It’s been two years since Google last updated Penguin, the big algorithm update that first arrived in 2012. But the latest version was recently released, changing the SEO landscape once aga.
It was announced by Google on Friday 23rd September, and it has been dominating discussion in the SEO community.
Here’s everything you need to know about Penguin 4.0.
Whole Sites Are No Longer Punished
One of the most important benefits of the new Penguin update is that your website will no longer be affected as a whole if you have bad links pointing to one page.
Instead, only the page in question will be affected.
Google is taking a granular approach with this update, so if you make a mistake on one of your pages, you can learn from this without your whole site’s ranking being affected.
Penguin Is Now Real-Time
Previously, Penguin was not updated in real-time, but this has now changed – and it’s a good thing for SEOs.
Before this update, if you were hit by Penguin for spam links pointing to your site and you then made the necessary improvements, your ranking would not have recovered immediately. You would have been forced to wait around until the next update for that to happen.
Now, you should see improvements much sooner. Because Penguin is real-time, your pages should recover as soon as the offending page is re-indexed.
This is great because you no longer have to wait around, and you can fix your mistakes much sooner without receiving a big hit to your traffic.
The potential downside is that if you do make a mistake, you could be hit for it sooner.
Penguin Is Now Part of the Core Algorithm
This is another major change with this update. Google has announced that Penguin is no longer separate and that it now makes up part of the overall Hummingbird algorithm.
From now on, it is just another signal, along with all the other signals. And for this reason, we will no longer hear about updates made to Penguin.
Should You Do Anything?
There is no need to do anything just because Penguin has been updated. As long as you have been doing everything right so far, you should be fine.
However, if you do notice any changes to the ranking of your pages, it could mean that your site has been affected. It may be that links you built months or years ago are no longer seen as high-quality links.
If so, you should use this opportunity to carry out a full link audit, and we can help you with this. This will go over your entire link portfolio to spot any problem areas and rectify any issues you are facing.
But in the long term, the only thing you need to worry about is sticking to the rules, creating and promoting more great content, and building links from authority sources.
As a specialist digital marketing agency consisting of a number of highly experienced digital consultants, Web Results Direct is expertly placed to support its clients with advanced, and strategic, digital marketing consulting services. To learn more contact us – call us now on 01483 429222
