I’ve seen mostly positive changes in my own results since the Penguin update.
For example, this Eric’s Tips website is currently ranking better for some of my keywords than it was before Penguin.
For example, I’m now ranking #2 for internet marketing lessons.
I’m also #5 for internet marketing tips, and #6 for free internet marketing tips. Certainly nothing to brag about, but those are all improvements by about 5-10 ranking positions. I see this as a successful implementation of Google’s attempt to “reward high quality sites”.
I’ve never done any spammy link building with this site, and have done a minimal amount of SEO. I believe the sites that were previously above mine have been penalized for spammy practices.
I’ve also seen some comments regarding Penguin penalizing sites for over-optimization. Some are saying that it’s now better to be a little more vague in your on-page optimization. Here’s a post-Penguin example from my site that would seem to support such a theory:
I’m ranked #1 for how to make a squeeze page, even though that particular phrase is NOT found anywhere on the page (the page is also ranked #1 for how to create a squeeze page, and #8 for squeeze page).
In the aforementioned blog post by Matt Cutts, he says, “We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites.”
That’s right, Google is implying that it’s OK if you don’t do any SEO. Here is a post-Penguin example from one of my sites that would seem to support this claim:
It’s a relatively new site, on which I’ve done no SEO, and I’m ranked #1 out of 439,000,000 results for clean movies.
Link Building…
For a long time, those who teach SEO (including myself) and those who practice it have said that off-page SEO is synonymous with link building.
Indeed, links are the measure of authority. However, Google never said to go out and GET a bunch of links, or to MAKE a bunch of links.
I don’t mean for this to sound like “I told you so”, but even while I was teaching about link building I was warning that Google COULD at any time negate the value of entire genres of back links.
Remember, Google is smart. And really it doesn’t take much intelligence to see what Internet marketers have done with article marketing, social bookmarking, blog networks, directories, etc.
If your back links look “unnatural” or if they look like they were built by YOU, then it’s likely that the Penguin is penalizing you. Which brings us to the most controversial point of all…
Negative SEO.
There has been much speculation that Google is now penalizing links that they deem to be spammy. Not just discounting those links, but actually penalizing them.
Whether it’s true, I don’t know, but the potential ramifications are huge. If it’s true, you could literally take out your competitors by spamming on their behalf. Those spammy links are so easy to acquire that this would absolutely become a reality.
IF it’s true, I’d also be willing to bet that there will be more big changes in the future for Google’s algorithm. Remember, Google is smart. If backhatters start sniping their competitors websites by spamming, Google will figure out a way to combat it.
Many prolific SEO experts are actually recommending that you seek to remove all questionable back links. An un-back-linking campaign if you will. In my opinion, that may be a waste of time. I really hope Google will give us a confirmation of whether “bad” links are merely being discounted (in which case you can ignore them), or if they’re truly being penalized (in which case you would need to get them removed).
Going forward, I would recommend the following if you care about SEO:
– Avoid spammy back links.
– Avoid link farms.
– Avoid keyword stuffing.
– Avoid over-optimization.
– Avoid spun content & other low quality content.
– Do get legitimate back links from methods like guest blogging.
– Do make sure back links seem natural. (Realistic anchor text, not overly optimized, etc)
– Do use Google+
– Do use author tags and claim your sites in Google+
– Do create great content.
If you would like some additional opinions about the Google Penguin update, I found a very good blog post from two days ago in which Razvan Gavrilas interviewed 13 SEO experts:
Link Building Experts talk about Google Penguin
He asked some very pertinent questions about link building, and the variety of answers gives a nice balance of viewpoints.
As always, you are welcome to leave your comments below. Be sure to let us know how the Penguin is treating YOU 🙂
Have a great day!
Hi Eric, good post. The whole SEO thing is so confusing. Sounds like it was a good idea to forget about SEO.
And apparently, based on what you are saying you don’t need to seek off page links to rank in the SEs.
What are the main things you need?
Thanks. Yes I’m glad I chose to not focus on SEO. At the same time, I don’t blame anyone for pursuing SEO. Those who are good at it get tons of free traffic.
You generally do need back links to rank well for a competitive keyword. You may notice in my ‘clean movies’ example, there are no paid ads… which is an indication that it’s not very competitive, even though it’s common. But Google doesn’t want you to go and build those links yourself. They want the links to come naturally, as a result of good content. Of course in the real world, it’s not that simple. Certain types of intentional link building will likely remain effective.
