For many of you this might be a bit late, but I wanted to give you this update anyways. Google recently released an update to its Penguin Algorithm. Penguin is an algorithm Google released to fight webspam and penalize sites they believe are violating Google’s quality guidelines. Penguin 1.1 is the first update to the algorithm and according to a tweet by Google’s Matt Cutts, the update affects less than 0.1% of English searches. Given that last fact, the UPDATE shouldn’t be a huge worry for webmasters and SEO’s. The Penguin algorithm as a whole on the other hand, has much of the SEO world in a tizzy, and there have been many arguments over whether it made search results better or worse. If you feel you have been affected by mistake and that your website doesn’t violate their quality guidelines, you can submit this form to Google and they will take it into consideration. However, regardless of how you feel about Penguin, Google feels it helps fight webspam and if your website is unnaturally optimized for search, you will almost definitely receive a hit.
So how do you combat this? You have to shift your search engine optimization mindset. There aren’t as many loopholes in the system now and Google is getting better at seeing what’s natural and what’s artificial. Take a step back from the link building and start focusing on writing great content. Build up your blog and use social media to drive traffic so you start getting traffic and in turn, natural links. Submit articles to guest blogging opportunities with links back to your site. Start building websites for people rather than Search Engines and the results will be better with both. According to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, Good Links are Hard Links.
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