Google’s April 24th update – codenamed Penguin – seems to have had some seriously adverse impact on many sites. Google has said time and time again, that SEO can be very constructive and positive. They have pointed out that effective SEO can make a website more accessible and crawlable. Basic SEO includes techniques such as easy keyword research conducted to help ensure that you are embedding the best and most attractive words for your industry, product or services.
Since good search engine optimization can equal good marketing, being creative and using a variety of ways to make your website’s content compelling is also key. This can also be beneficial on your social media networks, great content will be shared, and that is always a plus. Those who use suggested white hat, or organic, techniques as opposed to black hat, or more nefarious methods, do not usually experience some of the devastating problems that are common with big algorithm changes such as the one with Penguin and the previous Panda change.
Penguin Eats Webspam
Sites that pursue black hat techniques, or Webspam, may use shortcuts that can help to raise their page rankings quicker than the organic white hat methods. Anything from link farming to keyword stuffing can help to temporarily boost rankings, but then Google always seems to find a way to punish those who do. It is simply not worth it any longer to spend time looking for loopholes when organic methods continue to stand up to even the strongest test in Google’s content updates.
Penguin specifically focused on penalizing sites that utilized:
When Penguin was rolled out it was referred to as the ‘webspam algorithm update’ for this reason. It intentionally targeted those sites using black hat tricks to bump themselves above those using good wholesome white hat organic marketing methods.
Be sure to also check out the search engine spam penalties page for more information that could be helpful in helping you to remove issues from your site that Google’s new update is now frowning upon.
Google says that they want people to focus on white hat SEO methods such as creating compelling websites and creative content, or even no search engine optimization at all, before considering using any black hat methods. Although some of the webspam techniques they have been eliminating in recent algo changes are more than ten years old, Google has warned repeatedly about practicing bad SEO methods and admit that they are continually improving on ways to make sure their next releases find the other black hat needles in the haystack that is the internet and swiftly penalize them too.
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
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