Hi Eric, some of my niche sites have been affected. The were optimised onpage and offpage. I’ve changed a lot of the links that I control to have a more balanced link profile, between business name / website / keywords anchor text. However there are a lot of links that I’ve had made that are out of my control, that can’t be edited. Google can’t penalise them otherwise, I’d just go out and remove all my competitors with a few link campaigns.
Aaron
Hi Eric,
At LAST a voice of reason — VERY refreshing — THANK YOU.
Artificial SEO tactical “popularity” is the stuffed bra of the internet; and like most false foundations has failure built in.
Doing it right has ALWAYS been the long way around; but it has always proven to be the ONLY sustainable approach to enterprise — the dubious illusions of short-term highs notwithstanding.
Keep up the good fight…
Carl Street
Eric, Yet another great post and one that I happen to agree with.
I have for a long time endeavoured to write good quality articles on my blog, and while I have obviously used keywords appropriate to the content, it has never been at the expense of the post’s readability. I have never got involved in buying in huge quantities of backlinks (and have comparatively few as a result) and yet as the posts rank well I can only assume that Google must be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I agree too that Google’s numerous employees together have more than sufficient intellect to identify, and crush, any attempt to manipulate the quality of their results. I for one look forward to the day when SEO as we know it will become pointless, and quality alone will be as important as if you asked your best mate for his opinion on where to go look on a subject he knew well.
Great post. Thanks.
I totally agree, and also focus on the End Users Experience for my clients sites. I prefer to offer EUO (End User Optimisation) rather than SEO.
I think you’re right on in this post Eric. Even after the Penguin update, I still see products being created teaching people how to game the system. This frustrates me because it hurts the honest marketers who are trying to do things the right way.
Great post as always, Eric. I for one am in total agreement with your philosophy regarding Google – they definitely don’t rule the world, but my oh my are they ever smart and at least a few steps ahead of a lot of people 😀
Hi Eric
Great content and very helpfull information. I have also had mixed fortunes in the recent penguin update debacle with some of my main clients sites being more or less obliterated whilst other have risen slightly. I can confirm that in general the sites which were badly effected had at some point in time been “overoptimised” according to googles new rules with some spun content and “doubtful” backlinks. I had previously outsourced the services of an “SEO organisation” who had done this work and apparently they had used “link farms’ and multiple article submission sites etc etc..I stopped using them about three years ago but the content and links they placed have obviously now caused the “curse of outsourcing SEO”. SO we learn our lessons and move on….The Problem at the moment tho is…how best to proceed? I am going to sit this one out for a week or two till someone comes up with a “real” solution..
Hi Eric,
I find SEO a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
So if you don’t use SEO as a means to drive traffic, is the main alternative social media and regular blog posting of original content. I noticed you mentioned Google + a couple of times in your recommendation list. Please expand a bit on the best methods to drive traffic [right now] to a blog or money site. Thanks for the good stuff.
Robert Miller
Hi Eric. the big boys and big commercial companies will just make an even bigger effort now to build “authority” backlinks with their big bucks and teams of experts gaming the system as always..and as usual the small guy with little or no budget will sink even lower in the rankings…The Biggest problem we ALL have is that GOOGLE now dominates the search engine market whether we like it or not….hence the term “go and google it”
thanks for sharing your experience!
Posting good content (repeat visitors) is a big part of this blog. But my most important sources of traffic are affiliate traffic and list building. Yes it takes traffic to build a list, but once you’ve got it, you can create traffic on demand. I’ve covered list building in depth in my lessons, and will be covering affiliate traffic soon. Google+ is important for SEO because Google has essentially tied Google+ into all their services. You’ll notice the thumbnail pictures of my G+ profile pic next to my search engine rankings. I think this helps with authority and CTR.
Eric, thank you for the great post. I have been trying to get the low down on this update, but haven’t really got what I was looking for.
Hi Eric…Yes..I guess I can at least be called an “expert” at something now …..”How to OverOptimise for Google and lose Big Time” !!
I do agree that SEO game is an ever changing game that we can never won. In the end, it will still be Google.
However, gathering a good amount of readers as well as getting a good number of Google+ hits can not be easy. It takes time.
Eric,
Nice post. Yes, if Google is actually actively penalizing “Bad” inbound links, you can bet that will be exploited by people faster than you can say “Black Hat”.
