SYLVIANE NUCCIO

What You Need To Know About Google Penguin Update

May 14, 2012 Internet Marketing

Today, I am posting a guest post from my internet friend Seth Layton.  He is a young internet marketer who really knows his stuff. So, without further ado, enjoy!

First it’s the Panda update and now it’s the Google penguin update. What’s next, a zebra! If you haven’t heard about the latest Google penguin press release, there are a few updates they’ve made that have supposedly angered quite a few webmasters and SEO experts.

It’s important that we know exactly why webmasters and expert SEO people are ticked over this update, reasons for this update, and why it will affect anybody using article marketing.

Cause and Effect, Google Penguin Update

The cause and effect of the google penguin update will cause much more strife for new users, especially after the recent update with sites ranking off BuildMyRank websites and how they were de-indexed. It almost makes you think Google’s like a never-ending cycle where things just keep going in circles. With that said, it’s important that we weigh upon what this means for anybody who does article marketing and what our content and SEO campaigns need to follow.

Should I use Anchor Text Link Building Services now?

If you’re thinking of using any anchor text link building services in the future, you’re in for a big awakening.  Within the recent Google Penguin update, they fixed it to where anchor texts with spammy words or texts to a website will be flagged.  So when you pay services to spam your website with the same anchor text, Google will determine this and de-rank your website. This is why you need to link to more natural meaning words rather than the same thing over and over and over again. Using anchor text link building services is bad for another reason, which brings us to the issue of spamming.

2 Tools that you can use for checking your anchor text links are:

Can Backlinks Hurt your site now?

If you’re wondering to yourself – can backlinks hurt your site now, the answer is it can unless these are all legitimate backlinks.  If you use services that spam backlinks through paid text links using exact match anchor text, comment spam, guest posting on bad sites, and links from dangerous sites you are in the red zone of being flagged by Google.  Don’t spam your site link with the intention of trying to rank higher in Google, because Google will start punishing you for it. It’s like Kyle pointed out in Wealthy Affiliate; Back links are becoming a thing of the past.

One thing this has opened the door to is the possibility of people putting false back links to other competing websites, and de-ranking them in Google.  One way that you can deal with a situation like this is to go to Google Webmaster Tools and sort out the situation.  Either that, or somehow report it to Google.

Duplicate Content, Bad for SEO

If you know anything about duplicate content, bad for SEO is right! Google has been harping over stopping duplicate content, but the Google Penguin update emphasizes on that more with the ranking aspect of it. This of course opens the doorway to other people scraping your content, of which you can report to Google as a DMCA report.  Simply stated: don’t copy! In case you think you might have duplicate content from somewhere on the web or you think somebody else stole your content, you have the option of using Copyscape to check this.

When it’s all said and done, the important things to note is don’t try to cheat the system.  And if you’re one of those few people being affected by people trying to cheat you or copy your content, you always have the ability to report it.  Otherwise, there are tons of other mediums to submit your articles to besides Google.

60 thoughts on “What You Need To Know About Google Penguin Update”

    1. Hi Sian,

      I’m glad this info could be of good use to you and some people you know. I am sure Seth will come by replying to the comments about his post.

      Thanks and welcome here 🙂

    2. Hi Sian, thanks for the compliment. 🙂 This update was primarily made for people trying to use “services” or “tools” on the web that were ultimately made to help the user get a boost in there rankings. So as long as you’ve haven’t taken those types of routes, you shouldn’t have much to worry about. I think the primary sites that need to worry about this update are very large types of websites that have 100’s of posts and so on.

  2. Thank you Seth for sharing this information.

    I think what it really boils down to is if you are using other sites to move your rankings up in the search engines than that is what will hurt you in the long run. If you do this yourself, even if it does take longer, you won’t be looked down upon with Google.

    Thanks for sharing these sites to check our anchor text links. Always good to know.

    ~Adrienne
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    1. Hi Adrienne,

      Yes, what you are saying is right. The “good old days” of ranking, if we could call them like that, are over and I am all for it.

    2. Yes, I agree Adrienne. It’s primarily just for people spending a lot of money towards “services” online for attempting to use paid for type of methods on cheating the system for higher ranking.

