Google Penguin Update: Is Your Site Ready?

@accelerationpar #freethepenguins
GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATE:
IS YOUR SITE READY?
MEROVE HEIFETZ & BONNIE HERMAN
MARCH 23, 2016

INTRODUCTIONS
2

TODAY’S AGENDA
• Google Algorithm Updates: Background
• Penguin:What Is It,Why Is It Important &
When Is It Coming?
• HowToTell IfYour Site Is Impacted
• HowTo Prep for Penguin and/or Combat Its
Impact
• More Recent Google Updates: RankBrain,
AMP & Mobilegeddon
3

4
64%21%
12%
3%
Google Bing Yahoo Other (AOL, Ask)
*comScore
SEARCH ENGINE MARKET SHARE (FEB 2016*)
GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES:
BACKGROUND

GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES:
BACKGROUND
• Google’s focus is on delivering the highest quality content to
users.
• Updates to Google’s algorithm happen 500 – 600 times a
year, some reports note up to 2000 times per year!
• Most changes are very minor – public will not notice.
• Major updates that impact search:
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
5

MAJOR GOOGLE ALGORITHM
UPDATES
PANDA &
PENGUIN
6

MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PANDA
• Initially released February 2011.
• Importance: Seeks to reward sites with higher quality and
valuable content and results in down-ranking of pages that
are considered low quality.
• Penalizes websites with:
• Low quality content
• Duplicate, thin or poorly-written content
• Keyword stuffing
• Off-topic content
7

HAVE YOU BEEN PENALIZED BY PANDA?
Look for sudden drops in
organic traffic & organic
keyword positions
around the time when
previous updates have
occurred.
8

9
HAVE YOU BEEN PENALIZED BY PANDA?

“
RECENT PANDA CORE ALGORITHM UPDATE
Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to
sites overall and has become one of our
core ranking signals. It measures the
quality of a site, which you can read
more about in our guidelines. Panda
allows Google to take quality into
account and adjust ranking accordingly.
JANUARY 12, 2016: GOOGLE OFFICIALLY
CONFIRMED THAT PANDA IS NOW PART OF
THE CORE RANKING ALGORITHM.
10

11
• We will never see another Panda update like we have in the
past because it will run with Google’s main core algorithm.
• Websites with low-quality content now have an ongoing risk of
being impacted.
• Quality, unique content continues to be extremely important -
both technical SEO and on-page content for the user.
• Note: This is important for both your own site AND your
content on third-party sites like Amazon, Walmart &
external blogs.
RECENT PANDA CORE ALGORITHM
UPDATE

MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN
• Initially released April 2012.
• Importance: Seeks to reward quality websites and penalize
sites using black hat or “over optimization” techniques.
Primary focus is on link quality.
• Penalizes websites with:
• Spammy link profiles (links from “bad neighborhoods”)
• Off-topic link profiles
• Overly optimized anchor text links
• Keyword stuffing
• Forum spam (linking from comments)
• Paid or Sponsored Links
12

PENALIZES: SPAMMY LINK
PROFILES
Links from “bad neighborhoods” or
spammy websites linking to your
websiteAvoid links from “Bad PPC”
websites: Pills, Porn and
Casinos
13

PENALIZES: OFF-TOPIC LINK PROFILES
Off-topic links are when sites that are unrelated to you are
linking to your site.
YOUR WEBSITE
Topic cars
(example)
Linked Site
1. Topic Travel
Linked Site
2. Topic Food
Linked Site
3. Topic Health Blog
Linked Site
4. Topic Hair Styles
Linked Site
5. Topic Viagra
Linked Site
6. Topic Insurance
14

PENALIZES: OVERLY OPTIMIZED ANCHOR TEXT LINKS
Roughly 80% of the anchor text of your links should be your
brand name or the website URL
15

PENALIZES: KEYWORD STUFFING
"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a
webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to
manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Often
these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not
as natural prose).
16

PENALIZES: FORUM SPAM
Unrelated links with optimized anchor text found on forums
17

PENALIZES: PAID OR SPONSORED LINKS
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank or “link juice.” This
includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links;
exchanging goods or services for links.
This does not include paid ads like Google AdWords, content
syndication through tools like OutBrain or affiliate marketing
links.
18

WHEN IS IT COMING?
• Last updates:
• Penguin Everflux - December 2014
Google announces continuous Penguin updates going
forward (Search Engine Land)
• Penguin 3.0 – October 2014
• Next major update: Penguin 4.0:???
19

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WHEN IS IT COMING?

