The Penguin Affect

By Brandon Roach • August 10, 2012

Penguin

Google Penguin was just released so I thought I would take the time to write about any affects it might have on your website.

The bottom line of Google’s business is to give you a search that is adequate for what you would want. If they didn’t give you results you would be using one of the many alternatives. That is how Google overtook everyone in the late 90’s. I remember the first day I was introduced to Google. I was sitting in graduate school and we were discussing research on the web. Alta Vista was our default browser at the time and one of my classmates raised there hand and said “if you haven’t tried google.com you should every time I use it, it gives me exactly what I am looking for”. Since then I haven’t looked back.

So back to the penguin, it is another update to avoid modern black SEO tactics. Like with anything you put rules out and there are a slew of people that find out how to get around them. It is an ongoing battle, but Google has the advantage and will keep valid results pulling up, or we could always go to another search engine.

I see one of the biggest reasons for the update was the use of similar social content across the web. Example you can set up a Tumblr and re-post from everywhere on the web without adding any of your own content. Some sites were gaining immensely in Search Engine Presence.  It’s not their content and Penguin’s update addresses issues like or similar to this. While we may never see the actual algorithm we can continue to take educated guesses on what the big G is doing.

Small Primer:

  • Avoid Black SEO Tactics
  • Avoid Mirrored websites
  • Avoid Link Farming, Invisible content
  • Correct Canonical linking specify
  • Add microdata
  • DONT!!! duplicate someone else’s content
  • Own your own content
  • Create fresh relevant content for your audience

A successful search engine’s bottom line for me is to give me exactly what I am looking for in a search. We all think so differently this is a fun challenge and Google is still ahead in the battle.

To the perfect search,
Brandon Roach