  3. Thanks, Seth, some good, straightforward tips here. No doubt Google is getting smarter. I was personally glad on the last update that they knocked out so many of those content scrapers and junk article sites. They were so annoying and cluttered up search results. Back linking has been the next huge problem, but Google created that one themselves. They said “get links!” so everyone did. I’m not so sure I like the whole idea of this popularity game anyway. It tends to reinforce the same “known” sites over and over while so many lesser known sites get ignored. Then people resort to buying links and doing things that get them in trouble in the end, because sometimes you just can’t compete. I hope this turns out to be a good update and maybe level things a bit. I’m taking bets on what the next animal will be 😉
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    1. Hi Carol,

      You are so right about known and larger site always having an advantage even if a less known site is better. I am really hoping that in the end Google will really get it just right. It seems that they are moving that way.

      So, what will the next animal be?

      2. Hi Carol. I totally agree with you. This is why my method is to use other databases other than Google, but at the same time go after keywords that people are actually typing in Google, but are very less competitive and less trafficking. It’s the smaller keywords you want to go after. 😉 All the big companies are the ones trying to go after the very common types of keywords. Recall the incident with JCPenny?

        My advice for going after the big heavy keywords
        Just go after them within the beginning of your title while at the same time going after a less competitive keyword through most or the rest of your title. This is the main method I use for ranking in Google. You always have other places to let people know about your websites.
        ~
        Seth

    1. Hi Seth,

      Yes, low quality content is really bad these days, and that’s a really good thing. I’m so glad, personally that all this is changing. Too bad for the internet “crooks” so to speak 🙂

    2. Thanks Maruya. As for the comment about crooks, there are some people who have been affected to some degree whose intentions were not to take advantage of the system. My friend Jimmy Wrex –> http://nicheexperiments.com/about-us, so happened to be using BuildMyRank to help one of his sites and it shot down the rankings to 4th page after that update. He lost like $1,000 a month or something because of it. Google’s almost like the weather channel. You never know what update they’ll have. But obviously whatever updates that are made are going to be ones created to stop the abuse of there search engine primarily with rankings & hurting others.

  5. Hi Seth,

    Good post, I like what I read. As time goes on it’s good to know it’s getting harder to “beat around the bush”.

    I always say there is only one way to stay out of trouble, organized and succeed. Do things the right way.

    By doing so, you don’t have to deal with changes and get penalized, when there is a crack down. Cutting corners and playing around eventually leads to doom.
    Thanks for sharing,

    Terry Conti
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    1. Hi Terry,

      You are so right. The reason I have never worried about Google doing this or that is that really, I’ve never tried to manipulate the search engines in any way. Frankly, I’ve never been good at it and never, ever wanted to purchase a “back link machine”. So, I have no worries.

      Do the right thing and you’ll be fine. You’re right on, my friend!

  6. Good tips to keep in mind, Seth.

    The Google game is changing for sure, but if it helps keep our feet to the fire in terms of providing high quality and highly relevant content to our readers, then it may be a welcome change after all.

    1. I think that’s the main intention. It seems every update they make however, only leads to new problems. They’ve been doing it for 10 years now and as time progresses new things are always introduced, such as Pinterest for example, or some other new method or ranking. Google has to take all this into consideration, and it’s something hard to deal with I’m sure. Our hope is they’ll come up with a good solution that everybody can benefit from, yet allow everybody to be in peace doing it.

  7. Hi Sylviane, hi Seth,

    thanks for sharing your insights. Yes, chances are we can open a zoo with all these nice cute animals. Anyway and seriously, I haven’t thought of the danger that certain people might out false back links to sites to actually hurt them…so thanks for creating awareness and the reminder to keep our eyes and ears open.

    In general I would say that people know very well what they’re doing. They knew they were tricking the system and they just had’t been punish before the recent updates. So there’s no point in crying and whining now, right ?

    Take care

    Oliver

    1. Hi Oliver,

      You are so right. Most people do know what they are doing, so if they are playing with the system, most likely they would be on the list of people affected.

      Above, Seth mentioned one of his friends that didn’t have bad intentions but was penalized for using BuildMyRank. As much as I am not an expert at this, I think that the safest way is to NOT use any kind of tool to build your ranking on Google.

      Thanks for coming, dear, and have a great day!

