How’s the Google Penguin Treating You?
On April 24th, Google rolled out their “Penguin” update. Mass chaos has ensued in the SEO world, with much debate among the Internet marketing community.
Out of all the Google updates I’ve seen over the years, this one seems to have caused more anger and frustration than the others. So I figured I’d weigh in on the issue.
What is the Penguin Update?
This post by Matt Cutts on the official Google Webmaster Central Blog explains it pretty well:
Another step to reward high-quality sites
I’ve read numerous complaints around the web regarding the vagueness of Google’s explanation. Those seem to mostly be from SEO marketers who are making excuses for why their (and their clients) sites have fallen in the rankings. They say Google isn’t being clear enough, and isn’t revealing the details of the algorithm… which “isn’t fair”.
However, I think Google has given us plenty of information over the years about what they like and don’t like.
They don’t like efforts to manipulate search results. They don’t like spam. They don’t like low quality content. Pretty basic stuff, right?
Therefore the Penguin update shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. It’s basically an enforcement of what Google has been preaching over the past several years.
Now, before anyone labels me as a Google-hugger, or a pious white-hat puritan, let me explain where I’m coming from.
The majority of my traffic for most of my websites does not come from SEO. I decided a long time ago that SEO was not going to be my primary traffic strategy. I didn’t want to be dependent on Google, and I didn’t want to invest my time in the ever-changing SEO game.
In my Internet marketing lessons, I teach five main categories of web traffic generation. SEO is just one of those categories. I don’t have any SEO clients, and I’ve never sold any SEO products (although I have promoted several as an affiliate).
I’ve always held the viewpoint that Google does not own the Internet, nor do they have the right to exclusively define morality. Google is not God. Therefore I’m not inherently anti-blackhat. If what you’re doing is LEGAL, and doesn’t hurt anyone, that’s your prerogative.
Google built their business in part by “scraping” the web. An argument can be made that they took everyone’s content (without permission) and used it to build a search engine. When you do a search on Google, you’re not actually searching the web. You’re searching stuff that has been stored on Google’s computers.
Business is a war of sorts, and if your opinion is that gaming Google constitutes fair competition, so be it.
At the same time, I’ve held the viewpoint that Google does own Google, and they DO have the right to define their own ethics and to dictate how their search engine is used.
For that reason alone, I’m not a proponent of blackhat. I figure if you want to get web traffic from Google, why not work with them instead of against them?
Perhaps equally important, I believe that Google is smarter than me. Not better. Not wiser. But smarter.
I’ve never written a single line of code for a search engine algorithm, let alone create the most sophisticated one on the planet. I’ve never built a car that can drive itself (as Google has done), or built a multi-billion dollar company.
So I’ve always had a feeling that Google would eventually outsmart the blackhatters. Perhaps the Penguin is a partial manifestation of that eventuality.
I say “partial” because clearly there’s still a lot of spam at the top of the rankings.
For example, my previous blog post was a product review of a product called “One Minute Commissions”. Since my review is one of only a handful of unbiased reviews that I’ve seen, I would have hoped to see it near the top of the results for the search term one minute commissions review.
However, the ENTIRE first page and most of the second page of results are populated by bogus reviews (ie. reviews intended only to promote the product).
On the other hand, I’ve seen mostly positive changes in my own results since the Penguin update.
For example, this Eric’s Tips website is currently ranking better for some of my keywords than it was before Penguin.
For example, I’m now ranking #2 for internet marketing lessons.
I’m also #5 for internet marketing tips, and #6 for free internet marketing tips. Certainly nothing to brag about, but those are all improvements by about 5-10 ranking positions. I see this as a successful implementation of Google’s attempt to “reward high quality sites”.
I’ve never done any spammy link building with this site, and have done a minimal amount of SEO. I believe the sites that were previously above mine have been penalized for spammy practices.
I’ve also seen some comments regarding Penguin penalizing sites for over-optimization. Some are saying that it’s now better to be a little more vague in your on-page optimization. Here’s a post-Penguin example from my site that would seem to support such a theory:
I’m ranked #1 for how to make a squeeze page, even though that particular phrase is NOT found anywhere on the page (the page is also ranked #1 for how to create a squeeze page, and #8 for squeeze page).
In the aforementioned blog post by Matt Cutts, he says, “We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites.”
That’s right, Google is implying that it’s OK if you don’t do any SEO. Here is a post-Penguin example from one of my sites that would seem to support this claim:
It’s a relatively new site, on which I’ve done no SEO, and I’m ranked #1 out of 439,000,000 results for clean movies.
Link Building…
For a long time, those who teach SEO (including myself) and those who practice it have said that off-page SEO is synonymous with link building.
Indeed, links are the measure of authority. However, Google never said to go out and GET a bunch of links, or to MAKE a bunch of links.
I don’t mean for this to sound like “I told you so”, but even while I was teaching about link building I was warning that Google COULD at any time negate the value of entire genres of back links.
Remember, Google is smart. And really it doesn’t take much intelligence to see what Internet marketers have done with article marketing, social bookmarking, blog networks, directories, etc.
If your back links look “unnatural” or if they look like they were built by YOU, then it’s likely that the Penguin is penalizing you. Which brings us to the most controversial point of all…
Negative SEO.
There has been much speculation that Google is now penalizing links that they deem to be spammy. Not just discounting those links, but actually penalizing them.
