Speaking about Google Panda, Penguin, and Phantom

1. Roy Hinkis |Evangelist
Tw i t t e r : @ r o y h i n k i s
L i n k e d I n : h t t p : / / w w w. l i n k e d i n. c o m/ i n /r o y s e o
Recovering from Google Penalties

2. Every Website Every App
Every Country
We Reveal the Secrets of Online Success

3. Every Website
 Traffic Trends Desktop & Mobile
 Referring Traffic
 Keywords
 Advertising Analysis
 Popular Pages
Every App
 Current User Installs
 Active Users
 Engagement per app
 Retention Analysis
 App store optimization
Every Country
We Reveal the Secrets of Online Success

4. Google
Penalties
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis

5. Is Google Clamping Down
on Your Site?
Spot the Penalty

6. Panda
SimilarWeb.com 6/20#SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Panda from a new perspective

7.  Thin Content
 Content Farms
 Duplicate Content
 Ad-to-content Ratio
 Broken Pages
 HTML Improvements
 Short Click vs. Long Click
 Engagement Metrics & User
Experience
 Blog Post Comments
SimilarWeb.com
Old School
New Focus
#SMXIsrael @royhinkis

8. Short click vs. long click
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9. Short click vs. long click
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10. Short click vs. long click
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11. So what’s
the lesson?

12. Query  Keyword
is now
Query  Keyword  Post-Click Engagement

13. SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Engagement and User Experience
are now critical to SEO

14. Spam Comments are
Radioactive to SEO
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15. Panda 4.1 Panda 4.2
Blog post spam comments
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16. Moderate or Get Out
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17. Focus on user experience

18. Don’t remove pages, make them better!
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19. Ad:Text Ratio
Keep it in Check
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20. SimilarWeb.com 20/20#SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Be patient until the next update!

21. Google Penguin

22. • Over optimized anchor text
• Large-scale articles or links
posted by guests/commenters
• Relevance of linking domains
• Paid links
• IP and C-class links
22/20
Google Penguin
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis

24. • I used Majestic to discover the ratio between
the Class C subnets and Referring IP address
• Example for a Class C: 123.456.789.1
• Aim for a 1:1 ratio
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IP and C-class links

25. Know your
profile
Audit your backlinks
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26. Is the linking
page indexed by
Google?
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Audit your backlinks

27. Does the linking
page rank on
Google’s results
on pages 1-3 for
its own meta title?
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Audit your backlinks

28. Does the linking
domain rank in
positions 1-3 for
its own URL?
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Audit your backlinks

29. Does the link
drive any actual
traffic?
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Audit your backlinks

30. Aggregate all of your bad backlinks onto
one list, be sure to follow the manual
check guidelines for each link
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Audit your backlinks

31. Use the Disavow tool, but use it strategically after you’ve
tried contacting and removing the bad links by yourself.
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Google disavow tool

32. SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Google “Phantom” Update
• The google “Phantom” update was
released in May 2015
• Mainly focused on the “how-to”
websites
• Focused on the “task completion”
• Focused on the user

33. Page views
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Phantom – Engagement
is the difference maker
2.5
1.49
Time on site
00:00:00:179
00:00:00:67
Bounce rate
84%
62%

34. WikiHow (loser)
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Quora (winner)

35. SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
Your Toolkits

36. Relevant tools for Panda
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
• Duplicate content – Siteliner.com,
Copyscape.com
• Broken Pages – XENU, Screaming Frog
• Page Speed – Google page speed insights
tool, webpagetest.org
• HTML improvements – IIS SEO toolkit
• H’s and image alt tags – Wave toolbar
• Google Analytics & Search Console

37. • Focus on targeting relevant terms!
• Improve your problematic pages in terms of
engagement
• Moderate your blog post comments
• Greatly improve technical SEO
• Improve poor pages- rewrite/redesign them
• Check your ad to text ratio on your page
• Fix broken pages
• No-index on the pages that you want to remove
• Be patient until the next update
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis
How to recover from the Panda penalty?

38. How to recover from the Penguin penalty?
• Step 1 – check your backlink profile
• Is the linking page indexed in Google?
• Does the linking page rank on Google’s results on pages 1-3
for its own meta title?
• Does the linking domain rank in positions 1-3 for its own URL?
• Does the link drive any actual traffic?
• Content quality – if the content is good, more people will link to
your site.
• Social media– having a good social media strategy is a huge
factor for SEO purposes
• Outreach – contact opinion leaders and satisfied customers
that are using your product. Cultivate relationships.
SimilarWeb.com #SMXIsrael @royhinkis

39. • Diagnose your penalty
• Identify the problems that led to the penalty
• Follow the steps for each problem
• Wait until the next algorithm update
Takeaways:

40. Thank You
Roy Hinkis
@royhinkis
royh@similarweb.com