During the early years, SEO specialists have noticed that having plenty of links, even from low quality sites was effective in ranking high in the search engine results. Thus, many have resorted to “shady” practices. To name a few practices that still exist today are, creating self-written articles spammed with exact match keywords, directory listings from almost all parts of the web, and forum signatures bearing the keywords—all of which are very easy to get their hands on. All of which is a form of cheating the algorithm.
Google is too wise for this trickery and has once again asserted its authority in ruling out spammy practices, making it a fair fight for all. Enter The Penguin Update.
Google rolled out the “Penguin” algorithm for the first time in mid-2012 with the goal of filtering out sites which have unnatural backlinks on them. A link is a “vote” for your site, which means that if well-respected and authoritative sites link back to you, then Google would notice that and trust your site enough to put it up on its search engine results.
One important factor that businesses in Singapore should consider is that this algorithm, like many of its kind, doesn’t have a location preference. It will strike the website wherever it is located. So, businesses in Singapore that have websites are not exempted from Penguin’s jurisdiction.
Early Penguin Versions
Previous Penguin rollouts have tremendously affected many websites, from what seemed like being wiped off from the search engine results forever, is actually not the case.
Google imposes discipline but this giant is also forgiving. By doing a periodical rerun, those bumped-off sites are given a chance to be re-evaluated and returned to the search engine results. However, these reruns are not as often as we’d wish. It takes quite some time for the affected sites to return to that coveted spot, and what those sites can do is just wait and be ready for the next Penguin refresh.
Whilst cleaning up links won’t automatically mean that businesses can return to their previous spots before the rollout, in fact it will take them a little more time in working out to get trustworthy links and gaining Google’s trust once again. It might take a few refreshes as well, which runs over a course of several months to finally get the ball rolling again for rankings and traffic.
A Better, Real-time Penguin Update is Coming
Image via Imgur
The upcoming Penguin update by the end of 2015 is said to be a real-time version, which means that when Google detects that your site has shady and spammy links, you may experience the impact immediately. Whereas when you remove these spammy links, your site may recover immediately too, not waiting for that periodical refresh like before. Now that sounds a lot better.
There’s roughly a month left before 2015 ends, so while there’s still time; make sure that you come well-prepared for Penguin’s return.
If you are the sole driver of doing digital marketing for your website, doing last-minute backlink checks and clean-up will prepare your website for the coming update. Even if you didn’t intend for the spammy link to appear on your site, spam is just always around the corner; your competitors out there will try to destroy your site’s reputation by linking you to spammy sites so you lose your spot, giving them a better chance (and an easier way) of ranking high in the search engine results. Same advice goes to Singapore SEO agencies. A client website might get the penalty, so a backlink profile check will help weed out those that can affect the site’s authority and confidence.
Providing the best results for everyone using the search engine is Google’s everyday mantra, hence the algorithms. So, it would be counterproductive for anyone doing SEO to just take the “right” action EVERYTIME Google releases news of a new update or refresh to come out. It would be best to do the true SEO perspective from the start so everyone can sleep soundly at night and not worry for any update or refresh from Google. Now that sounds like a better “action” than the latter.
Know the game and play clean, be prepared and safe than sorry. There’s no excuse for your site to be gobbled down by Penguin because you have been reminded.
Cover Photo Credit: News Weekly Australia