    2. I agree Oliver. I honestly bet they’re using cute and cuddly animals to make it more appealing and fun to talk about I guess. And yes, it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open because often the innocent sometimes get pulled into the vortex of unethical & impractical businesses. Google has very intelligent people working for them, so I don’t think we’d have much trouble anyway. The only thing I’m worried about however, is the time sensitive issues revolving around these problems.

    1. Thanks for the compliment Andrew. This is my 1st time sharing via Sylviane’s awesome website, so I appreciate it. :mrgreen:

  9. Aloha Sylviane and Seth, great post and very informative. It sound as if Google wants to help online network marketers, but at the same time gathering as much information from everyone who is submitting to their tools and probably using everyone’s content to our own disadvantage then penalizing with corrections online.

    I understand those who abuse the system is trying to get what they want, but it can become sad for many who don’t understand much about what they are doing online and duplicating some of these so called leaders. Just my speculation. Back to the drawing board I guess and keep it simple. Mahalo, Lani 🙂
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    1. Hi Noelanikee,

      The way I see it is that when the search engines started to get very crowded with lots and lots of competitions the most clever marketers started to invent ways and tools to get above the competition.

      Over time, however, the content started to resemble more like a bad commercial than some valuable information. Now they are all paying for this.

      Thank you so much for your feedbacks 🙂

      1. Yeah, I believe the 1st website was built back in 1990 I think, and it’s now a Physics Particle website with a built in server. But obviously as time progressed, sly marketers (who tried to take the quick way out of things), used methods to get around the system, and thus became successful at ranking high on a keyword for a short period of time before getting cut off the search engines (and repeatedly doing this). Just one of the many examples of early forms of Google abuse.

        I think as long as you don’t try to cheat Google, you’ll be fine. Then if Google comes out with an update that hits all the good people, like all the people I see commenting on this post, I can see a lot of people leaving Google and using another medium in the future. Google’s easily one of the best mediums to use for getting a lot of traffic, but obviously the biggest and more complex it is, the more problems & rules it’s going to come with.

    1. Hi Nicky,

      I didn’t know that either. That’s the good part about have a guest posting on your blog, you learn things 🙂

      Thanks for coming by 🙂

  11. Nice write up Seth, i will put these things into action and i think it is going to work for me. Thanks for sharing this. I appreciate!

    2. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s just good to keep up to date with what they’re doing, and making sure it doesn’t hurt you in any way. This is mainly created to target all the big dogs trying to mess it up for everybody else. 😛

  12. Hi Seth, actually I don’t care at all about any Google update, for me the key is to do what people want and not Google and at the same not relying on search engines for traffic, having said that, after the new penguin update on April I am getting double the traffic that I used to get from google, it’s funny but it seems that if you don’t care about it Google will care about you!
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    1. Hi Kostas,

      Your are right in a way. You don’t have to care so much about Google as long as you don’t infringe their rules though. In your case, you probably don’t, that’s why your traffic actually increase and so is mine.

      Thanks for coming by 🙂

    2. Kostas, I like your plan of action. The main thing is to not try to do unethical things or take a short cut somewhere. I think as long as you are conscience of how Google wants you to do everything, it will only IMPROVE what you’re doing. By following Google’s rules, it’s actually helped me improve my content, improve how I engage my audience, and everything else. You should always care about a medium if you’re using it. 😛 That’s awesome your traffic has doubled too. I’ve heard other people in Wealthy Affiliate –> wealthyaffiliate.slayton1s.com/, say the same thing. Good luck Kostas & take care with what you’re doing.
      ~
      Seth

      1. Seth and Sylviane actually my point is not to not care about google rules but to not build links or doing anything with the only goal to rank better on Google, we just cannot rely only on one unstable source like Google. Usually whenever I build links I am doing it having in mind traffic and in order to get traffic from real people you cannot do it in spammy or unethecal way, you need to give something of value (for examble a good comment 🙂 ) if you want to get something back and thankfully it seems that google likes that…
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        1. Yes, I agree with this. I also think of backlink for traffic not so much for ranking.

          1. Agreed with you there. I do it for traffic….not for ranking higher in Google. High quality content, social media likes, & comments are probably the most powerful factors with outbound/inbound links being 4th. Then of course you have to look at how SEO friendly something is.

