Ranking high in Google’s search results should be one of the goals of your SEO strategy. Google handles most of the world’s searches, largely because people keep finding what they want there.
Google keeps poor sites out of the top spots partly through algorithm updates like Penguin, the subject of this article. Penguin looks at a site’s links and filters out sites whose link profiles Google’s crawlers judge to be manipulative. Below, we cover what triggers Penguin, how it assesses a site, and how to build your site so it doesn’t get pulled down in the rankings.
Initial Launch Date: April 24, 2012
How often is Penguin updated? Penguin launched in 2012 and ran as a series of periodic updates until September 2016, when Google made it part of its core algorithm. Since then there have been no separate Penguin updates; it runs in real time. Panda (2011) was Google’s first big push against low-quality sites, but plenty of spam still reached the SERPs afterward. Much of it ranked on manipulated links, which Panda didn’t look at. Penguin was built to catch those sites.
What Google Penguin targeted
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (now called Google Search Essentials) explain what your site needs for Google to find, index and rank it. They also list the practices that get sites penalized or downranked by updates like Penguin. If Google decides your site is spammy or manipulative, you’ll see it in your rankings on its SERPs.
When you build your site, stay well away from these two practices:
Link schemes
Penguin’s main job is to find sites that use spammy or irrelevant links. Google knows that some sites join link schemes to climb the rankings, and it treats those links as spam. Buying links, trading them in bulk, or joining networks set up to game Google’s rankings is exactly what Penguin picks up.
Over-optimized anchor text
Anchor text should describe the page it links to, and that page should be relevant. A link profile full of exact-match keyword anchors is a red flag for the algorithm, as is anchor text written for rankings at the expense of readers.
How the Penguin algorithm works
Spammy, excessive or deceptive anchor text annoys searchers when it leads them to poor pages, and Google built Penguin to stop that.
Links are normal, and good for your SEO. Penguin’s problem is with over-optimized anchor text and an unnatural number or pattern of links. Google has become much better at telling links earned by good content from links placed only to lift rankings. Since the 2016 update, Penguin usually discounts spammy links instead of demoting the whole site. Even so, if your rankings rest on manipulated links, they will drop once those links stop counting.
How to fix your website if Google Penguin hit it
Penguin, like every other change to Google’s algorithm, exists to reward high-quality sites. To repair the affected pages or your whole site, work through these steps in order:
Run a backlink analysis
Audit your backlinks on a regular schedule. Links from reputable sites in your field help your credibility with Google, while low-quality or suspicious links can cancel that out. Use a backlink analysis tool, or hire a professional to review your link profile for you.
Disavow links
If links you can’t control are hurting your rankings, use Google’s Disavow Links tool. It lets you tell Google to ignore specific inbound links when it evaluates your site. Google advises using it sparingly: only for a large number of spammy or paid links you couldn’t get removed.
Remove troublesome site-wide links
Next, check your own site, starting with footer and sidebar links that repeat on every page. Do any of them point to spammy pages? Is your anchor text stuffed with keywords?
Build new links
Replace the bad links with good ones. Link out to legitimate, authoritative sites when it helps the reader. To earn inbound links, publish content that trustworthy sites in your field want to share with their own audiences.
Build the site for your users
The best advice we can give site owners and web designers is to put the work into a good user experience. Earn links, publish solid content, and skip the shortcuts that promise quick ranking gains. Google’s spam systems are good at spotting manipulative and irrelevant links, and Penguin is part of how they do it. Repeating keywords in anchor text or cramming hundreds of links onto a page no longer works as an SEO strategy. Make the changes, and since Penguin runs in real time, your rankings can recover as Google recrawls the affected pages. On a big site, that can still take weeks.