Couple of days ago Matt Cutts the head of web spam team in
Google announced next generation of penguin being rolled out. Its not new for
SEO's but some people experienced its magnitude and were hit badly by this
update so i decided on writing a post on it.
So what is Penguin?
Google launched this update for the first time in April 2012
the main aim of this update was to target spammers who were using unethical
works like link networks to manipulate search engine rankings
This was the time when the whole SEO industry was in state
of shock as many lost their rankings traffic and drastically.
So What Are Possible Problem What Does Penguin actually
Targets?
- Link networks
- Advertorials
- Paid Links
- Directories
- Abusing Your Anchor Text of External Links
- Excessive Unnecessary Internal Linking
- Links From Bad Domain
- Links From Penalized Site
So What Is The First Step To Recover Your Site If You Have
Been Hit By Penguin Algorithm Update?
·
Check if you have received any Penalty warning
in Google Webmaster Tools
·
Basic ranks check should be done to check which
of your keywords have been affected
- Check You Link Profile In Google Webmaster( External Linking Sites & Internal Linking)
Identify domain from whom you are receiving enormous amount
of link and create a ratio of linking domains to the linking pages (This is totally
a personal call) If see the ratio being fishy then mark those domains
For Example refer below table
Linking Domain
|
External Links
|
Linked Pages
|
10000
|
1
|
From the above example you can clearly see that this is not
natural link.
Once indentified such domains contact webmasters of these
sites and get your listing removed
There are possibilities that you may not have build
directory links but some SEO agency did that for you as directories are the best
and easy way to manipulate SERP
Identify list of
such directories run a thorough audit on them, parameters to check are:
- Whether the directory indexed or not, this can be done using site: command operator
- Check for Porn, Gambling & Casino
After running these check the site which doesn't passes the
above parameters should be marked and the webmasters of those sites should be
contacted to remove your listings.
- Check Your Backlink Profile
Use tools like OpenSiteExplorer, MajesticSeo or Ahrefs to
check your backlink profile. Extract the data and check your anchor text
diversity for the pages that seems to have taken a hit analyse them and if you
feel that your link profile is not natural then you should start contacting the
site webmasters from where you have acquired those links and ask them to change
the anchor text or remove your links.
An Ideal Link profile should have diverse anchor text like:
20% Exact match
20% Phrase Match
15% Phrase + Brand Name
15% Brand Name
10% URL
5% Long tail
Note: Above classification is on the basis of personal
experience
Once all the clean ups are done from your side depending on
what kind of penalty have you received depends the recovering of site.
If you have received warning message in Google Webmaster then
you need to file a reconsideration request to Google once received they will
verify and check your site for quality guidelines and provide you the feedback
accordingly.
If you haven’t received any message then you have been hit
by Algorithmic change in this case there are chances you need to just play
waiting game until next penguin update or next data refresh is done by Google.
We all know the above mentioned stuffs are quite tiring but that’s
what we need to do.
More Advance post coming keep sharing and keep learning.
Written By Vijayraj Nadar
I have been working in the field of digital marketing with over 3 years of experience, i have handled many clients right from stock market broker, online ecommerce store. you can find me on my Google + Profile or Twitter Profile:
