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Have you ever heard of the Google Slap? Often times after a new update, Google “Slaps”, or penalizes, sites that Google feels are not ethically representing themselves. The reasons you could get Google slapped include:

  • Duplicate content
  • Unnatural backlinking – meaning that you either paid for backlinks or they appear to be spammy
  • Not enough relevant content on page
  • Keyword stuffing – If you have your keyword term 50 times in a 400 word article, Google knows that people aren’t going to like reading that.
  • Unnatural blog growth – if you add a lot of content fast and then ignore it, Google may not like that
  • Unnatural social media attention – Same thing it true here. If you get a ton of likes, tweets, +1′s and then nothing, Google is gonna see that you are manipulating this and may penalize you for it.

Basically, try to avoid any action that may look unnatural in Google’s eyes. Previous updates have changed they way we do SEO and rightfully so. You can no longer copy some content, spam your keyword 1,000 times, and create a ton of spammy backlinks and expect to rank high in Google. Heck, you may not even rank in Google if you try that.

As you may know, previous Google updates, the Panda update being the most popular, have put an end to duplicate content and keyword stuffing to name a few, in an effort to weed out the high quality, relevant content from the crap.

So, Now We Have The Penguin Update

The most recent Google update, known as the Penguin update has caused some web site owners to cry…

Well, when you are ranked one the first page of Google after a lot of hard work, and suddenly you are nowhere to be found, I might cry too. The problem with these updates is that, while Google is trying to rid search results of poor content, there are honest, hard working web site and blog owners out there who are hit as well.

My advice, don’t cry… If you fall, get back up and get your site ranked again!

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How Did This Update Affect Your Site?

There has been some intensive research done to figure out what Google was trying to do with this update. The results were very clear…

The first thing we noticed:

Every site that got slapped by the penguin update had their target keyword within the anchor text in more than 60% of their incoming backlinks.

This did not mean that if over 60% of backlinks contained your target keyword, that you would be penalized, but if  50% or less of your backlinks contained your target keyword, you are almost guaranteed that you were not affected by the Penguin update.

So, it would seem that this update is an attempt by Google to prevent over optimization of backlinks. But, this is only oart of what was discovered about the Penguin update…

 

 Here’s What The Penguin Update Is Really About

Further testing was done by taking the top links from sites from the initial study and see where those links came from. We were looking at if the links cam from sites that are in the same, similar, or related niches.

Findings:

  • Close to 50% of the sites that were slapped by Google had no incoming links from sites in the same or similar niches.
  • The sites that were penalized generally had very few backlinks coming from sites with content related to their niche.

The numbers indicate that it’s OK, and probably beneficial to have links coming from non-relevant sites, however it’s important to supplement those links with backlinks coming from sites relevant to the content on your site.

 

Conclusion: What Is Google Trying To Do?

It is pretty obvious that Google is attempting to prevent over optimization of anchor text in backlinks as well as giving higher value to those links coming from sites relevant to the destination site.

These two facts individually provide us with a simple answer as to what we should be doing.

However…. If you put these two pieces of information together, you will see an entirely new and valuable piece of information come out of the woodwork.

Google is attempting to replace or devalue “anchor text” use with “niche/content relevancy of linking sites” as a primary link relevancy, (or “quality”) signal.

It has been proven over the years that anchor text is fiarly simple to manipulate. Generally, getting backlinks from sites relevant to your niche makes it more difficult to manipulate the anchor text of such links. This reality of the ease of backlink manipulation more than likely prompted Google to create the Penguin update.

Improved technology has made it easier to determine where backlinks are coming from, thus making anchor text less powerful than it used to be.

 

5 Steps To Ranking Your Site After The Google Penguin Update

1) Create Mini sites – The idea of using mini or micro sites has been around for years and has been a proven method to create highly relevant backlinks to your site. They have worked for years and still work well today. The idea is to create sites that are tightly targeted around a specific topic or “micro niche” relevant to your sites niche. Make sure the site is full of high quality, unique content and reference to your main site as the source of information. These sites can be created for free using Blogger, Squidoo, Hub Pages, etc. and don’t take a lot of time or effort to create. By creating high quality content that Google loves, you will be sending positive signals to your main site as well.

 

2) Anchor Text Diversity - When building backlinks yourself, you have teo choices of anchor text to use… Anchor text for a keyword you want to rank for OR anchor text for a keyword that you are not trying to rank for, but appears naturally. You should be consciously aware that you need both, but subconsciously, you will tend to choose the first option. After all, you want to get the most out of your time and/or money spent backlinking, right?

I can tell you right now that if you over do it on keyword anchor text and lack on non keyword anchor text, your link building efforts will not be as effective. Make sure that over half of your backlinks are contain anchor text that is not a keyword you are trying to rank for.

What anchor text should you be using?

From the data we’ve evaluated, “MyDomainName.com”,  “http://MyDomainName.com”, “http://www.MyDomainName.com”, “MyDomainName”, “My Website Title”, “here”, and “the title of one of my H tag (not a keyword I am trying to rank for)”, were used as anchors on many sites that were not affected by the Google Penguin update and are a good starting point moving forward.

 

3) High Quality Blog Networks – Be careful which blog networks you belong to because low quality blog networks have been heavily penalized and everyone associated with them has been Google Slapped.

Networks with small amounts of content, poorly placed content, and poorly placed anchor text within the article body is no longer enough.

However, a niche blog network that is completely internalized (Like Blog Engage) is still a very effective and they are much more selective to ensure quality content and avoid footprints.

 

4) Play By Google’s Rules – Use legitimate, whitehat backlinks! The above suggestions are ways to help you create a natural looking backlinking system. Which means that your will look completely whitehat even if you do take some shortcuts along the way. Most importantly, here are some easy to implement whatehat strategies:

  • Write guest posts
  • Create Press Releases
  • Comment on relevant blog posts
  • Create Mini sites

 

5) Run Your Site(s) Like You Would a Real Business – The data in this study revealed that sites portraying themselves as a business did much better than those sites who appeared to be just looking for a way to leverage traffic from Google to monetize their site.

Which says a lot… But the main thing to take away from this is to look at other traffic sources other than Google. This will make it easier to endure through future Google updates as well as help your Google rankings because Google likes to see traffic coming to your site from other sources.

 

To see the original data and report, Click Here

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About Jeremy Ruggles

I am a full time internet marketer and blogger. I always post new things I learn and am willing to help anyone get started making money online in any way I possibly can. I am from the Northwest U.S.A. and have a wife and three kids... so I can relate to the many challenges that come along with trying to find time and get away from distractions to focus on your business...

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