ACCELERATION PARTNERS’ HYPOTHESIS
Given Panda’s integration into the core
algorithm, it’s likely that Penguin will be
integrated within the core algorithm at some
point, too.
21

HAVE YOU BEEN PENALIZED BY PENGUIN?
We don’t know what
impact Penguin 4.0
will have – it may be a
one-time filter like it
was in 2012 & 2013 or
it may be an ongoing
update like the recent
Panda update to the
core algorithm.
22

HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUIN
Your site can potentially benefit from the next Penguin update if
you follow best practices before it launches:
TOOLS
Use a variety of tools to check your backlink profile – we
will note some options in a moment.
ANCHOR TEXT DISTRIBUTION
Vary your anchor text keywords to make sure most are
branded or URL.
MONITOR BACKLINKS
Look for sudden spikes or anything out of the ordinary.
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FREE SEO TOOLS
25

INTERNAL DOCUMENT
PAID SEO TOOLS
26

DISAVOW LINKS
For the super spammy links you cannot remove, disavow the links
in Google Search Console.
It’s absolutely critical to follow Google’s disavow directions
exactly, or you can do some damage.
BUILD AUTHORITATIVE LINKS
Combat the negative impacts of negative links with gaining positive
ones –those that are highly relevant from sites that have higher
domain authority than your own site.
OPTIMIZE INTERNAL LINKS
Make sure that your internal links flow in a natural way. Add related
products to product pages, maintain as much of a hierarchy as
possible, use canonicals.
27

COMPETITOR BACKLINK ANALYSIS
One of the best places to find relevant, strong inbound links is by
looking at the backlink profiles of your competition. Use Moz’s Open
Site Explorer.
CITATION MANAGEMENT
On a weekly basis, check the web mentions of the brand to ensure that
all citations are linking to the website. Use Moz’s Fresh Web Mentions.
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BUILDING LINKS NATURALLY

OVERALL TAKEAWAY
Your website will be re-evaluated by Google when the next
Penguin update hits. Your site may potentially benefit from
the next Penguin update:
• If you have been consistently monitoring your
backlink profile and following best practices and
white hat techniques.
OR
• If you have recently addressed negative backlink
issues
(in advance of the update).
Your site may be penalized if you have negative backlink
issues that aren’t addressed…
29

MORE RECENT UPDATES FROM
GOOGLE:
RANKBRAIN, AMP & MOBILEGEDDON
30

GOOGLE RANKBRAIN
• Rankbrain, which was rolled out in early 2015, is
Google’s name for a machine-learning artificial
intelligence system that’s used to help process its
search results.
• It is part of Google’s overall search algorithm.
• Machine learning is where a computer teaches itself
how to do something, rather than being taught by
humans or following detailed programming.
31

GOOGLE RANKBRAIN
• RankBrain is the third-most important factor for ranking
web pages (according to Google). Although Google
won’t tell us what the first two factors are, people
speculate that links are number one and content is
number two.
• What does it do? Everyday, 15% of queries are ones
that Google has never seen before. That is 450 million
new searches a day.
• Among those searches can be complex long-tail
queries. RankBrain is designed to help better interpret
those queries and effectively translate them, behind the
scenes, to find the best pages for the searcher.
32

GOOGLE RANKBRAIN
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SEO?
• There is no affect on crawling nor indexing of websites.
• RankBrain may weigh existing algorithm signals differently.
• RankBrain is so complex, Google has said they don’t fully
understand how it works.
• More information: http://searchengineland.com/faq-all-about-
the-new-google-rankbrain-algorithm-234440
33

ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES: AMP
• Officially launched on Feb. 23, 2016.
• A Google-backed project intended as an open standard
for any publisher to have pages load quickly on mobile
devices.
• Supported by Twitter, WordPress and other publishers.
• WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SEO?
Google will be encouraging its use by integrating it
heavily into its platform - websites using AMP will see a
ranking boost as early as May.
34

ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES: AMP
Currently, there is a green lightning bolt next to AMP pages on the
SERPs.
35

HELPFUL AMP RESOURCES
36

MOBILEGEDDON…AGAIN!
37
• Initially released April 2015.
• Importance: Rewards mobile-friendly websites and penalizes
mobile unfriendly websites.
• Up next: May 2016
• Google: “…beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an
update to mobile search results that increases the
effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even
more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.”
• Is your website mobile-friendly? Check here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

OVERALL TAKEAWAY
Your website will succeed if you consistently produce high-
quality content that addresses your users and searchers needs,
which in turn will inspire high-quality and relevant backlinks.
Spammy or black hat techniques will backfire!
GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES
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ARTICLES
• Search Engine Land How to Get Started with AMP
• SEO Roundtable AMP is Live
• Search Engine Land FAQs About RankBrain
• Moz Major Google Algorithm Changes
• Search Engine Land Penguin Shift Continuous Updates
TOOLS
• AMP Project How To Get Started with AMP
• Google Mobile Friendly Test
• Moz Mozcast
RESOURCES
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@accelerationpar #freethepenguinsBoston
617.963.083
9
New York
646.664.103
6
San
Francisco
415.523.039
Chicago
312.973.386
4
QUESTIONS?
MEROVE HEIFETZ
Associate Director,
SEO & Digital Strategy
merove@accelerationpartners.co
m
BONNIE HERMAN
Senior Account Manager,
SEO & Digital Strategy
bherman@accelerationpartners.c
om
40

@accelerationpar #freethepenguinsBoston
617.963.083
9
New York
646.664.103
6
San
Francisco
415.523.039
Chicago
312.973.386
4
THANK YOU!
41
Visit the Acceleration Partners blog for more tips on
SEO, User Experience, Site Strategy, Paid Marketing
& Affiliate Marketing:
http://www.accelerationpartners.com/blog/

Google Penguin Update: Is Your Site Ready?

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