Google Penguin 2.0 Insights and Recovery Tips

Google Penguin 1.0 which was rolled out in 2012 April is one of the biggest algorithm updates. This update had its impact on large number of sites that featured questionable link profiles, low quality backlinks, keyword rich anchor text and sites that were overly optimized for single term.  Penguin 2.0 was released on May 22nd which is important for us to know how it is affecting sites and what are the tips or steps we have to take if our site is affected by this algorithm.

Penguin History:

         Google algorithms are designed and rolled out with an aim to give better, relevant search results for the users to find appropriate information. Panda algorithm was designed to focus on sites that provided low-quality content. While Penguin algorithm focused on unnatural, manipulative link profiles sites. It aimed sites that were consisting links which are:

• Coming from low-quality sites
• Links on the site which are not relevant to the topic
• Paid links
• Link having rich keywords
• Overly optimized anchor text links

Inside Look of Penguin 2.0:

Vast deal of assumptions is going on whether Penguin 2.0 also targeted the same as its earlier version. But according to Matt Cutt announcement, the Penguin focuses on penalizing sites which uses Black hat SEO techniques and site that gives a good user experience ranks well. It means that sites which involve in buying links, spam low quality directory sites with links and paying for leaving huge number of blog comments will be affected. While the sites that involve in creating quality content, building ethical links and does not participate in techniques that give immediate results will be improved in overall search rankings.
Penguin 2.0 went deeper into site for detecting spam and evaluated inner pages just not the home pages. Before it was not known that Penguin 1.0 just involved in evaluating homepages inbound link profiles. Now as internal pages are also being analyzed there is no chance of escaping from Google penalty if any site deals with black-hat seo techniques.
It was estimated that Penguin 2.0 influenced around 2.1 percentage of English queries and those sites which were reflected included those where numerous results from same site dominated first page.  It was even seen that search queries that are associated with spammy results also dropped in search results.

Ways to get Solid Rankings in Google search results:

It is needed to understand and cleanup link profile if a site is affected by Penguin 2.0 algorithm update. Following are the steps that are to be followed:

Step 1: Need to know what you are looking for

It will be challenging to conduct specific analysis and recover strategy, before we start with site link audit profile we need to keep certain points in mind and these are:

• Quality of site linking: To analyze a site quality we can take Page Rank and Domain Authority in to account. Other factors to analyze quality of site are quality of design, authoritative & well written content, is site active in blog comments and social media?

• Relevancy of the links: It is important that sites that link to our site should be related to our Niche.

• Were links acquired quickly: If there is a sudden increase in number of links than there are chances of being penalized by Google if it is linked in unnatural way.

Step 2: Take an active look at site profile

If we have a clear understanding of what we are looking for then it can help us to dive and take a closer look of link profile. We need to conduct a link audit by taking time and analyze which link has to be kept and which has to be removed from our site.

Step 3: Special Attention is to be given for anchor text

Anchor text has to be analyzed with special attention. If anchor text is keyword rich then it will result in penalty due to Penguin algorithm. Also even same anchor text should not be present for too many links.

Step 4: Using disavow tool for offending links

It is the best option to make use of Google’s Disavow tool to remove questionable links from the site to recover rankings. After removal of spam links from site, they are submitted to webmaster tools and then it will be re-crawled.

Step 5: Concentrate on building Quality links

The last step is to build high quality links and maintain quality link profile. To maintain good links we need to consider relevant, high quality sites and feature diverse anchor text.

By considering above points we can rebuild the site and get ranked in Google search results.