This presentation explores how to research, identify and avoid the punitive side of Google changes.

1. Panda, Penguin,
Penalties and
More!

Jordan Koene

Chief Evangelist Searchmetrics

9. What are Search Engine Changes

Search Structure Changes
 Hummingbird
 Core platform changes

Search Ranking Changes
 Panda and Penguin
 Search index changes and refreshes

Penalties
 Notice from Google GWMT
 Negative impact on a website's rankings

10. Panda: What Panda really looks like?
Is a change to Google's search results rankings that was first
released in February 2011. This change is intended to stop
sites with poor quality content. Panda is an update that occurs
multiple times a year and sometimes considered a “refresh”.

Not (necessarily) an overnight drop

Impacts targeted content sections

11. Latest Change “Panda 4.1”
“Slow” rollout of Panda started
at the end of September.
- Depending on the region, the
update affects about 3%-5% of
search queries.

12. Panda Winner and Losers
WINNERS
- News and Media
- Entertainment
- Travel
LOSERS
- Communities
- Banking
WINNERS
- Business Insider: +20%
- Netflix: +15%
- Cox.com: +10%
- Disney: +181%
LOSERS
- Answers.com: -60%
- Hubpages.com: -25%
- JPMorganChase: -18%

13. Panda Effect

14. Retailmenot.com

15. eBay

16. Panda and Competition

17. Targeted Ranking Changes “Pigeon,
Pirate”
- Update to combat software and digital media piracy.
- Changes targeting relevant and accurate local search results.
A clear statement to focus on local results.

Visible impact to subset of website

18. Pigeon and Pirate Winner/Losers
Pirate WINNERS
-xfinitytv.comcast.net:
+28%
-Vudu.com: +25%
-Youtube.com: +11%
Pirate LOSERS
-thepiratebay: -50%
-movie4k.to: -91%
Pigeon WINNERS
-Tripadvisor.com :
+20%
-Zillow: +18%
-NYTimes.com: +15%
Pigeon LOSERS
-Indeed.com: -30%
-Farmers.com: -10%

19. Pirate Winner

20. Pigeon Winner

21. Penguin, the king of the arctic
Google’s search results changed by cleaning up spam in Google.
Spam, is when webmasters or marketers do things like “buying
links” or “cloaking” that violate Google’s guidelines

Penguin 2.0 May 22, 2013 impacting 2.3% of queries

Penguin 2.1 October 4, 2013 impacting around 1% of queries

Penguin 3.0: October 17, 2014 Rollout In Process, Impacting
1% of queries

22. Difficult to Isolate with slow rollout

Black hat affiliate sites

Content syndication websites

Some winners include news and media websites

Testing for Pirate update occurred at the same time

23. New world of manual penalties

24. For eCommerce:
Relevance (Utility)

The purpose of this page
is to provide information
about, and allow users to
buy, a specific type of
product.

The page provides helpful
product information, for
example reviews.

Manufacture vs. reseller
vs. affiliate (expert on the
product)

Product quality and
popularity of product
Quality

A satisfying or
comprehensive amount of
very high quality main
content

Very high level of
expertise, highly
authoritative/ highly
trustworthy for the
purpose of the page

Very positive reputation

25. Penalties are painful!

26. Competition can win

27. twitter.com/jtkoene
linkedin.com/in/jordankoene
twitter.com/searchmetrics
facebook.com/searchmetrics
THANK YOU
QUESTIONS
Panda, Penguin,
Penalties and More!

28. Searchmetrics &
3Q Digital
How to Thrive in the Age of
Algorithm Changes

29. 3Q Digital
Reading the tea
leaves
Algorithm Updates

30. Building Up Your Knowledge
Due Diligence :: Reading
• Nobody truly knows when an algorithm change is
3Q Digital
coming
• However, you can set yourself up for success…
– Panda has been around since 2011 and
Penguin has been around since 2012
• If you’re just beginning with SEO, do
you know what these are?
• Are you aware of the other past
algorithm updates that you should
avoid?
– Understanding the historical trends can
help predict future changes
Sources
• http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
• http://searchengineland.com/library/go
ogle/google-algorithm-updates
• https://www.seroundtable.com/categor
y/google-updates
• http://www.springboardseo.com/resour
ces/google-algorithm-updates/

31. Identification Of Changes
Visual Graphs Sources
3Q Digital
- Updated daily
- Highly trusted industry
resource
- Visuals only
- Updated each month
- Visual volatility & article
write-up in one place
• http://mozcast.com/
• https://www.rankranger.com/google-algorithm-updates
• https://serps.com/tools/volatility
• http://searchengineland.com/18-days-later-google-penguin-
3-0-continues-slowly-roll-worldwide-207339
- Updated daily
- Highly trusted industry
resource
- In-depth articles

