What is Google's Penguin update about ?
- SEO |
Google's Penguin update is also called Over optimization penalty update.
Today, we want to change gears a little and expound on the over-optimization penalty and linking.
By discovering what NOT to do, you can gain a better understanding of what TO do and find out specific SEO strategies that will make sense for your website.
As we usually say, no one knows Google's exact algorithm or what Google is ready to penalize. All we can do is take what we know and apply its principles to the best of our ability.
I have find some very authorized opinions of this over optimization penalty and share with you below .
Cyrus Shepard, SEOMoz associate, created a video where he discussed, from personal experience, what causes sites to drop in rankings as it relates to over-optimization.
Keyword Stuffing - Keyword stuffing is using too many keywords in text, images, and navigation links
According to Cyrus, there are also three areas to which Google pays attention,
especially when marketers use too many keywords in these areas simultaneously. If your keywords are similar for all three, you will most likely see a decrease in rankings because it
does not look natural.
Title tag
URL
Inbound anchor text
Link Profiles - We saw the destruction of link profiles when Google took down many popular link networks . Google announced it would be de-valuing administrative links which come from common sites linked to each other.
Years ago, it was a normal SEO practice to buy dozens of keyword-rich urls and create mini-sites that linked to each other and to the main money site. According to Cyrus, this is over-optimization and website owners could face possible penalties or even de-indexing.
Link Balance - Any technique done excessively will be categorized as over-optimization. Cyrus suggests varying article directory links, blog commenting, and others to make it more natural.
As you are transitioning from beginner SEO to more intermediate SEO, Cyrus recommends not giving in to the temptation to over optimize, but instead creating great content.
Content Calendar - Whether daily, weekly or monthly, set a content creation schedule and stick to it. The constant flow of content will produce new long tail keyword opportunities.
New content tells Google your site is relevant and it contributes to the freshness factors, which is one of the more recent Google algorithm updates.
As you create new pages with new content, you have the opportunity to link back to your main site and older pages more often which tells Google to crawl them and to see them as relevant. Of course, this is not as crucial as external links, but it is still important.
Creating content gives you what Cyrus calls "Link Assets" which refers to content to which webmasters want to link.
Carson Ward, SEO consultant with Distilled, talks about building a legitimate link portfolio by eliminating low-quality links and avoiding over-optimization of anchor text.
According to Carson, low-quality sites are, "sites (and pages) that have little or no relevance, few incoming links, unnatural link portfolios of their own, and few branding signals. Having too much exact-match anchor text from legitimate domains is a hard thing to
do, but it has happened through things like widgets with unnatural anchor text."
Carson suggests building links with methods and strategies that are scalable and effective for the long term. Think about what makes you different from your competitors, discover your unique selling point, and ramp up your content marketing.
Carson also mentions that building links from legitimate sources is hard and requires a lot of time and creativity. Because of the effort investment required, SEOs often turn to "spammy" techniques.
At Distilled, content marketing is united with SEO efforts and looks like this:
Researching & identifying influencers and communities
Keyword research & analysis
Competitive content research
Creative content generation
Outreach and promotion
Analytics, measurement and tracking
Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas sat down with Aaron Wall, founder of SEObook, to discuss linking and how SEO is changing in reference to over-optimization.
Both Jim and Aaron are strong proponents of link building and they still believe it is one of the premier methods to gaining rankings. However, there is a right and a wrong way to build links.
Jim strongly believes in the power of the long tail. In his analysis of his clients' websites, in nearly 98% of the cases, no more than 5% of their traffic comes from short tail
phrases. And the more content-rich pages they have, the more long tail keywords they get.
He said that he wasn't surprised by Google's recent takedown of link networks since this activity is always going to happen as something gets too big or too popular.
According to Jim, "the popular "short cuts" of today are the popular penalized networks of tomorrow... there will always be someone who will create a network (of others sites they control, or their new friends control, or of near expired domains, or blogger groups, etc) and that someone will start selling links, and advertising, and it will catch on, and they will sell to everyone and it will become so interconnected that it will cause its own algorthymitic penalty, or it will get popular, and get the eyes of Google on it, and then it will get filtered, or there will be exact match penalties, or entire site penalties."
Jim mentioned that quality link building takes a lot of time and effort and marketing, but that is the price to pay for rankings.
Some marketers are chanting the death of SEO, but I think we can surmise that link building is still very much alive even with Google's over-optimization penalty.
What do you think of the over-optimization penalty? Have you seen a drop in rankings? What linking strategies do you use that are still going strong?
