Tips For Recovering From The Google Penguin Update

Photo via Arthur Chapman

Have your websites been negatively affected in the SERP’s by the latest Google Penguin update? If so, don’t worry. You’re not the only one. Today, we’ll be discussing some tips and tactics to get you on the road to the recovery process. This is assuming you have had negative outcomes from this Google Penguin update, so let’s take a look at the negatives because it makes for a better picture.

Google Penguin is the newest code name for a Google Algorithm update, and it was announced back on April 24 2012. It’s goal? Decrease search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by (mainly) using black hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, link schemes, duplicate content and a list of other things that Google deems as a “no no”.

By Google’s estimates Penguin affects approximately 3.1% of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in languages like German, Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of them in “highly-spammed” languages. On May 25th, 2012, Google unveiled the latest Penguin update, called Penguin 1.1. This Penguin update, according to Google search expert Matt Cutts, is supposed to impact less than one-tenth of a percent of English searches.

Now that we know a little about this update, let’s look at how to combat it if you were accidentally or not-so-accidentally caught in its net.

One of my personal favorite bloggers wrote this about the update:

Google’s Penguin Update is forcing people to make some hard decisions. Thinking about those decisions too much is making it much harder for people to recover from their Penguin penalties.

In my opinion, recovering from the Penguin Update does not require anything new or anything foreign from the common knowledge of “White Hat Seo”. As a matter of fact those who use White Hat tactics might just find that their efforts will produce better results making them more effective in the long term.

Here’s a list of Google Penguin update recovery methods worth trying.

• Tune up or fine tune your “Technical SEO Implementation”(robots.txt, XML sitemaps, Full use of Webmaster tools
• Remove all of your tricky Redirects (You think Google doesn’t see you but they do so cut it out)
• Get Rid of Dead Links
• Get Rid of Your Sponsored Links (they may make you money but switch them over clearly defined text based ads)
• Create quality content with quality links to other quality sites (SEO 101 here)
• Stop Stuffing Keywords (make your content user friendly and easy to navigate stop writing for the spiders and starting writing for people like me)
• Delete or re-write bad quality content and delete crappy/spammy links (You wouldn’t put on dirty clothes would you then don’t put up crappy content/links on your websites)
• Grow your links at a reasonable & natural pace (DO NOT GO FROM 1 BACK LINK TO 60 THE NEXT DAY)
• Do not buy links from non reputable places (Don’t take candy from strangers)

If you have any other ideas post in the comments and we’ll update the list accordingly!

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