32. 3Q Digital
In The Crosshairs
Gray Hat Tactics

33. Social Automation
• Social promotion is growing both in usage and effectiveness
• Due to the popularity and high engagement metrics, brands
3Q Digital
are trying to find ways to scale their efforts
– Offerings exist for brands to gain more followers, likes,
shares, +1’s, tweets, etc.
Domain Recycling
• Old Domain Purchasing
– Offerings exist where companies will
sell you domains that have built up
strength in the past
– The idea is to redirect these domains
and their strength to your actual website

34. Link Building
• Link-based penalties are the most common penalty at the
3Q Digital
moment
– Because of this, strategies are being leveraged to still
scale links but in ways that hopefully won’t look
inorganic
• Strategy 1
– Link Building (anchor text spreading)
• Strategy 2
• Also manufactured link building, sending links to pages
outside of homepage with the notion of ‘you can always
cut the arm off’
• If this results in a Partial Match link penalty, removing
the page should get you out of the penalty
Article Spinning
• Article Spinning
– Could be done through the CMS
– Typically an automated approach of rewriting parts of
existing articles or replacing words
• Through an automated approach, this can leave
articles human unreadable

35. Article Spinning Example
Original Paragraph Spin-ready Syntax
Spun Paragraph
3Q Digital
#1
#2

36. 3Q Digital
5 Evergreen
Techniques
For Working Now and into the
Future

37. It’s All About The User
Designing For End Users
• User experience is becoming more of a weighted priority for
3Q Digital
Google when ranking websites
• Historically, UX and SEO were run separately
– Over the past several years, not only have they
intersected but they are now married
• Think about what users want to do when arriving at your page,
not what you want them to do
– AdSense overuse for example
• User experience testing tools are great ways to determine if
your landing pages have been properly designed
– https://www.optimizely.com/
– http://www.crazyegg.com/
– https://qualaroo.com/
*Next ranking factor?
(Mobile User Experience)
Engagement & Outreach
• Users are your most precious commodity, as
it’s them who either will (or won’t):
– Convert
– Spread your branded message
– Become repeat purchasers/users
• Engagement
– Social media is a two-way street
– If you want a fruitful social presence,
stop marketing and start engaging
• If your social community feels that all you want
is something from them, what’s their incentive
for returning & promoting?

38. Effort vs. Benefit
Outlinking
• Outlinking To Authoritative Sites
3Q Digital
– Creates topical association and authority
– Allows your site to function as a hub of information
– Should still be kept contextually relevant
• If you’re a company who sells shoes, linking out
to a government website on national parks will
have little return
– Try thinking as if you’re doing a link audit
• You’ve identified a domain who links a lot to
your competitor
• You’d like links from them
• You write a great content piece and then link out
to that domain so they’ll notice you
Page 2 & Page 3
• Placing Efforts On Pages 2 & 3
– If you’re not on the first page, you’re not getting
traffic
– With mobile…
• This is even more pronounced, as many
believe if you’re not #1, then you’re nowhere
– Pages 2 & 3 present the fastest opportunities for
current content to increase the traffic it drives
• Your pages are already being ranked well on
queries; refining them and furthering their
strength to rank them on Page 1 will increase
their visibility in front of users

39. Tactical
3Q Digital
• The tool definitely has its
limitations
– You will receive close
variants of your seed
keyword(s), but most of the
creative work is on you
• Wikipedia to the rescue
– One of, if not the largest
online information hubs
– Example seed keyword:
• Wine
*If you’d like to see the search volume for
these, then you can go back to the
Keyword Planner
Keyword Research
• Keyword research is one of those strategies
that will never go away
• The depth of it involves:
– Listening to social media
– Identifying dying and emerging trends
(for query usage)
– Staying on top of competitor
content/offering strategies
– Running focus groups
*Keyword Research = Content Creation
*Poor Content Creation = Panda
Google Keyword Planner is great, but…

40. Bonus
3Q Digital
• Previously, research was highly manual
• Then it became more streamlined
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:All_articles_with_dea
d_external_links
• Then it became scalable…
Dead Wikipedia Links
• Expanding your reach and digital footprint
• Birds of a feather flock together
– You want to be associated with high-authority
domains
– Being able to place your resources on a
highly trafficked information hub allows
this

41. Questions &
Comments?
3qdigital.com
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