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Comment RSSGoogle Penguin Killed You? How to Recover
Written by Mustafa KhundmiriMay 23, 2012 # 12:42 pm # Expert Guides, Specials # 35 Comments
If you’re a webmaster or blogger that has been hit by Google’s Penguin update, then you should continue reading.
The Penguin Update was launched by the big G to take care of websites that had been clogging its results with spammy pages. Most of the websites caught by the update were guilty of artificially inflating their rankings by using shady tactics that violate Google’s guidelines.
If you are impacted by this update, you obviously want to know how you can recover from it. Even if you haven’t been hit by it, you should take proper measures to safeguard your site from the dreaded Penguin’s peck.
Here are a few tips on making sure your website nurse itself back up and recover from the impact of the update:
#1: De-optimize Your Site: Over-optimization is something you should stay away from. Because Google is keen on penalizing sites that have done too much SEO.
#2: Indulge in Quality Link Building: This one goes without saying – you have to start getting more high quality links to your website. No second thoughts on that. It’s one of the best ways to send a green signal towards Google.
#3: Go for Natural Anchor Text: No matter how hard you try to fake it, Google somehow figures out that you’re not natural. Using the same anchor text for every other incoming link to your site is not a good idea. You should try to keep it as natural as you can.
#4: Say Bye-Bye to Links in Blogrolls: Removing links from blogrolls is a step that you should take right away. Why? Because even though these links are technically not spammy, they might get you penalized. And you don’t want to take any chances.
#5: Stop Using Exact Match Domain Names: Yes, the exact match domain names used to be hot way to get your website ranked for that particular keyword phrase. But not anymore – it’s much, much harder now to convince the Penguin that your site is not spammy. The solution is to focus on brandable domain names.
#6: Add Google+ Sharing: If you’re trying to make a good impression on Google then you should enable Google+ sharing on your website. It makes your site look more authentic and approachable.
#7: Look Into Problem Areas: Go through your website and see what you can fix. Try to make it as genuine as possible. Remove any bad content or links that look spammy. The more you work on the problem areas, the better.
#8: Create Better Content: Making your site more valuable for your visitors in terms of content is really important post Penguin. It not only makes your site more real and useful, but also attracts natural links from relevant websites, giving you an edge over the competition.
#9: Stop Taking Short Cuts: It’s about time you think long term for your website in terms of ranking. You have to understand that it takes time to reach the top, and you have to put in real efforts to reach there. There’s no magic pill.
How are you coping with the Penguin Update? Do you have any tips to share with us? Do comment below and let us know!
Here’s a great interview on PMI-TV about Google Penguin
Written by Mustafa Khundmiri
Mustafa Khundmiri is a staff writer for Performance Marketing Insider. He is also the co-founder of Foundora.com – a knowledge hub for entrepreneurs.
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That Penguin update was sure the end for many sites, great image by the way. Does creating better content mean creating more content, i.e longer blogs, etc.
Byrl Lane recently posted..Lexus Steering Wheel Dilemma Can Lead to Injury
Byrl,
It can mean longer, mor unique content. It also means correct sentence structure and spelling. I have an account at grammar.ly to help with that.
Colin Klinkert ( recently posted..Happy Easter 2012
Creating better content means creating content that people will like, discuss and link to. The length of your content doesn’t matter as long as you’re giving value.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Facebook COO Begs for Clicks
Quality content. Quality content and quality content. What more do you need? We’ve used spinners, and while they work they results are still pretty poor so we end up revising the spun content and in most cases it takes just as long as writing original content.
Robert recently posted..Guest Posts, Google Updates and other Rants
good points on the penguin.
shortcuts are just quick solutions. Quality content is what google wants to see.
Good that you are helping to remind people of that.
david recently posted..Quality Blog Comments With Examples
Shortcuts never work when it comes to long term, stable Google rankings.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Facebook COO Begs for Clicks
We all know that Google is the most powerful website among all, so true that nowadays back-linking don’t recognized by Google, I think that Google prefer to see unique content.
Kate Brown Wilson recently posted..baby desert eagle
Unique content that delivers real value. That’s what Google wants.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Facebook COO Begs for Clicks
yeah, this penguin stuff affected most of my sites..
they were deindexed…:(
Esha Putra recently posted..Having A Damaged Criminal Record Under The Canadian Regulation? Why Don’t You Use Canadian Pardons
It’s okay, you can get back on track with a little effort. No worries.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Facebook COO Begs for Clicks
I liked your last tip- stop taking short cuts.
Truly said, it is because of thinking of achieving achieving high rankings in short duration has resulted in various black hat SEO techniques.
If that won’t exists, then may be Penguin update won’t also be there.
The Penguin Update opened many doors for ethical SEOs, so yes, having a long term strategy is now more important than ever.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Facebook COO Begs for Clicks
Great tips mate. I think now we should start for Reader not For SERP
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“#5: Stop Using Exact Match Domain Names”
(chuckles)
What are you basing these “tips” on? Is this actual data or are you just making suggestions?