  13. Great info Seth. Funny that Next update will be Zebra :D.
    BTW really thanks for this article. I also don’t care about this update and all. We write for readers not for Google. BTW there are another SE Bing and Yahoo so why always Google and Google?
    BTW i just want to say stop building link with low quality sites. And make your site for reader not for SE. Thats enough to protect your site from Google’s Zoo. 😀

    1. Hi Amit,

      That’s right the best way not to have any problem, ever, is to write for the reader and not for Google. Funny thing is that exactly what Google wants.

      Thanks for coming 🙂

    2. I agree Amit. I think it’s important to be conscious of what Google wants anyway, since this will only help you in the long run. As for the other search engines, they are all derivatives or branches to what Google is, since they actually base there content from Google.

    1. Hi Herbert,

      Yes, what Google is trying is get rid of all the garbage, and that’s a good thing.

    2. Yes, it’s sort of annoying dealing with people who copy and paste there content to & from other sites. I’ve been on Clickbank myself in the past and have seen tools that “copy content from anywhere on the web & paste it onto another website as unique content”. There’s 2 flaws to this I see immediately:

      1) It’ll spit out content that doesn’t make sense, or even change the words to where the sentence structuring doesn’t make sense; which will only hurt how you engage your audience. It’s rare for businesses to both be made to help and teach somebody new things as opposed to meddling in with the rest.
      2) Google could probably come out with an update that somehows gets around “this unique content they’ve changed through html” and fix it. It’s the same way they fixed ways to copy content to and from multiple article directories.
      —-
      with that said, the only good way to go about copying content is by creating pdf guides of articles you write, and put it on Youtube, even though the problem with doing that is it won’t really be an awesome video people really want to see on Youtube.

      The days of overkill are coming to an end.
      ~
      Seth

  15. I’m glad to read that the Penguin update doesn’t sound like it will affect me too much; although the latest Panda update in late March killed the search traffic I was getting to my sales sites and I’m still trying to recover from it. Thanks for the recommendation for the Ahrefs Site Explorer, I’ll definitely look into it and compare the results to my Open Site Explorer results.
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    1. I agree Steve. Back-links are becoming a thing of the past and they’re rewarding people who don’t try to copy content, rank higher by spamming there link on directories, and many other things.

  17. Great post explaining google penguin , i am getting so many mails regarding the update and how to recover from them i have said the same thing to everyone to get a content of 600+ words and inter link them to let google know what your content is about and bad links have to do.

    Finally diagnosing 10 sites of my readers and helping them find the culprit pages , their website is out of google penguin.

    I am really glad to help them out.
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    1. Hi Saad,

      Thanks for coming. It seems that you know quite a bit about Google Penguin 🙂

      In my case I have never had to worry too much about that as I have always followed the rules of search engine naturally. The best way to go, right?

    2. Wow, it sounds like you have a big follower base going on. People need to learn how to read from Google directly than annoy everybody else who doesn’t know themselves….or indirectly ask them to look it up for them because they’re too lazy too.

      1. yea its didn’t affect most of the people , only effected 2-3% of the google queries. i am glad it did not affect your site , as it takes 2-3 months to come out of.

        @seth , you are certainly right , i am talking to so many probloggers who dont even know what they are talking about but their content is soo good , i wonder where they are getting their posts from. Its just disgrace in the blogging world when people buy content to make money out of it.
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  18. Wonderful post about google penguin update. The Penguin update is the best update of Google yet. Through the penguin update black hat techniques are eliminated and promotes a more relevant search on the Google Search Engine. Thanks for sharing these resources. Always write original and quality content, and only get links from relevant websites.

    Thanks for sharing.
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    1. Hi Bashir,

      I am glad if the Penguin helps Google providing better results for Google. However, only yesterday I happened to be looking for someone by name and a very irrelevant search result came up second place. I guess there is still room for improvement.

  19. My general feeling is to stay well clear of any automated processes and you’ll be fine. Google seems to be rewarding social interaction and so as long as you are contributing rather than spamming I think activities like blog commenting remain sound practice.
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  20. Specifically, Google Penguin has been introduced to target the websites that place greater importance on advertising themselves than giving users a better and more useful experience.

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