Whether it’s true, I don’t know, but the potential ramifications are huge. If it’s true, you could literally take out your competitors by spamming on their behalf. Those spammy links are so easy to acquire that this would absolutely become a reality.
IF it’s true, I’d also be willing to bet that there will be more big changes in the future for Google’s algorithm. Remember, Google is smart. If backhatters start sniping their competitors websites by spamming, Google will figure out a way to combat it.
Many prolific SEO experts are actually recommending that you seek to remove all questionable back links. An un-back-linking campaign if you will. In my opinion, that may be a waste of time. I really hope Google will give us a confirmation of whether “bad” links are merely being discounted (in which case you can ignore them), or if they’re truly being penalized (in which case you would need to get them removed).
Going forward, I would recommend the following if you care about SEO:
- Avoid spammy back links.
- Avoid link farms.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Avoid over-optimization.
- Avoid spun content & other low quality content.
- Do get legitimate back links from methods like guest blogging.
- Do make sure back links seem natural. (Realistic anchor text, not overly optimized, etc)
- Do use Google+
- Do use author tags and claim your sites in Google+
- Do create great content.
If you would like some additional opinions about the Google Penguin update, I found a very good blog post from two days ago in which Razvan Gavrilas interviewed 13 SEO experts:
Link Building Experts talk about Google Penguin
He asked some very pertinent questions about link building, and the variety of answers gives a nice balance of viewpoints.
As always, you are welcome to leave your comments below. Be sure to let us know how the Penguin is treating YOU 
Have a great day!
Hi Eric, good post. The whole SEO thing is so confusing. Sounds like it was a good idea to forget about SEO.
And apparently, based on what you are saying you don’t need to seek off page links to rank in the SEs.
What are the main things you need?
Thanks. Yes I’m glad I chose to not focus on SEO. At the same time, I don’t blame anyone for pursuing SEO. Those who are good at it get tons of free traffic.
You generally do need back links to rank well for a competitive keyword. You may notice in my ‘clean movies’ example, there are no paid ads… which is an indication that it’s not very competitive, even though it’s common. But Google doesn’t want you to go and build those links yourself. They want the links to come naturally, as a result of good content. Of course in the real world, it’s not that simple. Certain types of intentional link building will likely remain effective.
Hi Eric. the big boys and big commercial companies will just make an even bigger effort now to build “authority” backlinks with their big bucks and teams of experts gaming the system as always..and as usual the small guy with little or no budget will sink even lower in the rankings…The Biggest problem we ALL have is that GOOGLE now dominates the search engine market whether we like it or not….hence the term “go and google it”
Hi Eric, some of my niche sites have been affected. The were optimised onpage and offpage. I’ve changed a lot of the links that I control to have a more balanced link profile, between business name / website / keywords anchor text. However there are a lot of links that I’ve had made that are out of my control, that can’t be edited. Google can’t penalise them otherwise, I’d just go out and remove all my competitors with a few link campaigns.
Aaron
Hi Eric,
At LAST a voice of reason — VERY refreshing — THANK YOU.
Artificial SEO tactical “popularity” is the stuffed bra of the internet; and like most false foundations has failure built in.
Doing it right has ALWAYS been the long way around; but it has always proven to be the ONLY sustainable approach to enterprise — the dubious illusions of short-term highs notwithstanding.
Keep up the good fight…
Carl Street
Eric, Yet another great post and one that I happen to agree with.
I have for a long time endeavoured to write good quality articles on my blog, and while I have obviously used keywords appropriate to the content, it has never been at the expense of the post’s readability. I have never got involved in buying in huge quantities of backlinks (and have comparatively few as a result) and yet as the posts rank well I can only assume that Google must be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I agree too that Google’s numerous employees together have more than sufficient intellect to identify, and crush, any attempt to manipulate the quality of their results. I for one look forward to the day when SEO as we know it will become pointless, and quality alone will be as important as if you asked your best mate for his opinion on where to go look on a subject he knew well.
Great post. Thanks.
I totally agree, and also focus on the End Users Experience for my clients sites. I prefer to offer EUO (End User Optimisation) rather than SEO.
I think you’re right on in this post Eric. Even after the Penguin update, I still see products being created teaching people how to game the system. This frustrates me because it hurts the honest marketers who are trying to do things the right way.
Great post as always, Eric. I for one am in total agreement with your philosophy regarding Google - they definitely don’t rule the world, but my oh my are they ever smart and at least a few steps ahead of a lot of people
Hi Eric
Great content and very helpfull information. I have also had mixed fortunes in the recent penguin update debacle with some of my main clients sites being more or less obliterated whilst other have risen slightly. I can confirm that in general the sites which were badly effected had at some point in time been “overoptimised” according to googles new rules with some spun content and “doubtful” backlinks. I had previously outsourced the services of an “SEO organisation” who had done this work and apparently they had used “link farms’ and multiple article submission sites etc etc..I stopped using them about three years ago but the content and links they placed have obviously now caused the “curse of outsourcing SEO”. SO we learn our lessons and move on….The Problem at the moment tho is…how best to proceed? I am going to sit this one out for a week or two till someone comes up with a “real” solution..
thanks for sharing your experience!
Hi Eric…Yes..I guess I can at least be called an “expert” at something now …..”How to OverOptimise for Google and lose Big Time” !!