Unless they want a blood bath that precipitates exactly the kind of spammy sites dominating the SERPs they’re trying to avoid, they nbeed to address this ASAP.
I had some sites affected. A couple of which were probably over optimized, but others were not. All have a large amount of excellent, original content, and predominantly long posts of over 1,000 words.
I suspect that a couple got hit because of EMDs, although one was a local site and the domain only made sense. I also got plenty of links from blog networks, in addition to natural links and guest post links. I thin the problem with the blog networks is that even if the links came from articles, many of the articles are on garbage sites or sites that are not niche focused. Many have no authority at all.
Hopefully a recovery is in store before too much longer. Until then, I’ll continue toramp up my local marketing businesss.
Eric,
Great post, as I would expect from you.
This whole Google thing is pretty demoralizing. I recall when they published the “Hot Zones” of reader interest on a typical blog post. So I moved my Adsense ads around to capitalize on it. Then a year later Google announces that some ads should be below the fold. Thanks a lot, Google. I usually find out about their changes when my sites disappear from their rankings. So I think you have the right idea. Just don’t rely on SEO for traffic because it’s a full-time job trying to stay on top of what Google wants at any particular point in time.
Thanks for the no hype honest valuable fair review and thoughts about Google Penquin update. I guess it is better to rely on multiple source of traffic instead of ‘kow-tow’ to big brother Google. Besides, there are other major search engines that are equally important such as Bing. In between, to date I noticed not much efforts on improving search for Baidu.com which is China’s number one search platform.
Why complained to the boss when he is always right? He is the one who call the shots!
I am a newbie right now just trying to figure out what’s going on in this internet marketing. And what i see is so far is this: thre is too much contradiccion on the players. They call names to each other and they even cussed. Sad! And this is confusing to us and dishartening. It is almost impossible right now to start a business if we don’t have quite a bit of monney to invest to start the engine. Sales and upsales buy the tons everywhere even without preparing us beforehand. That is robbery. It was so difficut for me to get… not a refund, but to pull out from a suscription. I did rushed because they RUSH AND RUSH US! WAO!
WHEN WE’RE NEWBIE WE ARE DUMB.
There is a guru right now that just finished with a seminar. Yea! He has explained very clear what he does to make money. Easy to imitate what he does. But we need his software!
How much? He says: we need education and tools to be succesful. And sure we do. But cannot begin even to talk about his price! What he want me? To put the envestment on a credit card? Well, for that we have to have guts! He is not helping us! Why not put this idea in a WSO and sell the sofware for peanuts? No. He want to recoup the money he spent on making the software! All right! Let him do that! This is why today he is a millionare. Because there are people who have money and want to make more money with it. The sky is the limit in greediness! But this is no help to us. So goodby software for us!
Hey brother, i am not including you here, neither Carol and others. Honesty and sincerity is obvious in your business. So, please continue educating us. Please send us the rest of the Erik’s Tips to get to collect 100 lessons. But take your time… i am not rushing you, just do what is humanly possible. God bless!
Google has rules and that it! Take it or leave it! We have to follow the leader. To whatever they do: amen! Thank Eric for your lenthy explanations of things! You’re an angel men! God bless!
Eric you already have a large email list. Thousands follow you. Your followers are what makes your sites rank well. SEO is a bit over rated. They google+you facebook like you and tweet your post over and over again.
My question is how did you get to that point? I believe your content is what made your along with a little big of luck.
Paul
My authority site on antiques has taken a major hit, with income and traffic down 80%. We had our own antique store for over 20 years and my blog was basically sharing our experiences and trying to help dealers and buyers be more proficient through our experiences. Posts avg over 900 words of original content with next to no backlinking (I hate doing it). I did use traditional onpage SEO like bold main keyword in first sentence and include in H1, H2, and H3. Also use keyword in alt tag for photos. I thought I was being as white hat as possible. Had over 100 posts and a year’s work, very demoralizing.
I just keep writing my books for Amazon and hope I am doing the right thing at the moment. Their rankings are improving as I take on board many tips I have received from you thank you.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for being the voice of reason here. May I ask you to expand a little on Author tags? Respectfully,
Juliet
Eric, I searched for the keyword, “clean movies” and your site is doing great in rankings. #2 out of 465,000,000. I went to your site and I realize that all those clean movies that you review are linked to two main sites, netflix.com and christian cinema dot com.