Today, we want to change gears a little and expound on the over-optimization penalty and linking.
By discovering what NOT to do, you can gain a better understanding of what TO do and find out specific SEO strategies that will make sense for your website.
As we usually say, no one knows Google's exact algorithm or what Google is ready to penalize. All we can do is take what we know and apply its principles to the best of our ability.
I have find some very authorized opinions of this over optimization penalty and share with you below .
Cyrus Shepard, SEOMoz associate, created a video where he discussed, from personal experience, what causes sites to drop in rankings as it relates to over-optimization.
Keyword Stuffing - Keyword stuffing is using too many keywords in text, images, and navigation links
According to Cyrus, there are also three areas to which Google pays attention,
especially when marketers use too many keywords in these areas simultaneously. If your keywords are similar for all three, you will most likely see a decrease in rankings because it
does not look natural.
Title tag
URL
Inbound anchor text
Link Profiles - We saw the destruction of link profiles when Google took down many popular link networks . Google announced it would be de-valuing administrative links which come from common sites linked to each other.
Years ago, it was a normal SEO practice to buy dozens of keyword-rich urls and create mini-sites that linked to each other and to the main money site. According to Cyrus, this is over-optimization and website owners could face possible penalties or even de-indexing.
Link Balance - Any technique done excessively will be categorized as over-optimization. Cyrus suggests varying article directory links, blog commenting, and others to make it more natural.
As you are transitioning from beginner SEO to more intermediate SEO, Cyrus recommends not giving in to the temptation to over optimize, but instead creating great content.
Content Calendar - Whether daily, weekly or monthly, set a content creation schedule and stick to it. The constant flow of content will produce new long tail keyword opportunities.
New content tells Google your site is relevant and it contributes to the freshness factors, which is one of the more recent Google algorithm updates.
As you create new pages with new content, you have the opportunity to link back to your main site and older pages more often which tells Google to crawl them and to see them as relevant. Of course, this is not as crucial as external links, but it is still important.
Creating content gives you what Cyrus calls "Link Assets" which refers to content to which webmasters want to link.
Carson Ward, SEO consultant with Distilled, talks about building a legitimate link portfolio by eliminating low-quality links and avoiding over-optimization of anchor text.
According to Carson, low-quality sites are, "sites (and pages) that have little or no relevance, few incoming links, unnatural link portfolios of their own, and few branding signals. Having too much exact-match anchor text from legitimate domains is a hard thing to
do, but it has happened through things like widgets with unnatural anchor text."
Carson suggests building links with methods and strategies that are scalable and effective for the long term. Think about what makes you different from your competitors, discover your unique selling point, and ramp up your content marketing.
Carson also mentions that building links from legitimate sources is hard and requires a lot of time and creativity. Because of the effort investment required, SEOs often turn to "spammy" techniques.
At Distilled, content marketing is united with SEO efforts and looks like this:
Researching & identifying influencers and communities
Keyword research & analysis
Competitive content research
Creative content generation
Outreach and promotion
Analytics, measurement and tracking
Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas sat down with Aaron Wall, founder of SEObook, to discuss linking and how SEO is changing in reference to over-optimization.
Both Jim and Aaron are strong proponents of link building and they still believe it is one of the premier methods to gaining rankings. However, there is a right and a wrong way to build links.
Jim strongly believes in the power of the long tail. In his analysis of his clients' websites, in nearly 98% of the cases, no more than 5% of their traffic comes from short tail
phrases. And the more content-rich pages they have, the more long tail keywords they get.
He said that he wasn't surprised by Google's recent takedown of link networks since this activity is always going to happen as something gets too big or too popular.
According to Jim, "the popular "short cuts" of today are the popular penalized networks of tomorrow... there will always be someone who will create a network (of others sites they control, or their new friends control, or of near expired domains, or blogger groups, etc) and that someone will start selling links, and advertising, and it will catch on, and they will sell to everyone and it will become so interconnected that it will cause its own algorthymitic penalty, or it will get popular, and get the eyes of Google on it, and then it will get filtered, or there will be exact match penalties, or entire site penalties."
Jim mentioned that quality link building takes a lot of time and effort and marketing, but that is the price to pay for rankings.
Some marketers are chanting the death of SEO, but I think we can surmise that link building is still very much alive even with Google's over-optimization penalty.
What do you think of the over-optimization penalty? Have you seen a drop in rankings? What linking strategies do you use that are still going strong?
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