3 Steps to Avoid the Wrath of Google Penguin

The Digital Essentials, Part 3

Developing a robust digital strategy is both a challenge and an opportunity. Part 3 of the Digital Essentials guide series explores five of the essential technology-driven experiences customers expect, which you may be missing or not fully utilizing.

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With Google’s introduction of its spam-fighting algorithm, Google Penguin, many websites have suffered from both short and long-term positional drops in search result pages and hence traffic. As Rand Fishkin states on his edition of Whiteboard+, Google Penguin is focused on punishing devalued links from manipulative link profiles, rather than trying to improve the quality of search results.
Worried that your site could be deemed Penguin-like and possibly be unfairly hit with or without warning? Don’t fret the fury of the Google Penguin update until you uncover your SEO errors with these quick tips to clean up your site.
1. Delete. Delete. Delete.
Remove any web spam or spam-like techniques from your site. Examples include keyword stuffing, hidden text and links and duplicate content that is used to manipulate search results.
2. Naturalize Your Anchor Text
Analyze your website’s anchor text (the visible text showing in your links) using SEO tools like Open Site Explorer, Majestic or Google Webmaster Tools. This will make sure that your anchor text is distributed as naturally as possible. You can do this by exporting the data to reveal if there are any spikes on exact match keywords and then make changes as necessary to even out results.
3. Balance Your Link Profile
Don’t waste your time and money pursuing poor quality reciprocal linking, buying links or submitting your site to SEO-friendly directories. Need some ideas for “white hat” methods for link building? A few include blogging, creating link bait like infographics or other visual content, press releases, sponsorships, social media and of course, content creation that goes beyond a blog, such as, surveys or case studies.
There is no quick fix to recover if you have been negatively affected by Google Penguin. But if you make conscious efforts to know your industry and your customers, you can easily avoid common SEO mistakes that give over-optimization signals. Remember, now is the time that the right search marketing strategy is more important than ever, starting with quality as your top priority.