Infact, I’m a newbie Internet marketer, and lately I have been looking at this idea of blog- curation closely. The widely accepted theory is that Google looks favorably at curated sites and I think those outbound links gives you a boost. what do you say?
Hi Eric, Thank you for this post. You are awesome and I appreciate your connection with us!
I am putting up my first site next week after many months of learning this brand new business.
I will be an affiliate and maybe a blogger, later on. So all this didn’t really effected me so far. The website alone, is freaking me out! It is fun, but so different!
But now, I am soooo confused about traffic. I will easily fit the confines of Google, but that doesn’t mean I will succeed.
Do you have a program that teaches us the myriad ways of getting free traffic to start? And then what to invest in later?
I know that you have a membership site, which I plan to join at a later date, When I get a cash flow.
I am glad I found you, and you 100 tips! I would recommend you to anyone!!!
I always wish you well ! Mary
Relying on 1 single traffic source is very risky, especially Google. Now, I just take it as a bonus on top of other sources. List building is the way to go to actually build up an asset.
Though Google mentioned it is for the sake of rewarding higher quality sites, some of the sites with some heavy backlinks are great quality yet they are penalized. In another view, sites that are not over optimized are rewarded, but that does not mean they are high quality (though some are…)
Great post and great job being one of the good guys of IM.
First a complaint – I might be the nuisance penguin so that means I rather dislike them calling this the penguin update.
Eric your post was far too long cos everybody knows that any post should be in the 500-700 word range to to keep the search engines happy.
OK I happen to believe that to be a total untruth because I have seen short posts get good rankings and much longer ones do the same.
I fully agree with Eric when he talks about needing good quality content. That gets SEO sorted but, more importantly, gets visitor engagement. Let’s face it, they might not take action on their first visit yet good quality content gets them coming back.
Never dismiss SEO but it has to be worked into your visitor experience. Turn your visitors into repeat visitors by giving them the quality of content that they expect. Then they respond to your call to action.
Nice article Eric and I hope my comments help the discussion
At last, Quality Content RULES!! I am encouraged to continue to pump out good quality sites… and Google will like it. Thanks for you insight, Eric.
I have problems with Google, in terms of how they de-ranked my (and others’) web sites, and in terms of how the Penguin put really lousy sites on the first page while putting my and others’ better sites on the back pages.
I have a problem with Google’s approach to dealing with spammy backlinks. This is how I see it:
Bear with me a minute while I back up and point out that Google has always pretended that they hold that “content is king”.
So when I built my web sites I built them with natural, informational, helpful content. I didn’t know jack about SEO or IM so I did what I read in many books and articles that Google wanted.
Guess what? This got me ZERO rankings. I wasn’t even in the first 5 PAGES.
So I began to research it and I heard about backlinks. Backlinks are king these experts told me. I began to look at my competitors’ sites and they had lots of backlinks. The backlinks they had did not seem natural. I learned that some were part of a link exchange program. I did the same thing. My rankings improved.
Regardless of WHAT GOOGLE *SAID* IT WANTED, the fact is that it wanted backlinks and furthermore it was clear from looking at many – dare I say “most” – first page sites, that it did not seem to matter that much whether the backlinks were natural or not.
I improved my rankings by doing link exchanges and building links like my competitors did. But I still could not get to page 1 EVEN THOUGH MY CONTENT WAS WAY BETTER than any of the pages on the first page.
Then I ran into an SEO company which claimed to be white hat and which claimed to get first page rankings, guaranteed. I hired them. They got me to page 1 within 2 months for 5 keywords.
So I found out soon enough that this was being done by spammy articles on a spammy blog network.
Long story short, Google slapped me hard. Based on the fact that I went WAY FURTHER BACK in the rankings than I was before Penguin, this seems to be more a punishment than just a de-ranking of the blog network links.
Here’s my main problem with this:
If Google wanted to get rid of spammy backlinking why didn’t they just issue a PRESS RELEASE stating exactly what they did not want and WARNING that these type of backlinks would lead to punishment?
Seems to me this is all they really would have had to do: just make clear to IMers and everyone what they do not want, in no uncertain terms. And everyone could have gone about their merry way with no loss of income. I went from making $1000/month to zero a month on my main site. In this economy people cannot afford to lose this kind of money based on Google’s whims.
