Back in 2010, living with and from Google’s SEO was something like sailing on a calm ocean. If you had the right boat, the right sails and good sailors you could just fear bad weather.
Although Google never revealed any secrets to have the perfect boat and sailor, SEO experiments helped SEO gurus find their way on the ocean.
The infographic below is qui relevant on best practices that are still important to follow today.
Then Panda and Penguin arrived!
Since 2007, I ran travel related websites that relied for 93% of its
traffic coming from Google, pulling up to 18,000 daily unique visitors from France, UK, DE, ES, IN and CN.
On the US Market we were hit on January 12th, 2011 for Panda. For the
French market it was August 15th, 2011 and mid-October 2011 for Panda and June 18th for Penguin.
The Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) [INFOGRAPHIC]
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| Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) [INFOGRAPHIC] |
“The Non-SEO Guide to The Penguin Update
There has been a lot of discussion around the search marketing industry over the past few weeks thanks to what many consider to be a pretty major update released by Google. There has been a lot of speculation that has followed with some good and not-so-good advice as a result.
With all of this information floating about it’s difficult for anyone without their ‘ear to the ground’ to get a concrete understanding of exactly what ‘Penguin’ is, and what the effects have been. I’ll put the speculation to one side for the moment and start with the facts:
What is it?
Google’s latest update aimed at rewarding high-quality sites in search results by targeting and demoting sites appearing ‘overly optimised’. Some sites that have used or are continuing to use outdated tactics (specifically tactics to get other websites to link to theirs for the purposes of improving rankings in search results) have been affected by this, however there are reports of websites that have never engaged in such tactics being affected by the update as well.
When did this happen?
Google released a blog post stating that the update would roll out “in the next few days” back on 24th April- almost one month ago at time of writing. Most sites affected by this will have noticed changes around 24th onwards.
COMMENT: As reminder for personal experience on the US Market we were hit on January 12th, 2011 for Panda. For the
French market it was August 15th, 2011 and mid-October 2011 for Panda and June 18th for Penguin as shown on screen shot below.
How to I tell if I was affected?
Sites affected by the update will probably notice a change in rankings and visits from organic search traffic (specifically visits from Google) around this time. If using Google Analytics you should be able to tell by navigating to ‘Traffic Sources’->’Sources’->’Search’->’Organic’, making sure you have a date range that spans a few weeks before and after this date. To be sure it’s best to limit the data you are viewing to Google only. Look for ‘Primary Dimenson’ and click ‘Source’ next to it to give you a list of organic search sources, and click on ‘google’:
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| Traffic between Jan 2011 and June 2012 on natural search - French Market |
The example above shows a drop in visits from organic search (specifically from Google)- if you see a consistent increase in visits around this time it is likely that a competitor may have been affected and your site may have improved in rankings as a result.
OK it looks like my site has been affected by Penguin - What else do I need to know?
1- You’re not alone-
1000’s of sites have been affected by this update- some undeservingly so (to the point where Google has created a
feedback form for sites that don’t believe should have been affected by the update)
2- Penguin is an algorithmic update- it isn’t personal.
Google has identified your site as being within this ‘category’ based on the data it has, not due to a human reviewing your site personally.
3- Reconsideration requests won’t help-
SearchEngineLand.com reported:
“Because this is an algorithmic change, Google has no plans to make manual exceptions. Webmasters cannot ask for reconsideration of their site, but we’re happy to hear feedback about the change on our webmaster forum.”
4- No one that has been affected by Penguin has recovered… yet-
There is a wealth of speculation and tips for recovering from the penguin update online, however no one can confirm what the best solution to recovering from this update is. Currently there has been no ‘refresh’ or ‘reevaluation’- sites that were affected are still in the same boat.
5- Penguin isn’t ‘real-time’-
Like the ‘Panda’ updates before, the Penguin update isn’t continually reevaluated in real-time, meaning any changes that are made now won’t have any impact until Google reevaluates their data at a later date.
How can I get my traffic and rankings back after Penguin?
The only certain answer at this stage is no-one can be 100% sure (as with pretty much anything within the SEO sphere), but the potential signs of redemption lie in evaluating the existing links to your website and the methods used to attract links from external websites.”
Source :
DATADIAL A London Digital Web Agency | Web Design | Web Development | SEO | Social Media
Feel free to give any tips for SEO against Panda and Penguin in your comments.
