It has been official news that Google has activated its latest Penguin Update, after months of speculations. With this new update, what does it mean for SEO marketers?
The latest update by Google aim to penalize web pages that commit the following crimes:
1. Excessive low quality links
2. Keyword overstuffing
3. Deceptive links
4. Publishing of meaningless and unrelated content to generate traffic from search engines
Making sense of your links
Do a in-depth analysis of your site links. Check for unnatural and spam links pointing to your site, and remove them. Ensure that places that you place your links on are trustable, and related to your site. Having strong and relevant links would prevent Google from ranking you down.
Also, Google also penalize sites which have many identical anchor texts pointing back to their site, as repetitive anchor texts make your links look like spam.
Footer? My Foot!
To protect yourself from the penguin update, do remove your footer links. Footers normally contain links from sponsors, which Google find irrelevant and not useful to the content of your site. If you must have relevant links, try placing them within the body of your content.
Great content, the way to go!
Next, check if your content is being duplicated by another site. Duplicated content may be flagged down by Google. Hence, it is important that you site have great content which will add value to your site, and would help you drive traffic to your site as well. Here are some great tips on writing substantial content with value:
1. Do not overuse keywords.
Yes, keywords are important, however, do not overuse them! If your content is stuffed with repeated keywords, it looks unnatural, and will appear like spam. Google will penalize you, and not rank you for the keywords, or even worse, take your site off being rank on the search engine as well. Focus on delivering only quality keywords, and providing highly relevant content. This would be more valuable, and also greatly appreciated by your visitors.
2. Make your content go social.
Try producing content that is interesting, and worth being shared on social media and bookmarklet sites. This is also a way of link-building, to generate traffic to your site. Be bold, and different. This is the only way to get people’s attention to view your content, and share it with the community.
At OOm, we are in the business relating to online marketing, especially on search marketing. Hence, we would be discussing industry related topics on our blog posts, to engage people who are interested in the latest updates on this field. Every time a new article is posted, it would then be shared on OOm’s social media accounts, to share the articles. Mainly the followers of OOm’s account would be people who are interested in this industry, and would be inclined to click on the links to read more. After which, they would follow up leaving comments, participating in discussion on the topic. You would get to enjoy interacting with your visitors in the discussions as well.
3. Write articles/blog post relevant to your line of business.
Having blogs and have regular post regarding issues relating to your business is another good way to earn quality linkages. When you write quality and relevant posts, people will be compelled to read them, and share them. People who share your articles on forums, social media sites and social bookmarking sites would help create links to your site naturally, which in turn generates traffic to your site for you.
Also, you could give people updates on your business happenings through newsletters. This is a way to engage your audience better, and keep them coming back to visit your site.
Don’t fall victim to the latest Google Penguin update. Take this simple measures, and you would be sure to get the results you want!