Hi Eric,
I find SEO a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
So if you don’t use SEO as a means to drive traffic, is the main alternative social media and regular blog posting of original content. I noticed you mentioned Google + a couple of times in your recommendation list. Please expand a bit on the best methods to drive traffic [right now] to a blog or money site. Thanks for the good stuff.
Robert Miller
Posting good content (repeat visitors) is a big part of this blog. But my most important sources of traffic are affiliate traffic and list building. Yes it takes traffic to build a list, but once you’ve got it, you can create traffic on demand. I’ve covered list building in depth in my lessons, and will be covering affiliate traffic soon. Google+ is important for SEO because Google has essentially tied Google+ into all their services. You’ll notice the thumbnail pictures of my G+ profile pic next to my search engine rankings. I think this helps with authority and CTR.
Eric,
Thanks for the reply. I’ll look at your list building lessons again (I understand you have a new new list building product coming out soon) and will look forward to your affiliate traffic lessons.
It seems to me you have to scramble like crazy to build a significant list and then work to keep that momentum going with consistent attention to the list.
Am I close?
There are many ways to build your list. Some of them involve scrambling like crazy and some do not. I cover some of these methods in lesson 66 and 67. I have lists that keep building themselves on autopilot. For example, I have products that are promoted by affiliates, and they keep sending traffic. Also this blog draws a decent amount of traffic. New readers find it and subscribe. But list building should always be a priority and I do recommend paying consistent attention to your list building efforts.
Eric, thank you for the great post. I have been trying to get the low down on this update, but haven’t really got what I was looking for.
I do agree that SEO game is an ever changing game that we can never won. In the end, it will still be Google.
However, gathering a good amount of readers as well as getting a good number of Google+ hits can not be easy. It takes time.
Eric,
Nice post. Yes, if Google is actually actively penalizing “Bad” inbound links, you can bet that will be exploited by people faster than you can say “Black Hat”.
Unless they want a blood bath that precipitates exactly the kind of spammy sites dominating the SERPs they’re trying to avoid, they nbeed to address this ASAP.
I had some sites affected. A couple of which were probably over optimized, but others were not. All have a large amount of excellent, original content, and predominantly long posts of over 1,000 words.
I suspect that a couple got hit because of EMDs, although one was a local site and the domain only made sense. I also got plenty of links from blog networks, in addition to natural links and guest post links. I thin the problem with the blog networks is that even if the links came from articles, many of the articles are on garbage sites or sites that are not niche focused. Many have no authority at all.
Hopefully a recovery is in store before too much longer. Until then, I’ll continue toramp up my local marketing businesss.
Eric,
Great post, as I would expect from you.
This whole Google thing is pretty demoralizing. I recall when they published the “Hot Zones” of reader interest on a typical blog post. So I moved my Adsense ads around to capitalize on it. Then a year later Google announces that some ads should be below the fold. Thanks a lot, Google. I usually find out about their changes when my sites disappear from their rankings. So I think you have the right idea. Just don’t rely on SEO for traffic because it’s a full-time job trying to stay on top of what Google wants at any particular point in time.
Thanks for the no hype honest valuable fair review and thoughts about Google Penquin update. I guess it is better to rely on multiple source of traffic instead of ‘kow-tow’ to big brother Google. Besides, there are other major search engines that are equally important such as Bing. In between, to date I noticed not much efforts on improving search for Baidu.com which is China’s number one search platform.
Why complained to the boss when he is always right? He is the one who call the shots!
I am a newbie right now just trying to figure out what’s going on in this internet marketing. And what i see is so far is this: thre is too much contradiccion on the players. They call names to each other and they even cussed. Sad! And this is confusing to us and dishartening. It is almost impossible right now to start a business if we don’t have quite a bit of monney to invest to start the engine. Sales and upsales buy the tons everywhere even without preparing us beforehand. That is robbery. It was so difficut for me to get… not a refund, but to pull out from a suscription. I did rushed because they RUSH AND RUSH US! WAO!
WHEN WE’RE NEWBIE WE ARE DUMB.
There is a guru right now that just finished with a seminar. Yea! He has explained very clear what he does to make money. Easy to imitate what he does. But we need his software!
How much? He says: we need education and tools to be succesful. And sure we do. But cannot begin even to talk about his price! What he want me? To put the envestment on a credit card? Well, for that we have to have guts! He is not helping us! Why not put this idea in a WSO and sell the sofware for peanuts? No. He want to recoup the money he spent on making the software! All right! Let him do that! This is why today he is a millionare. Because there are people who have money and want to make more money with it. The sky is the limit in greediness! But this is no help to us. So goodby software for us!
Hey brother, i am not including you here, neither Carol and others. Honesty and sincerity is obvious in your business. So, please continue educating us. Please send us the rest of the Erik’s Tips to get to collect 100 lessons. But take your time… i am not rushing you, just do what is humanly possible. God bless!
Google has rules and that it! Take it or leave it! We have to follow the leader. To whatever they do: amen! Thank Eric for your lenthy explanations of things! You’re an angel men! God bless!
Eric you already have a large email list. Thousands follow you. Your followers are what makes your sites rank well. SEO is a bit over rated. They google+you facebook like you and tweet your post over and over again.
My question is how did you get to that point? I believe your content is what made your along with a little big of luck.
Paul
Paul, One thing to keep in mind is I’ve been running this site since 2005. There may be some luck involved but also a lot of hard work. I think there are 3 main things that built up my following…
1) The content, which compels people to come back and subscribe. (Lessons, product reviews, etc.)
