How to Recover from the Google Penguin Update

Peter Roesler, President - Web Marketing Pros

By Peter Roesler

President, Web Marketing Pros

Are you freaking out? Did your website recently lose Google rankings and traffic? Well chances are your website got effected by the new Google Penguin update that was released on April 24 2012. This update was released to target link spammers, search spammers and poor quality content, but still many websites were hit for no reason at all. A few news blogs that I really like got hit, even Google makes a mistake here and there, but keep in mind their ultimate goal is to provide the best search results possible.

Don’t worry it’s not the end of the world.  Take a deep breathe, relax and keep reading this article to learn how to recover from the Google Penguin update.

Webspam or search spam was targeted.

Many of the sites didn’t follow Google’s Guidelines.

  1. Keyword stuffed their websites, links, content, meta tags
  2. Participated in link schemes or link wheels
  3. Had a large amount of low quality websites linking to them
  4. Purposefully duplicated content to boost their rankings
  5. Cloaked sites, redirected in a sneaky way or had some doorway pages for search

Tips on how to recover from the Penguin Update

Keep in mind Matt Cutts himself encourages SEO.  So SEO isn’t bad.  It’s the shortcuts that are targeted and the shortcuts that are bad.  High quality fresh content with quality backlinks that provide valuable resourceful information is the key.

  1. If you feel you were unjustly de-ranked you can click here to submit to Google for reconsideration.
  2. Submit a newsworthy press release, get it written professional, yes it is expensive, but you will get great press and tons of quality backlinks.
  3. Get quality backlinks, I am going to say this again QUALITY.  You can check your backlinks here don’t buy the full version, save your money. Don’t buy them.  Get creative.  Do something newsworthy, write a funny article, share a funny picture, go viral, have fun, market creatively.  That’s the best way to build links by not actually building links.
  4. Blog your ass off.  Or hire a professional blogger to write great original content for your website and your blog.  Share these posts via Social Media websites, it’s not too hard to setup a social media dashboard and funnel your blog content to multiple networks.
  5. Fix all onsite issues with your website, does it validate?  You can check here.  Is it easy to use?  Does it load quickly, you can check here.  Is it easy to navigate?  Are there any dead spots for the user?
  6. Stop taking shortcuts and be patient.  Good SEO takes time.  Good SEO doesn’t tank when updates are released.  Be patient and work hard and you will be rewarded.

Keep in mind many websites were wrongly de-ranked, after all it’s a computer program that was responsible if you feel you were unjustly de-ranked you can click here to submit to Google for reconsideration.


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