Whether you run a small business or an online blog, your website is your digital home. If you want to increase your web traffic, you need to employ a comprehensive approach to building your audience or customer base. Search engines provide a considerable amount of traffic for websites.
Using search engine optimization (SEO) can help you increase your page ranking – which means your website will appear higher on a Google search results page. Google employs a sophisticated algorithm to help identify the top sites on the web. This provides web users with the best possible results when they input specific keywords.
As many website owners try and manipulate their websites to rank higher, Google is continuously seeking ways to prevent poor-quality sites from gaming the system.
A few years ago, Google brought out Google Penguin; an algorithm tasked with combating nefarious behavior from website owners.
In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at the Penguin Algorithm and its impacts on SEO. We’ll also provide you useful advice on how to “Penguin Proof” your website and improve your search results performance.
1. What is the Penguin Algorithm?
The Penguin Algorithm, or Google Penguin, was initially released by Google in 2012. While it did not initially impact all of Google search results, it was quickly implemented as a significant component of its search algorithm.
The primary goal of Google Penguin was to increase the quality of websites at the top of Google page rankings.
While the exact algorithm is unknown, Google Penguin is most known for targeting wrong links and keyword stuffing. Let’s explore these individually below:
Wrong Links: When other websites link to your site, it can provide your content with authority and increase your ranking. This has resulted in many people creating ‘linking schemes’ that artificially inflate the links driven to a particular site.
If Google Penguin identifies wrong links from irrelevant or suspicious websites, they will punish the website that benefits from the links.
Keyword Stuffing: As keywords have always been a significant component of Google’s algorithms, many website owners have resorted to ‘keyword stuffing.’ This is the process of overusing keywords to trigger a positive result on Google’s search rankings.
Google Penguin was created to identify unnatural use of keywords and penalize websites for this practice.
If you have a website made before Google Penguin’s release, it might have had a considerable impact on your ranking. If you’re currently building a website, it’s essential to avoid the issues highlighted in this section.
2. Penguin Proofing Your Website: Three Easy Steps
If you want to ensure that Google Penguin doesn’t impact your website’s performance in search results, you will need to take a few quick steps:
a. Remove Links Manually
As discussed, if you have links from illegitimate or unrelated websites that link to your website, Google Penguin might be penalizing you and preventing your site from ranking well. Fortunately, if you have control over the links, you should delete them and stop Google Penguin from penalizing your website’s ranking.
So, how can you go about removing the links? You can manually delete the links yourself if you’ve made websites specifically for linking to your leading site. If you’ve paid for connections that have proven to damage your page ranking, you should contact the service you used and ask them to remove the links.
Alternatively, if there is a third-party website that you know is linking to your website, you can contact them directly and ask them to remove the links. All of these methods are manual techniques you can use to rid yourself of the burden of unwanted backlinks.
b. Revise or Improve Your Website’s Content
If you have made the mistake of using your website’s content as a tool for keyword stuffing, it’s best to consider revamping it. One of the biggest reasons that Google Penguin impacts a website’s ranking is because there are too many unnatural keywords in the text.
If you have an old website with content from before Google Penguin’s release, you might notice that your page ranking has decreased over time.
By rewriting your content and removing keyword stuffing, you can restore the status of your content. Creating high-value content that retains the attention of website visitors is one of the best ways to approach generating new content. SERPS often have the most relevant content for their keyword.
It’s important to note that keywords are still a critical component of optimizing your content for Google’s search engine. This is one of the main ranking factors that Google will consider when ranking your page for searches.
Ensure that you’re targeting the right keywords for your niche in a natural way – it is the best way to improve the website’s search results performance.
c. Disavow Bad Links
In some cases, you might fall victim to spam links. If your website has links to your site that you did not approve of, you can still remove them from counting towards your page ranking. Google has created a method for ‘disavowing links’ that you have no control over.
If you know that you’re currently being impacted by spam, you can head to the disavow tool. This can help you quickly reduce the burden of poor-quality links.
3. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Penguin Proofing Your Website.
Whether you’re building a new webpage or trying to improve the ranking of a current site, it’s crucial to “Penguin Proof” your content and links. Using the three recommendations outlined in this article can go a long way in helping you improve your search results performance.
If you’re hoping to find search engine optimization methods that won’t trigger Google Penguin, it’s always good to consider the services of a professional digital marketing team.
Digital marketing agencies can help you source “white-hat” SEO techniques that will drastically improve your page ranking and content quality. It’s the perfect way to offer more to customers and refine your search results performance at the same time.