2) Selling products and doing product launches (this adds thousands of paid customers to my list when I launch a product)
3) Giving away various freebies to build prospect list.
Ultimately yes my followers are what makes my site rank well, because they are the people who give it authority. I do get some retweets and social posts, which helps with SEO by proving true human activity. But I think the natural back links that I get from people (even though it’s not a ton) are more beneficial for SEO than the social stuff.
My authority site on antiques has taken a major hit, with income and traffic down 80%. We had our own antique store for over 20 years and my blog was basically sharing our experiences and trying to help dealers and buyers be more proficient through our experiences. Posts avg over 900 words of original content with next to no backlinking (I hate doing it). I did use traditional onpage SEO like bold main keyword in first sentence and include in H1, H2, and H3. Also use keyword in alt tag for photos. I thought I was being as white hat as possible. Had over 100 posts and a year’s work, very demoralizing.
Yes that is demoralizing, I hope you can get it back. I think you are a good candidate to submit a report to Google: http://goo.gl/nt3Pz
I just keep writing my books for Amazon and hope I am doing the right thing at the moment. Their rankings are improving as I take on board many tips I have received from you thank you.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for being the voice of reason here. May I ask you to expand a little on Author tags? Respectfully,
Juliet
Juliet, here is some info for you.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986
The easiest way is to claim your site on your Google+ profile. Then put the appropriate rel=author tag in the sidebar of your Wordpress blog, which will automatically claim authorship of every page of your site. If it’s not a Wordpress site, then you’ll need to post that rel=author tag wherever you’re trying to claim content.
Eric, I searched for the keyword, “clean movies” and your site is doing great in rankings. #2 out of 465,000,000. I went to your site and I realize that all those clean movies that you review are linked to two main sites, netflix.com and christian cinema dot com.
Infact, I’m a newbie Internet marketer, and lately I have been looking at this idea of blog- curation closely. The widely accepted theory is that Google looks favorably at curated sites and I think those outbound links gives you a boost. what do you say?
I think curated sites have worked well with Google in the past, especially ones that are truly curated by humans, and those that have a big following. However, I think attempts by marketers to automate curation is probably changing the way Google sees it. Duplicate content seems to be more of an issue with the Penguin update.
I would not say my clean movies site is technically a curation site. There are elements of curation, because we are getting some of the content from other sources like netflix. But each post and movie review is created by us. I do not think the outbound links to netflix and Christian cinema are helping the ranking. In fact, I’m using “no follow” tags because those are affiliate links. Interestingly, although the site is getting good organic traffic, the monetization model is not working too well. I think most of our users are already netflix subscribers. So I’m looking at changing the monetization. (BTW the main objective of the site is really ministry and not making money, so I’m happy with the traffic either way)
Hi Eric, Thank you for this post. You are awesome and I appreciate your connection with us!
I am putting up my first site next week after many months of learning this brand new business.
I will be an affiliate and maybe a blogger, later on. So all this didn’t really effected me so far. The website alone, is freaking me out! It is fun, but so different!
But now, I am soooo confused about traffic. I will easily fit the confines of Google, but that doesn’t mean I will succeed.
Do you have a program that teaches us the myriad ways of getting free traffic to start? And then what to invest in later?
I know that you have a membership site, which I plan to join at a later date, When I get a cash flow.
I am glad I found you, and you 100 tips! I would recommend you to anyone!!!
I always wish you well ! Mary
I done several lessons on free traffic so far, including list building methods, SEO, article marketing, video marketing, and social media. I will soon be covering some additional free traffic methods in lesson 84, and then will be covering affiliate traffic after that.
Thank you for your response! I appreciate your time!
Mary
Relying on 1 single traffic source is very risky, especially Google. Now, I just take it as a bonus on top of other sources. List building is the way to go to actually build up an asset.
Though Google mentioned it is for the sake of rewarding higher quality sites, some of the sites with some heavy backlinks are great quality yet they are penalized. In another view, sites that are not over optimized are rewarded, but that does not mean they are high quality (though some are…)
Great post and great job being one of the good guys of IM.
First a complaint - I might be the nuisance penguin so that means I rather dislike them calling this the penguin update.
Eric your post was far too long cos everybody knows that any post should be in the 500-700 word range to to keep the search engines happy.
OK I happen to believe that to be a total untruth because I have seen short posts get good rankings and much longer ones do the same.
I fully agree with Eric when he talks about needing good quality content. That gets SEO sorted but, more importantly, gets visitor engagement. Let’s face it, they might not take action on their first visit yet good quality content gets them coming back.
Never dismiss SEO but it has to be worked into your visitor experience. Turn your visitors into repeat visitors by giving them the quality of content that they expect. Then they respond to your call to action.
Nice article Eric and I hope my comments help the discussion
At last, Quality Content RULES!! I am encouraged to continue to pump out good quality sites… and Google will like it. Thanks for you insight, Eric.
I have problems with Google, in terms of how they de-ranked my (and others’) web sites, and in terms of how the Penguin put really lousy sites on the first page while putting my and others’ better sites on the back pages.
I have a problem with Google’s approach to dealing with spammy backlinks. This is how I see it:
Bear with me a minute while I back up and point out that Google has always pretended that they hold that “content is king”.
So when I built my web sites I built them with natural, informational, helpful content. I didn’t know jack about SEO or IM so I did what I read in many books and articles that Google wanted.