“Deopimitizing” a site is a rather stupid concept. Optimizing means that you’re “optimizing” your site so search engines will find it relevant.
This means that optimization can never die as long as Google has to value and devalue certain aspects of a website page.
By “deoptimize” you are really saying that you should decrease signals that look like manipulation of their page for the search engines.
A better approach would be to watch the top 10 results for your keyword and model your site around theirs. The go getters will add in 15-1000% more value to their visitors.
thisbeats9to5 recently posted..How to Stay Super Ninja Laser Focused and Make More Money As a Result
This is actual data and not mere suggestions. Google is really hitting sites that are using “exact match domain names” to get ranked in spite of having low quality content.
And yes, Google IS penalizing websites for over-optimization. De-optimization does not mean that you completely chuck technical SEO out of the window. It’s just about “toning” it down.
After the Panda and Penguin updates, high quality content is the most important factor for getting ranked. Period.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Facebook COO Begs for Clicks
Mustafa, I’m newbie on bloggin world and You write a good article and it’s really valuable for me but I have a little question about exact match domain names. How if I use EMDN and matched with my keyword and I have good quality contents…do You think Panda/Penguin will still kicking out my website ?
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It might just work but you’ll have to have really great content that your visitors don’t find elsewhere.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Facebook COO Begs for Clicks
According to what I read in a blog post from SEJ(Search Engine Journal), we don’t need to stop getting exact match anchor texts. We just need to make it more natural by trying keyword variations as well as adding brand names. This can be a useful rule of thumb:
-60% brand, URL, brand+keyword, and non-targeted anchor texts
-30% partial, phrase, and broad match keyword anchor texts
-10% exact match anchor texts.
I hope this will help you guys.
chizcurlz recently posted..How To Increase Blog Traffic
Appreciate your input chizcurlz
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..How to Market Your Blog on Reddit
How can i recover easily?
I am working on clients website and one of client website get effected.
How long it takes to recover?
Looking for response
Thanks
Unfortunately there’s no given time frame, but if you focus on adding more value to the website and get some natural backlinks, you should recover slow and steady.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..How to Market Your Blog on Reddit
Thanks for quickly reply.
My 50 to above keywords are affected by Penguin.
What you suggest?
Shall i continue to create backlinks?
Or i want to leave website for few days?
Instead of trying to build links, focus your time, energy and money on creating content content that attracts links.
Besides that, strike new relationships with other bloggers and webmasters within your niche so that you can leverage them.
Technical SEO that used to work before the Panda/Penguin update no longer works without great content and a valuable website.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..How to Market Your Blog on Reddit
Create high quality content and be social…the game has changed!
Bingo! The game has changed indeed.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Twitter Advertises on TV?
Great content must be only a part of the equation…if it counted for more, than our 16 year old site with a million pages of 100% automotive content would rank on the first page of every automotive subject search, unfortunately we don’t… in fact the guys with the deep pockets who have copied (but not improved) our ideas and our page and section titles now rank much higher than we do… so I guess paying for SEO and other tricks does work.
Yes, content is only a part of the equation albeit an important one. Things are changing pretty quick and soon bad sites that with “deep pockets” will no longer have an unfair advantage over the sites deserving to rank.
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Twitter Advertises on TV?
Got Hit by Penguin
Traffic dropped by 80%
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Recovery isn’t hard. It will take some time, but it’s possible
Mustafa Khundmiri recently posted..Twitter Advertises on TV?
The new Google Instant is primed to be the greatest change in search history. Internet users type words into the search bar and Google guesses what the user is searching for with every letter added. Many SEO experts have dedicated websites to long tailed keywords created from three, four or five word stringed together in a sentence-like structure. Will Google Instant inhibit websites using these long tailed keywords from receiving traffic?
Google killed my site off!
Sunk it so far into the depths that I don’t see anyway back.
I will just let the domain expire.
5 years of work down the drain, several thousand visitor’s a month and a decent income.
I had quality content, no paid backlinks but I did have over 20,000 backlinks placed on a variety of blog sites.
A lot of those site no longer exist now, I get the “server not found” error.
Google doesn’t give a hoot about anyone all they are interested in is making money for Google.
A Search Engine rules the web, it’s time things were changed.
yeah that’s too good..you written it as detailed as possible about penguin recovery nowadays it’s tough to find articles like those..thanks for the nice share..
Mustafa:
I am about to select between two domain names to start a new web site.
-One is a four keyword long.
-The second has just two keywords separated by a “dead” word.
Both domain names (in Spanish) belong to a same topic.
Is the first one considered as spammy, keyword stuffing?
And please explain me what exactly does it mean “Exact Match Domain Name”.
Thanks!
I good penalized by pinguin update!i have 3 month working with my site since update making post every day ( 1 post) and i had not still recovered just keep losing rank on google anyone has any idea how much can this last ?
Best regards!
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It’s all about quality nowadays – quality content and quality links. There really is no point in taking short cuts because each new update brings with it carnage for “black hatters”. Now’s definitely the time to start doing things properly – and if you don’t have the time to do it all properly remember you can outsource things like article writing, site design, and even some basic link building tasks.