Overview of Google Penguin. What it is, what to do if you've been hit, how to recover and how to avoid. A primer for anyone who doesn't know what Penguin is.

1. What Is It? Why Should You
Care? What Can You Do?
All Things Penguin

2. Penguin
April 24, 2012
Impacts 3.1% of
English Queries.
Penguin 1.1
May 25, 2012
First Penguin
algorithm data
refresh. Affected
<0.1% of English
searches.
Penguin #3
October 5, 2012
Minor Penguin
data update,
impacting 0.3%
of Queries.
Penguin 2.0
May 22, 2013
Large update
based on new
technology
Penguin 2.1
October 4, 2013
Small update on
2.0
Penguin 3.0
COMING SOON
VERY SOON!

3. According to the Google Blog, Penguin is an…
“important algorithm change targeted at
webspam. The change will decrease rankings
for sites that we believe are violating Google’s
existing quality guidelines.”
Here is a list of the top areas that we believe
Penguin is targeting:
 Aggressive linking with the exact same
anchor text
 Overuse of keywords
 Low-quality article marketing & Blog spam

4.  Go to Google Analytics, Click Acquisition
 Click All Traffic
 Click Google / Organic
 Adjust the date range to go from April 1, 2012
to today.
 Look for sharp, noticeable decreases in
traffic. If there are none, you are good. If you
see any, check the dates. If they are on the
following dates, you have been hit:
 April 24, 2012
 May 25, 2012
 October 5, 2012
 May 22, 2013
 Oct 4, 2013

5.  Commenting on Blogs
 SEO Firms
 Article Syndication
 People thinking they can boost their
site by linking to you
 Negative SEO

6.  Originally they felt links were a
vote of popularity for your site.
The more links, the better your
site, the higher you rank!
 Google realized people could easily
“game” the system and needed to
crack down on link building as an
SEO strategy, so they created
guidelines to determine if links
were good.

7. They look at:
 how many total links you have
 how were they achieved
 anchor text
 timeframe they were achieved
 quality of links
 where on the page the link resides
 which pages on your site it links to
 about 78 other factors!
Google is looking for
naturally occurring links

8.  If Google has determined you have
too many “bad links” and Penguin hit
you the first step is a Link Audit so you
can determine which links are bad.
 The next step is trying to remove the
bad links.
 You could try to have the links
“nofollowed” but that isn’t fool proof.
 Lastly you could disavow the links with
Google (more on that in just a minute)

9. Penguin is NOT a penalty, it is a filter

10.  You need to be diligent about
cleaning up your links as quickly as
possible.
 You won’t see the true benefit of
the clean up until Google runs the
filter again.
 Which means if you are hurting
now – you need to get it cleaned
up BEFORE the next Penguin runs.

11.  In October 2012, Google
introduced a Disavow Tool
that allows you to tell
Google you don’t want
those links counted
against you.
 Not many people have
seen it work for them.
 Use it very carefully.
 Only use it after you have
attempted to clean up the
links yourself first.

12.  Keep tabs on your Link
Profile and monitor
Google Webmaster Tools.
 Clean up bad links as
quickly as possible.
 Acquire natural, high
quality links through
sharing top notch content.
 Get active on Social
Media.
Make sure your site is
professional, full of quality
content and not spammy.

13.  We had expected it to run by now, which means
it could be any day. Could even be before I finish
recording this video.

14. Get a link audit so you know
what your link profile looks like.
 Try to remove links. Services like
rmoov.com work well.
Document all efforts so Google
can see the work you did.
 Disavow.
 Build up quality content on your
site and share it via social media.

15. Jennifer Horowitz
Director of Marketing
EcomBuffet.com
562-592-5347
jennifer@ecombuffet.com

16. Jennifer Horowitz,
EcomBuffet