Guess what? This got me ZERO rankings. I wasn’t even in the first 5 PAGES.
So I began to research it and I heard about backlinks. Backlinks are king these experts told me. I began to look at my competitors’ sites and they had lots of backlinks. The backlinks they had did not seem natural. I learned that some were part of a link exchange program. I did the same thing. My rankings improved.
Regardless of WHAT GOOGLE *SAID* IT WANTED, the fact is that it wanted backlinks and furthermore it was clear from looking at many - dare I say “most” - first page sites, that it did not seem to matter that much whether the backlinks were natural or not.
I improved my rankings by doing link exchanges and building links like my competitors did. But I still could not get to page 1 EVEN THOUGH MY CONTENT WAS WAY BETTER than any of the pages on the first page.
Then I ran into an SEO company which claimed to be white hat and which claimed to get first page rankings, guaranteed. I hired them. They got me to page 1 within 2 months for 5 keywords.
So I found out soon enough that this was being done by spammy articles on a spammy blog network.
Long story short, Google slapped me hard. Based on the fact that I went WAY FURTHER BACK in the rankings than I was before Penguin, this seems to be more a punishment than just a de-ranking of the blog network links.
Here’s my main problem with this:
If Google wanted to get rid of spammy backlinking why didn’t they just issue a PRESS RELEASE stating exactly what they did not want and WARNING that these type of backlinks would lead to punishment?
Seems to me this is all they really would have had to do: just make clear to IMers and everyone what they do not want, in no uncertain terms. And everyone could have gone about their merry way with no loss of income. I went from making $1000/month to zero a month on my main site. In this economy people cannot afford to lose this kind of money based on Google’s whims.
And by the way, while your sites may have fared well, Eric (and deservedly so), I wonder if you have looked into it and have seen the TONS OF SITES that are now on page one that are NOT deserving of it AND seen that tons of sites that were punished which had great content.
Seems to me that Google is more interested in punishing IMers than it is in providing good search results. Otherwise why not just have released a clear warning as to exactly what they were going to base rankings on and what they were going to de-rank?
In my niche (water filters) there are now absolute crap sites on p. 1. Yesterday I was looking at laptops and the pages I went to are absolutely DOMINATED by some very spammy apparently Asian-made Amazon affiliate sites with NO content at all - just the most basic of info taken right from the manufacturers and reviews that seemed to be stolen from amazon.
What does this all mean?
I think it means Google are:
a) nuts
b) a-holes
c) cutting off their nose to spite their face
d) screwing up their own search results so they can punish gray- or black-hatters.
See my blog about this by clicking on my name.
I feel for you man. That’s incredibly frustrating!
I feel for you too, but now you are in the same club that I am in….”Devout Penguin Haters”…My story is more or less the same as yours…I have spent lots of time on the google forum lately trying to understand what they want us to do, or what they expected us to do but the information on there is SOOOO confusing its impossible to get a real understanding of what we are expected to do going forward…and the form moderators generally dont seem to know any more than we do ….so thats a waste of time too….seems they just want crap new sites with no SEO or backlinks butt millions of visitors….yeah …..
Great SITREP Eric, I agree with everything you posted and I may even dislike SEO more then you, I don’t like tricking people into thinking I’m something that I’m not, this gets me in trouble with team members but ah well, I know we still have to do the free traffic things like Offpage-SEO to stay afloat, anyway sweet post and looking forward to lesson 84 More Free Traffic!
.Andrew.
One point that is never mentioned is the size of google’s problem. The sheer weight of the numbers of pages being published must cause google to revise the way they rate pages. They also have to balance that against them needing to earn from Adwords, so they need pages to show ads upon that will be read. It may be that there is a lot more in the strategy of google than getting rid of a relatively small percentage of wierd links.
My thought is to continue with what one does best, because if one is being pulled along behind a whale there is nothing one can do to alter the direction the whale is moving
Jim
It sounds frustrating I know and sorry to hear this. Having been in the SEO industry since 1998, you are at the mercy of the SEO company (if you are just starting out or if your knowledge is limited).
As you have experienced this has affected quite a bit of websites partaking in it. In SEO you have to think ahead and not just think what works today is what we are going to use. If you learn more about Google, the more you will see where they are heading. Not many SEO firms follow this principle sadly, but before you sign up for any SEO firm, do your due diligence…Your very own business is dependent on it..And absorb as much SEO information you can from the influencers in the field.
Good Luck
Johan Hedin
Johan, you are right it is good to know where Google is going… The problem is that is very hard to do because basically they lie. They say “Content is King” but the Penguin proves content is NOT king.
I don’t know why everyone is not complaining and/or going to Bing and Yahoo because G’d post-Penguin search results are horrible.
The problem is 2-fold as I see it:
1) No one really knows what google really wants in terms of SEO or content, apparently not even google, as they continue to change their ideas
2) Even if you think you know what google wants (let’s say they want “social markers”), still it is very difficult to get that (just like it’s difficult to get tons of great backlinks) if you are selling a product or service that simply does not inspire social participation or sharing via backlinking.
Therefore IMers in certain niches (or no niche at all!) will always have to figure out how to artificially give Google what it wants in order to get on p.1, especially if your competitors are gaming the system.
I hope I can shed some light on the Penguin, because there seems to be a lot of confusion, anger, and frustration caused by that nasty little bird. Even some of the “Link Building Experts” don’t seem to fully understand how Penguin has effected page rank (or perhaps they don’t want to divulge their secrets).
