Google Deploying New Algorithm — Will Penguin Reward You or Penalize You?

On April 24, 2012, Google announced the launching of its new Penguin algorithm which targets webspam:

“The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

In short, here are simple actions you need to take to ensure your site is rewarded and not penalized:

1. Content is King – create compelling and relevant content on your site.
2. Play Fair – don’t use questionable tactics like keyword stuffing or linking schemes.

The easiest way to tell if Penguin has affected your website is by monitoring the volume of traffic from Google Organic Search.  Has it increased or decreased?  If your site traffic has decreased, you may want to consider an audit. Envano offers Search Engine audits which identify what you can do to improve performance including key phrase usage, website architecture, broken links and organic rankings.