And by the way, while your sites may have fared well, Eric (and deservedly so), I wonder if you have looked into it and have seen the TONS OF SITES that are now on page one that are NOT deserving of it AND seen that tons of sites that were punished which had great content.
Seems to me that Google is more interested in punishing IMers than it is in providing good search results. Otherwise why not just have released a clear warning as to exactly what they were going to base rankings on and what they were going to de-rank?
In my niche (water filters) there are now absolute crap sites on p. 1. Yesterday I was looking at laptops and the pages I went to are absolutely DOMINATED by some very spammy apparently Asian-made Amazon affiliate sites with NO content at all – just the most basic of info taken right from the manufacturers and reviews that seemed to be stolen from amazon.
What does this all mean?
I think it means Google are:
a) nuts
b) a-holes
c) cutting off their nose to spite their face
d) screwing up their own search results so they can punish gray- or black-hatters.
See my blog about this by clicking on my name.
I done several lessons on free traffic so far, including list building methods, SEO, article marketing, video marketing, and social media. I will soon be covering some additional free traffic methods in lesson 84, and then will be covering affiliate traffic after that.
Paul, One thing to keep in mind is I’ve been running this site since 2005. There may be some luck involved but also a lot of hard work. I think there are 3 main things that built up my following…
1) The content, which compels people to come back and subscribe. (Lessons, product reviews, etc.)
2) Selling products and doing product launches (this adds thousands of paid customers to my list when I launch a product)
3) Giving away various freebies to build prospect list.
Ultimately yes my followers are what makes my site rank well, because they are the people who give it authority. I do get some retweets and social posts, which helps with SEO by proving true human activity. But I think the natural back links that I get from people (even though it’s not a ton) are more beneficial for SEO than the social stuff.
I think curated sites have worked well with Google in the past, especially ones that are truly curated by humans, and those that have a big following. However, I think attempts by marketers to automate curation is probably changing the way Google sees it. Duplicate content seems to be more of an issue with the Penguin update.
I would not say my clean movies site is technically a curation site. There are elements of curation, because we are getting some of the content from other sources like netflix. But each post and movie review is created by us. I do not think the outbound links to netflix and Christian cinema are helping the ranking. In fact, I’m using “no follow” tags because those are affiliate links. Interestingly, although the site is getting good organic traffic, the monetization model is not working too well. I think most of our users are already netflix subscribers. So I’m looking at changing the monetization. (BTW the main objective of the site is really ministry and not making money, so I’m happy with the traffic either way)
Yes that is demoralizing, I hope you can get it back. I think you are a good candidate to submit a report to Google: http://goo.gl/nt3Pz
Juliet, here is some info for you.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986
The easiest way is to claim your site on your Google+ profile. Then put the appropriate rel=author tag in the sidebar of your WordPress blog, which will automatically claim authorship of every page of your site. If it’s not a WordPress site, then you’ll need to post that rel=author tag wherever you’re trying to claim content.
I feel for you man. That’s incredibly frustrating!
Great SITREP Eric, I agree with everything you posted and I may even dislike SEO more then you, I don’t like tricking people into thinking I’m something that I’m not, this gets me in trouble with team members but ah well, I know we still have to do the free traffic things like Offpage-SEO to stay afloat, anyway sweet post and looking forward to lesson 84 More Free Traffic!
.Andrew.
One point that is never mentioned is the size of google’s problem. The sheer weight of the numbers of pages being published must cause google to revise the way they rate pages. They also have to balance that against them needing to earn from Adwords, so they need pages to show ads upon that will be read. It may be that there is a lot more in the strategy of google than getting rid of a relatively small percentage of wierd links.
My thought is to continue with what one does best, because if one is being pulled along behind a whale there is nothing one can do to alter the direction the whale is moving
I feel for you too, but now you are in the same club that I am in….”Devout Penguin Haters”…My story is more or less the same as yours…I have spent lots of time on the google forum lately trying to understand what they want us to do, or what they expected us to do but the information on there is SOOOO confusing its impossible to get a real understanding of what we are expected to do going forward…and the form moderators generally dont seem to know any more than we do ….so thats a waste of time too….seems they just want crap new sites with no SEO or backlinks butt millions of visitors….yeah …..
Jim
It sounds frustrating I know and sorry to hear this. Having been in the SEO industry since 1998, you are at the mercy of the SEO company (if you are just starting out or if your knowledge is limited).
