Penguin update synopsis

[VSC]

My strategy on previous updates is to change nothing for a few weeks and just see what happens after the dust has settled, and then act.

Of the pages that dropped, roughly half have now resumed their pre-penguin position and the other half have stayed dropped.

I have done absolulety nothing since the update.

The ones that resumed their position are all sites that EMDs. Some of these include very thin sites with only a few pages of content.

The pages that haven't resumed their position are pages optimised for keyword phrases that aren't a complete match for the domain - or that the niche is wide and that the page is targeting a phrase that is a higher exact that than the domain name exact.

Just FYI ...

 

[LisaV]

As an SEO copywriter what changes we are making include:

Emboldening your key phrases and not just words, so for a designer kids clothes site instead of just highlighting designer childrens clothes you would highlight buying cheap designer childrens clothes from online outlets.

Focusing on just 2 or 3 keyterms and spreading these out in the piece.

Focus on related keywords as the Penguin does place importance on these.

Other good practices include good anchor link text and now those anchor links should also be on your related keywords. Writing for the reader and not just for the search engines is a must, so knowing your audience is key. And of course using sub-headings.

Most SEO copywriters are already doing all of this and for us, the Penguin does mean that those copywriters who employ black hat methods will be removed quicker, making our clients happier and our jobs a lot easier.

 

[ClassicalGuitar]

Every site hit by this update needs to be evaluated differently, there is no one cap fits all approach.

 

[raymortim]

With my sites that were Penguin'd I was regularly updating with unique content and never really did any backlinking myself so I am thinking the on-page SEO was 'over optimized'

Because of this, when writing or re-writing content I find that I am now writing for the search engine, whereas before it was always for the reader.

It's often not so easy to find suitable synonyms or to reduce keyword usage and it's easy to end up with text that just doesn't sound quite right to a human.

The homepage of a site about Red Widgets, that has a decent amount of text (news, products etc), is natuarally going to feature Red Widgets a fair bit.

 

[chippyb]

I read last night that penguin is not a live update, so you will only find out if changes you make to your site work when the next update comes out,

 

[max99x]

i've just read 'Matt Cutts have said Penguin runs periodically (like Panda).'

 

[vizzo]

i've just read 'Matt Cutts have said Penguin runs periodically (like Panda).'

Interesting.
One of my sites was definitley hit on the 24th and came back a week later. That could be a coincidence or it might be that although it runs periodically it is still possibloe to recover between updates, or that it's abit grey round the edges and there are other algo changes that got associated with penguin or were affected by penguin.

 

[ClassicalGuitar]

This is an interesting post from WPMU.org regarding the Penguin update.

Monday 23rd April saw 8,580 visits from Google. Monday 30th saw 1,527

They are an established news source online since March 2008, with over 10,000 Facebook likes, 15,000+ Twitter followers, over 2000 google +1s and 4,000 RSS subscribers and still got smashed.

 

[rob]

Are those who were advocating 'sponsor a WP theme' offering refunds to their conferences!?

 

[julian]

I could help but notice on your personal site http://www.freelancelinkbuilder.co.uk/ it says:

"I use ethical (white hat) link building methods using hundreds of backlink sources, here are a few of them:"

Isn't that slightly contradictory statement?

blah

 

[SamSites]

Interesting.
One of my sites was definitley hit on the 24th and came back a week later. That could be a coincidence or it might be that although it runs periodically it is still possibloe to recover between updates, or that it's abit grey round the edges and there are other algo changes that got associated with penguin or were affected by penguin.

I've seen this on the majority on my sites too. Heres a example I've got from paint skills & Google Analytics:

 

[vizzo]

Sam - thanks for sharing that.

My own thoughts looking at your graph and if I'm understanding it correctly are that for your site there's something other than Penguin going.

Looks like you were already on the downward trend before the Penguin strike on the 24th/25th. In fact Penguin seems to mark the start of your recovery.

 

[Marcoose]

Link wise, all the link requests from the bog boys are asking for variations on URL anchor text so I think this is probably the way to go if you're looking to rank an EMD. Do as the big boys do!

 

[SamSites]

Sam - thanks for sharing that.

My own thoughts looking at your graph and if I'm understanding it correctly are that for your site there's something other than Penguin going.

Looks like you were already on the downward trend before the Penguin strike on the 24th/25th. In fact Penguin seems to mark the start of your recovery.

I agreed at first. However, reflecting on main post too, it seems google did a number of big changes before 24th - the big day - which affected my site. I can grab a longer distance shot of the visits, as that one obviously only shows a month, but thats because that is the standard for google analytics. Also, I've had these results become the majority result - the "update" causing success after fluctuations before. Has anyone else had like wise?

 

[Ashton]

This is an interesting post from WPMU.org regarding the Penguin update.

Monday 23rd April saw 8,580 visits from Google. Monday 30th saw 1,527

They are an established news source online since March 2008, with over 10,000 Facebook likes, 15,000+ Twitter followers, over 2000 google +1s and 4,000 RSS subscribers and still got smashed.

With backlinks almost entirely composed from wordpress themes and with hardly any variation in anchor text.

The value of these backlinks were killed, as were their rankings.

 

[chippyb]

Seems like there was an update yesterday, followed all the ideas from website in cleaning up etc, so penguin hit first time dropped 8 places, make my site like how google want it they update yesterday site has vanished

Brilliant

 

[Blossom]

I agreed at first. However, reflecting on main post too, it seems google did a number of big changes before 24th - the big day - which affected my site. I can grab a longer distance shot of the visits, as that one obviously only shows a month, but thats because that is the standard for google analytics. Also, I've had these results become the majority result - the "update" causing success after fluctuations before. Has anyone else had like wise?

I agree that there were changes before 24th - one of my sites was going up progressively a few days before from being pretty static for months. Levelled out at Penguin, went up more following (presumably because of people higher up crashing down), and then after a few days started going back down (I think a second update was rolled out a few days after the 25th as a correctional adjustment). Now it's a little lower on the traffic front than previously.

 

[dazc]

Hack posted by rusty brick
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-check-15165.html

It works - try replacing 'keyword -amazon.com' with 'keyword -amazon.co.uk'

 

[chippyb]

Hack posted by rusty brick
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-check-15165.html

It works - try replacing 'keyword -amazon.com' with 'keyword -amazon.co.uk'

very strange work on 2 of my sites, but on one didnt give the orignal rankings but the ranking of the day after the update, still pretty good.

but what does this mean

 

[vizzo]

I don't think it's to do with Amazon at all. It's to do with the - operator.

Maybe if you include the - it's using an old pre-panda database