Penguin Protection 2016: How To Shied Your SEO From Google’s Upcoming Update
The time has come: Google’s 2016 Penguin Algorithm Update is drawing closer and closer each day.
We’ve already talked about the basics of Google’s Penguin and Panda updates, but many organizations want to know a little more about what the updates really entail. As you may already know, the 2016 Penguin update is scheduled to happen sometime in the first quarter of the year but no one really knows when the update will roll out. Whether you’re managing the website of a private school, doctor’s office, or just a small business down on Main Street — Penguin is something that will affect your search engine optimization.
The first thing you need to do is to read up on the basics of the Penguin update. Once you’re thoroughly convinced that it’s time to protect your SEO campaign and website against the update, check out some of these tips from the SEO experts at Search Engine Land on Penguin Protection:
- Penguin updates are all about getting spammy — or “toxic” — links out of the system. Hopefully you’ve managed to avoid any SEO services that use black hat SEO strategies, because they typically make use of sketchy, spammy links. If you have fallen into this trap, be sure to ask a trustworthy SEO company for an analysis of your site links, so that you can remove the toxic ones.
- Anchor text is an important part of link quality, but many businesses don’t realize it. Make sure that your anchor text isn’t an exact match to your links, and try to vary the anchor text whenever possible. You’ll want to use a variety of relevant keywords, various URLs, long-tail keywords, and brand names in the anchor texts.
- You current internal links are — hopefully — not toxic links. Still, it’s important to take a second look at how Google might interpret these links. Even though internal links don’t have the biggest effect on search engine optimization rankings, they still impact how well the search engine spiders can analyze your site. Make sure that your internal links use varied anchor text, only link to relevant pages, and provide your site visitors with a helpful guide to your site. If you haven’t paid much attention to your internal links, then this is definitely something to examine.
Even expert search engine optimization firms can get a little frazzled when a Penguin update is drawing near. A slight algorithm change can have a big effect on a website, even one that abides by Google’s Webmaster Tools for content creation, requiring months to repair the damage. Considering that 60% of all organic link clicks go to the top three page results on any given keyword search, and there are at least 12 billion searches per month in the U.S., a successful SEO campaign can be one of the best ways to reach target audiences and see an impressive increase in revenue (sometimes as high as 40%).
So, have you Penguin-proofed your website yet?
