Google’s Penguin Update Explained and Recovery Strategies

High rankings on Google’s search results should be one of the objectives in your SEO strategy. Google dominates the search engine market, and for good reason. Their team consistently delivers a superior user experience.

One way they ensure quality sites rank at the top of their SERPs is by creating algorithm updates like Penguin, which we’ll explore in this article. Penguin is an update that filters out sites that, according to its links, Google’s web crawlers deem manipulative. We’ll give you a rundown of Penguin’s triggers, how it assesses sites, and how you can build your site to avoid being downranked.

Initial Launch Date: April 24, 2012

How often is Penguin updated? Though Penguin launched in 2012, it’s been part of Google’s core algorithm since 2016. In other words, the Penguin algorithm isn’t really “updated” like other algorithms are, but it still works in real time. Panda was Google’s first concerted effort to tackle low-quality sites. After Panda rolled out, Google’s team noticed that there was still quite a bit of spam appearing in their SERPs. Penguin was designed to handle the leftover spammy sites that Panda didn’t catch.

What Google Penguin Impacted

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines explain what your site needs to include for Google to find, index, and rank it. They also outline what you need to avoid to avoid being punished or downranked by updates like Penguin. If Google deems your site to be spammy or manipulative, you’ll feel it in your rankings on their SERPs.

When designing your site, avoid at all costs the following:

Link Schemes

The main goal of Penguin is to identify and penalize sites that use spammy or irrelevant links. Google is very aware of sites that engage in link schemes to boost their rankings. When a site buys links or uses networks designed to boost Google rankings, Penguin will sniff it out.

Over-optimized anchor text

Your anchor text should link to a relevant page on your site. Too much anchor text on your page is a red flag for the algorithm, as is manipulation of anchor text at the expense of the user experience.

How the Penguin Algorithm Works

If you have spammy, annoying, excessive, or deceptive anchor text, Google’s users will be annoyed, so the team created Penguin to prevent this.

It’s normal (and good for your SEO) for you to have links on your site. But if you’ve got over-optimized anchor text or an unnatural amount of links, that’s a problem according to Penguin. More and more, Google can identify good content from links posted simply for the sake of achieving a higher ranking. If you’re manipulating the system to boost rankings, you’ll feel it when Penguin hits you with a penalty, and your rankings drop.

How to Fix Your Website If It Was Impacted By Google Penguin

Because the goal of Penguin, like all other updates to Google’s algorithm, is to showcase high-quality sites, work to improve your affected pages or your site by doing the following:

Conduct a backlink analysis.

Auditing your backlinks is essential to maintaining strong website rankings. Quality, reputable websites linking to you can enhance your credibility. But low-quality or suspicious links can undermine these benefits. Use backlink analysis tools or hire a professional for a thorough review.

Disavow links

If you’ve been penalized on account of links that you can’t control, make good use of Google’s Disavow Links Tool. This tool lets you tell Google to ignore certain inbound links when evaluating your website, which is helpful if low-quality links are hurting your ranking.

Remove troublesome site-wide links.

You also need to evaluate your own site. Are there any links that are spammy or unhelpful to your users? Or do you have too much anchor text?

Build new links

Replace problematic links with new, high-quality ones. Focus on building relevant and useful links. Link to legitimate, authoritative sites. Attract inbound links by creating content that other trustworthy sites want to share with their users.

Create an Excellent Experience

The best advice we can give site builders and web designers is to put in the work to deliver a fantastic user experience. Build links, create quality content, and avoid taking shortcuts that you think will increase your rankings. Google’s webmasters know what they’re doing, and the Penguin update enables Google’s algorithm to find every spammy and irrelevant link. Your SEO strategies can no longer include repetition or cramming hundreds of links onto your site just to increase your rankings. Make the needed changes and, because Penguin works in real time, enjoy better ranks the same day.