First of all you have to understand Google’s business model. Google makes almost all of it’s revenue by selling advertising (pay per click) and anyone or anything that gets in the way of that revenue stream will not be tolerated.
With that said, the notion that Google really gives a rip about who gets to top of an organic search by way of “quality content” is utter nonsense. I don’t believe that even the all poweful Google has technology that can determine what’s good, bad, informative, helpful or relevant. And they certainly don’t have the time or man power to scrutinize all the billions of pages out there by hand.
If you read Jim’s post above, he clearly states - Google has always pretended that they hold that “content is king”. What that got Jim was a big fat zero! What Google doesn’t want you to know is that it’s backlinking that’s king. As Jim discovered. All the top sites use back linking to get to the top. The key is to make your back linking campaign look as natural as possible.
So here’s what we’ve determined about the Penguin.
Sites with over optimized anchor text got hit. Specifically, sites with over 60% exact match anchor text.
So we seem to have fixed the problem by coming up with these percentage ratios to make our back linking look natural.
Exact Match Anchors “Your Keyword” - 32% + or - 10%
Partial Match Anchors “Variations of your Keywords” - 14% + or - 10%
Generic Anchors “Meaningless Words” like “click here” - 21% + or - 10%
Naked Anchors “Your URL” with & without “www” - 33% + or - 10%
So if you got hit by the Penguin I would look at your anchors and adjust accordingly. One thing I wouldn’t do is remove links. Might look unnatural in the eyes of Google.
Should we all strive to make our content the best it can possible be? Absolutely! Because ultimately it’s fellow human beings that will judge the quality and decide to opt-in or click out.
Paul, thanks for confirming what I’ve been saying about content NOT being King, nor really even that important. (A quick investigation of search results will prove this.)
I have heard what you are saying from others and I agree re a variety of backlinks. However, HOW do I get rid of backlinks that an SEO co. created for me on their article /blog networks? As far as I know that’s impossible, they certainly are not going to do it. Also since the blog network has been de-valued already, is it really even necessary?
QUESTION:
Would any of the following help those of us who were slapped hard by the penguin?
*** Re-naming all our pages, properly spinning or re-writing the content and pinging and/or submitting to google’s url submission page and/or creating a new sitemap?
*** Moving our sites to a whole new page (like in my case moving it from an html/css site I built, over to Wordpress, with all new page titles etc.?
*** And if I did either of the above is there any chance google would hate me for it?
*** Any other ideas? Eric? Anyone?
So far I have just taken the advice of some SEO experts and am waiting to see if Penguin adjusts itself, but based on what I have learned about it so far, I am skeptical that waiting any longer will be advantageous.
I think the jury is still out on whether it would be beneficial to attempt to remove back links from blog networks. My *hope* (even though I haven’t used any) is that it would not be necessary to remove the links, and that Google would only discount them rather than penalize them.
As far as Google is concerned, I don’t think they consider there to be any right way to “spin” content.
It’s a tough call as far as what action to take. They want everything to be “natural” and if you suddenly move your site to another domain, or suddenly change all the pages on your site, I think that could cause suspicion too.
Eric, you’re probably right: anything one tries to do that is not “natural” to fix the Penguin slap may cause further problems, at worst and at best not help.
As for spinning content I think there is a fine line between spinning content and re-writing it. You can use a spinner to make re-writing faster and if you go through and make sure it’s all good grammar and everything I don’t see how Google or anyone else could penalize you for that. Technically you can rewrite even something someone else wrote if it’s different enough and in this case I’m talking about re-writing my own content.
I’m still waiting to see if I can get my site back to the top by adding more content and more “natural” (?) backlinks.
But if at some point if one can’t get one’s site back by making it better and creating good 2.0 links etc. then one has nothing to lose by trying to migrate it and change the page titles etc…
Jim, Penguin penalized sites with over optimized backlinks. In other words, sites that have overused exact match keywords in their anchor text. It’s really that simple.
Penguin has nothing to do with content. It’s not about link sources or low quality sites. It’s about link variation.
The one thing I wouldn’t do is remove links or change anything. If you do, you’re just admitting to Google that your doing something they don’t want you to do. You just have to not panic and move forward.
The best way to fix your problem is to very your anchors and make your linking look as natural as posible.(create a cloud cover)
I would start by increasing your “naked link” - Links that use your url, with and without the “http” and with and without the “www”. Create short videos and syndicate them out to youtube and other video sites.
Use generic links like “click here”, “go to my website”, etc. Use these on low quality sites because the have no SEO value but will add to your cloud cover.
Use partial match links. If “dog training” is a keyword, use something like - “the best dog trainer”. Google still sees your keyword. Very these but make them look like a natural sentence.
And keep using exact match links as before, just remember the key is variation!
Good luck Jim. Hope this helps.
Paul, I think your second paragraph is the most telling information on the Penguin.
“First of all you have to understand Google’s business model. Google makes almost all of it’s revenue by selling advertising (pay per click) and anyone or anything that gets in the way of that revenue stream will not be tolerated.”
If quality sites that appear natural in the “eyes of Google” are all rewarded with high page rankings, then, maybe, the click through rate of adword campaigns decrease and Google’s revenue suffers.
Maybe having some spammy sites on page one actually improves the click through rate on adword campaigns, and, thus Googles bottom line.