As you have experienced this has affected quite a bit of websites partaking in it. In SEO you have to think ahead and not just think what works today is what we are going to use. If you learn more about Google, the more you will see where they are heading. Not many SEO firms follow this principle sadly, but before you sign up for any SEO firm, do your due diligence…Your very own business is dependent on it..And absorb as much SEO information you can from the influencers in the field.
Good Luck
Johan Hedin
I hope I can shed some light on the Penguin, because there seems to be a lot of confusion, anger, and frustration caused by that nasty little bird. Even some of the “Link Building Experts” don’t seem to fully understand how Penguin has effected page rank (or perhaps they don’t want to divulge their secrets).
First of all you have to understand Google’s business model. Google makes almost all of it’s revenue by selling advertising (pay per click) and anyone or anything that gets in the way of that revenue stream will not be tolerated.
With that said, the notion that Google really gives a rip about who gets to top of an organic search by way of “quality content” is utter nonsense. I don’t believe that even the all poweful Google has technology that can determine what’s good, bad, informative, helpful or relevant. And they certainly don’t have the time or man power to scrutinize all the billions of pages out there by hand.
If you read Jim’s post above, he clearly states – Google has always pretended that they hold that “content is king”. What that got Jim was a big fat zero! What Google doesn’t want you to know is that it’s backlinking that’s king. As Jim discovered. All the top sites use back linking to get to the top. The key is to make your back linking campaign look as natural as possible.
So here’s what we’ve determined about the Penguin.
Sites with over optimized anchor text got hit. Specifically, sites with over 60% exact match anchor text.
So we seem to have fixed the problem by coming up with these percentage ratios to make our back linking look natural.
Exact Match Anchors “Your Keyword” – 32% + or – 10%
Partial Match Anchors “Variations of your Keywords” – 14% + or – 10%
Generic Anchors “Meaningless Words” like “click here” – 21% + or – 10%
Naked Anchors “Your URL” with & without “www” – 33% + or – 10%
So if you got hit by the Penguin I would look at your anchors and adjust accordingly. One thing I wouldn’t do is remove links. Might look unnatural in the eyes of Google.
Should we all strive to make our content the best it can possible be? Absolutely! Because ultimately it’s fellow human beings that will judge the quality and decide to opt-in or click out.
Its pretty obvious that with the Penguin update, there is no way for google to streamline only the very best sites deserving Page one. Through the passage of time and bounce rate may be one of the many factors that will determine if your good or bad sites retain that crucial visibility on organic search!
Thank you for your response! I appreciate your time!
Mary
Hi Eric:
What do you think of WordTracker? Seems like a pretty useful program to me huh?
Eric,
This is an awesome post. One of the best explanations I have read from my research on the topic. In the SEO circles I have been involved with it seems people are always worried about new changes. The funny thing is that some websites have maintained solid rankings from 2003 and beyond because they just focus on providing good, usable, content.
This change is a good thing for those that are willing to put forth the effort to create solid content. With Google it is all about the users and that is what you want anyways.
I think a big part of your success with Google is that you not only have good, compelling written content, but also have included videos on many of your lessons. So your stick rate is really high.
Good work on this post.
Paul Counts
Hi Eric, Great post you have put up on the SEO to make it better for all
Hi Eric,
Thanks for your valuable contribution. It is always helpful to read your articles as you never hype anything and give a real account.
I am trying to set up autoresponder for a webiste. I am a self development trainer and getting a monthly tool like aweber etc is very expensive for me. Is there any other tool that you could suggest that is reliable and one time payment?
Johan, you are right it is good to know where Google is going… The problem is that is very hard to do because basically they lie. They say “Content is King” but the Penguin proves content is NOT king.
I don’t know why everyone is not complaining and/or going to Bing and Yahoo because G’d post-Penguin search results are horrible.
The problem is 2-fold as I see it:
1) No one really knows what google really wants in terms of SEO or content, apparently not even google, as they continue to change their ideas
2) Even if you think you know what google wants (let’s say they want “social markers”), still it is very difficult to get that (just like it’s difficult to get tons of great backlinks) if you are selling a product or service that simply does not inspire social participation or sharing via backlinking.
Therefore IMers in certain niches (or no niche at all!) will always have to figure out how to artificially give Google what it wants in order to get on p.1, especially if your competitors are gaming the system.