Recovering from Google Penguin Fever
Google Penguin was in April of 2012 to decrease the search engine rankings of websites that did not comply with the Webmaster Guidelines established by Google. The sites that were hit the most involved those who used black hat SEO to achieve their previous ranking.
Main Targets of Google Penguin
Websites that utilize black hat SEO, such as unnatural link building, content spinning, content spamming, buying text links, and overuse of keywords as anchor tags will see a great drop in their Google Analytics if they continue further. Other examples of the Penguins prey are sites with mistakes, involving those with duplicate content, overuse of keywords, and spammy internal linking. There is also a small amount of risk for websites that hired help from novice SEO firms that were unaware of how safe their services offered were.
Healing after Penguin Fever
Look at your previous backlinks and remove any from spamful websites or sites with the same IP network as yours. Start to pay attention to onpage SEO tactics if you haven’t done so already because some of them are factors that can contribute to a Google Penguin attack. After these two steps, submit a reconsideration form to Google webmaster tools and wait patiently for your rank to recover. The Google bots will look at your website and decide whether your site is fit to recover. Lastly, research about SEO and use natural tactics to prevent the same mistakes from occurring again.
10 Tips for the Future
1. Do not purchase keyword links or pay too much attention to them.
2. Do not automate SEO processes that spam the web with backlinks, instead spread the SEO and make the promotion natural.
3. Use natural anchor tags, like “read more”, “visit website”, or other long tail keywords to replace exact match keywords.
4. Extend your SEO efforts to many inner pages in your website.
5. Do not over-optimize a single webpage.
6. Actively use social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
7. Use social bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon and Reditt as well.
8. Check that page speed, META details, page content, image alt tags are optimized as they are huge SEO factors.
9. Do not expect overnight results.
10. Ask questions and make sure that the SEO services of a company will not harm you in the long run and are ethical before hiring a firm.
The Google Penguin Fever spread to innocent websites, however, it is their responsibility to take matters into their hands and research ways to recover and bring their ranks back to the level they once were. The harmful practices that they once used can no longer be utilized now, and they must be replaced with strategies that will bring their previous online status back.