Maybe Penguin is more about improving the experience of Googles paid advertisers with greater click through traffic.
Just a sinister thought!
Any ideas?
Thank you Eric. As always, your posts are very informative and thought provoking.
Rick
There has definitely been speculation that Google is intentionally lowering the quality of their results in order to increase Adwords CTR. They’re also sophisticated enough that they could employ such a strategy on a per keyword basis. In other words, they could deliver good quality results most of the time and bad results on certain searches. I would hope it’s merely a myth.
I think you hit the nail on the head Rick!
Its pretty obvious that with the Penguin update, there is no way for google to streamline only the very best sites deserving Page one. Through the passage of time and bounce rate may be one of the many factors that will determine if your good or bad sites retain that crucial visibility on organic search!
Hi there…that will not work either….even if you have a great site in a micro niche you may only ever receive a limited number of visitors who once they have seen the content they wanted have no need to click on to anything, bookmark the site or take any action whatsoever….how can you measure that site…it will have a terrible bounce rate factor but yet the visitor will have seen exactly what he wanted to see ?
Hi Eric:
What do you think of WordTracker? Seems like a pretty useful program to me huh?
Yes Wordtracker is a good keyword tool.
Eric,
This is an awesome post. One of the best explanations I have read from my research on the topic. In the SEO circles I have been involved with it seems people are always worried about new changes. The funny thing is that some websites have maintained solid rankings from 2003 and beyond because they just focus on providing good, usable, content.
This change is a good thing for those that are willing to put forth the effort to create solid content. With Google it is all about the users and that is what you want anyways.
I think a big part of your success with Google is that you not only have good, compelling written content, but also have included videos on many of your lessons. So your stick rate is really high.
Good work on this post.
Paul Counts
Hi Eric, Great post you have put up on the SEO to make it better for all
Hi Eric,
Thanks for your valuable contribution. It is always helpful to read your articles as you never hype anything and give a real account.
I am trying to set up autoresponder for a webiste. I am a self development trainer and getting a monthly tool like aweber etc is very expensive for me. Is there any other tool that you could suggest that is reliable and one time payment?
I have a hard time recommending anything else, because AWeber is well worth it. For smaller lists, you could host it yourself on your own domain. I use the Amember script to manage most of my membership sites, and it also has list management built in. I do send out emails that way sometimes.
A few questions - if aweber is well worth, do you use it??
I was checking out Amember and it seems pretty good but I gather that $179 is only for one license i.e. for one domain. It is a bit expensive for me but if it is really good for membership site and only one time payment then I can consider.
However, I will still need list management tool for my other sites. Any suggestion for that?
Yes I use AWeber, and have for many years.
Yes Amember is per site license.
A free alternative to Amember is the Butterfly script that Mike Filsaime released as open source.
I know some people are using mailchimp with some success. What I’ve heard said is that if your list is not too big you can use mailchimp.
But then I think Eric said that if you do something like that, you can’t later transfer your list to aweber? Is that correct, Eric?
That’s right, Aweber is pretty strict about importing lists. And in the cases where they do allow a list to be imported, all the subscribers have to confirm their opt-in again.
AWeber is my top pick, but I would also say that it’s better to be building a list than not. In other words, any platform is better than none. So do what will work for you.
From my experience aweber are highly unlikely to accept a list transfer from anywhere ! I had several double optin confirmed lists on 1shoppingcart earlier this year i wanted to transfer to aweber. They refused, even after i gave them access to the lists to check them out !!!
Thanks Eric for the post. Very helpful as usual. I have a blog that got hit by the Penguin update and I think it is because I used SEOLinkVine to put content on it.
I have a question for you. Should I spend my time and clean up those posts that were from SEOLinkVine (delete the posts or at least the links from them) or is it useless.
I have started to write my own blog posts again (even though this is just a little hobby site and not my focus) and I noticed my traffic is always about 10X as much when I post so I will keep doing that….
If you have any advice regarding the other posts please let me know.
Thanks
Viola
I’m really not sure, as I think the jury is still out on this issue. But since it’s your own blog, I think it would not hurt to clean up the posts or at least take the links out of them.
WOW all those years ignoring SEO seem to have finally gone my way! This is a revolving issue as Black hatters and Goggle do their merry dance. Like it has been about all along, good quality content will most of the time. Concentrate on what you write not how you write it!
Nice article mate, Thanks a Bunch.
Hi Eric! Glad to see you again. The latest zoo full of G updates gave me the motivation to change my direction and be more true to myself. That said, I was surprised to see increased traffic on a few sites I was ready to dump in my renewed focus. Looking at them, I can guess that their survival and upsurge was because of good structure vs grey hat SEO ( they are xcitepro sites) and perhaps some nakedness. All are easily traceable back to me. Maybe Matt is listening to The Who these days.
Hi Eric
Thanks for this post. It always boils down to the fact that if you do what is right and true you are rewarded. I write from the heart with original material and my sites were not penalised.
There are too many software products out there that cheat.
Hey Eric,
Wonderful post. I believe like good content as you write often in your blog:). Yes I’m not exagerrating and we all know that webmasters were playing all nasty tricks to get high rank in google.
Hello Eric,
As soon as the recent Google algorithms became live there was a rush of so-called experts preaching doom and offering magical ways to get round the ranking effects and continue tricking Google.
