3 Ways Google’s “Penguin” Can Affect Your Website’s Rankings and How to Stay on Top

In an effort to provide searchers the most helpful search results, Google has continued to refine their search algorithm.

Their most recent update, affectionately named “Penguin,” was launched shortly after Memorial Day in 2012.

Penguin updates are geared toward dramatically improving quality, relevancy, and cleanliness of the search result by penalizing overly spammy pages or those with spam-like links.

Sites that violate Google’s quality guidelines have also likely been hit by this newest update to Google’s constantly changing algorithm.

Even though many sites have been hit hard by these updates, you don’t have to be among them. Your site can recover from Penguin and prepare for future algorithmic updates by understanding the update and making recommended changes.

Here are some of the most important things to know about how Penguin might affect your website.

1. Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing is the excessive use of keywords in the content of your website. If a site is keyword stuffed, the keywords are usually repeated randomly and excessively throughout the website.

REMEDY: Appropriately include your keyword phrases in the titles of your web pages and use them sparingly in the content of your website. Vary the keywords and phrases so they sound natural. It’s smart
to shoot in the range of 2-5% keyword density for most blocks of text.

2. Ad-Heavy Page Layout – Penalized page layouts usually have to do with the overload and placement of ads on a page —particularly those “above the fold”– or those first seen when a viewer lands on the page. Google knows that a site which favors relevant content over advertisements gives users a better experience, so they reward and penalize accordingly.

REMEDY: If you have ads on your website, the best practice is to balance the ads with relevant content throughout your website… Wait, what’s that you say about content?

3. Plagiarized or Outdated Content – As with all Google updates, Penguin will penalize websites that do not have original (not plagiarized, informational, and relevant to the keywords searched) and or fresh (recently uploaded) content. It makes sense, since users want to find the most pertinent and most recent information on the Internet about their topic.

4. If you want to find out how these updates may have affected your website and where your website ranks today, check out this Free Website Analysis tool by clicking on the link below.

This analysis will provide you with your site metrics that identify prominent problems with your website.

http://www.seoworkers.com/

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