On the 24rth of April we all saw a post on Google’s blog written by Matt Cutts about the changes which are going to take place. This time Google targeted over optimization and Webspam. This created an earthquake on the Internet. Google said that the new change affects 3.1% of the search queries. But the changes we felt were much more, approx 15%. There was a lot of talk about this on all the webmaster forums and it was the hottest topic.
Suddenly on 25th of April we saw that all search results were changed. The change did not do any good for the end-user. The results which appeared on page 1 were not worth being on the page 10!
Here are a few examples:
1.
Keywords: Pregnancy Miracle
Rank: #5
URL: http://pregnancymiraclereviews.tumblr.com
Monthly Exact-Match Searches: 6,000
It has two pages of content and only one backlink that isn’t NOFOLLOW. “Pregnancy Miracle” gets 6,000 exact-match searches per month. Some data centers are also showing a livejournal blog at #6 (cametennus892.livejournal.com) that’s one page of illegible garbage.
2.
Keywords: Cat Pictures
Rank: #8-#11 (depending on the data center)
URL: http://felinephotos.blogspot.com
Monthly Exact-Match Searches: 33,000
This one is my old Blogger blog that fell by the wayside FOUR YEARS AGO, and yet it’s on page one. The keywords get 33,000+ exact-match searches per month. The blog only has a few dozen different domains linking to it, of which only 14 links are on pages with any PageRank at all. And the links are exact-keyword anchor-text heavy. About 60% of them have “cat pictures” as the anchor text.
3.
Keywords: How To Make Chicken Soup
Rank: #8
URL: http://voices.yahoo.com/how-chicken-soup-perfectly-340461.html
Monthly Exact-Match Searches: 5,400
Yahoo! Voices is free to sign up for and lets you post content (articles, videos, slideshows). I was surprised at how many searches this query gets each month, but there it is. Care to guess how many backlinks the page has? ZERO!
Here are some others (lesser monthly searches, but noteworthy):
bing seo – A press release on PRWeb.com is ranking #4 (keywords get about 1,000 exact-match searches per month).
studio microphone review – A YouTube video review is number four.
landscaping advice – A Yahoo Answers page is on page one.
Example Source: http://jlforums.com/search-engine-optimization/kill-the-penguin-piggyback-off-of-domains-with-lots-of-authority/
This also proves one thing that Google gives more priority to free blogs and web 2.0 blogs. We have seen a lot of case studies which proves this fact.
And if you all remember the BuildMyRank.com de-indexing slap, it destroyed the blog networks. But Private Blog Networks are still alive and they work like a charm, all you need to do is build one for yourself and use it properly.
Lastly, anchor text diversity is VERY important or you will surely get slapped as MicroSiteMasters.com’s blog post proved in their study of historical data they have on thousands of sites.
NOTE: We recommend you to not use your main keyword as anchor text on more than 20-30% of the links.
Socialize, Promoting your main website and inner pages of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus has also shown Marvelous results
On 27th of april, Google named the over-optimization update as Google’s First Penguin update.
Now, What you should be doing to Avoid/Recover from this update:
- Make HIGH QUALITY & Relative links in small amounts
- Add content regularly on your site and make the navigation for the end user easy.
- Content should be updated regularly and more facts should be added to it, to show google that the content is fresh.
- Use Bold, Italics and Underline in pages.
- Try using H1 through H4 tags also if your css pemits.
- Once all done, get all the links and ping them once every 15 days.
This will help you in getting back to the top position.
Here are some more links of blog posts which will help you to learn more about Google Penguin Updates:
https://www.seotools.w3webdesigns.com/backlink-maker
We will be updating this article and adding more on our blog, Please do visit our site again to get updated about Google updates.