For example, I have seen websites offering to sell everything from WordPress plugins to expensive tutorials that simple continue to do the things that those product owners have suggested in their sales hype are the cause of falling ranking.
More than one website is offering automatic methods of getting hundreds of links every day. That is great for a site like Amazon that already gets many links daily. Google will accept that as being natural. But Amazon will not buy those link offers. They don’t need them.
The people who will buy them are the very people who have websites that probably have less than one hundred existing links. So, if they do manage to generate hundreds of links every day what will happen? Google will recognize it as not natural and the ranking will be adversely affected.
Where relevant my websites warn people of this problem but I wonder how long it takes for them to accept that doing link building naturally is the route to success. Sales hype can be very persuasive.
Best regards,
Toby.
Thank you Eric.
This is great post. It helped me to understand what is penguin update and how we can stay in the business.
I liked the article while I was reading it but since finishing it I forget why I liked it
I have one site that has no backlinks at all and just has lots of comments by viewers and the views have started to skyrocket whereas others that have backlinks have not really done anything much, dropped a bit if anything, so the link building thing could be spot on.
Eric,
It has been a while since I’ve tapped into your lessons and really worked on my own site. You have given me great advice in the past, and so I come to ask you for some more.
I’m finally ready to go fulltime into my website and start building it to be the site I’d always envisioned it could be. I have so many lessons stored away regarding link building, traffic building, SEO, etc., that it overwhelms me to the point I give in to despair and don’t progress very far.
My instinct tells me to just start building content, really good content that matters to my niche, and let God start blessing it. I think you once said content is king. I think that I need to get tripped up with scads of keyword research and optimization that I just get crippled and don’t write anything.
Any words of encouragment or advice?
Basically yes, you should just start building good content. My caveat (for other people reading this) is if you’re doing this to make money, then you do need to start with a profitable niche. It’s not simply a matter of “if you build it they will come”.
I DO think your current niche (large families) has good potential.
I took a quick look at your site. I would recommend switching over to the WordPress platform (on your own domain from Godaddy Website tonight, before investing time in building more content.
This will be much better for the long term, and will give you more control over your site. Also will enable you to have your blog on your own site instead of blogspot.
It’ll be a bit of a pain to rebuild your site on Wordpress, but it’ll be much easier to do it now than in the future when you have more content.
See lesson #24 for my recommend host. Lesson #33 for explanation of Wordress. You could also outsource the website conversion on a site like vworker.
thanks for the info eric, i so like the part - - Avoid spammy back links.
- Avoid link farms.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Avoid over-optimization.
- Avoid spun content & other low quality content.
- Do get legitimate back links from methods like guest blogging.
- Do make sure back links seem natural.
- Do use Google+
- Do use author tags and claim your sites in Google+
- Do create great content.
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oopps..sorry for the ?? character..must have mistype it.
Hi eric
found this which may help.
http://blog.majesticseo.com/webinars-and-videos/unnatural-links-and-flow-metrics-presentation/
Hi Eric, i cant believe what just happened to our website.We recently had some seo work done , we run a legitement roofing buisness in melbourne australia offering roof repairs and restorations weve paid a company called clixpert over $1000 to work on optimising our site and up until a few days ago were ranked 1st page under a few keywords and 2nd 3rd page ranking under quite a few as a direct result of adding links to pages throughout our site and apparently other back end changes. i feel ripped off as i have just descovered we have ben deranked so far i cant even find our site now.Went back to page 15 and gave up. Up till know weve done all our own work including building the site and running an extensive addwords campaigne targeting a specific region. i am an owner opeator with the help of my wife taking care of marketing and unfortunately it was my bright idea to have seo work done as i recieve alot of calls from internet marketers.Can you please help me with some advise? My wife is going to kill me.
There are so many people in the same boat, so your wife should realize it’s not your fault. you could try submitting a report to Google if you feel you were unfairly penalized: http://goo.gl/nt3Pz
It’s been a really devastating for most of site owners like me. Been at the top for sometime then dropped really hard after the update. I guess right now we just have to press the right buttons when building backlinks..
Great information Eric, I do not have the time to do a lot of SEO and I do put some quality effort into my articles and post. I think this new Google update may help some of the small internet businesses reach top status when Google figures out who is spamming the search engines. Your post was very informative. Thank you.
Hi,
A relative newbie here. I have had fantastic success with a powerful global marketing tool. I had positive results from Penguin which I can only attribute to this marketing tool. I have 4 websites on Google Page One. One site has spot 1 and 2 and 13 positions with longtails ranking on pages 1-4. It is not black hat and it changes to fit the specs of Google. Built by an engineer who wants to help the 97% who make no money.
Check it out, it’s worth your time. http://www.globalmarketingtools.com.
I don’t have a intelectual prouduct, I have some cold hard facts! I NEED SOME HELP! I do want to live the life I was born to live, and I need somebody to help me because I cannot do it by myself, I’ve tried.
Hello George,
Thank you for your question. We recommend that you hang in there with Eric’s free video lessons here at http://www.ericstips.com/. Eric’s lessons have helped many people to go from beginners, to successful online business owners!
The lessons are presented in a sequence that starts at the very beginning, where the very first things you need to learn about online marketing are shown in the first few lessons!
If you’re interested to go even more in-depth with marketing, you might also want to take part in Eric’s coaching club:
http://www.realguysrealmoney.com
Eric, Paul, and Jeff are expert marketers. They will be a great resource for you!