Google has been clamping down on low quality, irrelevant and malicious websites. It is determined to cleanse its search engine results pages (SERPs) of these websites. Over the past few years we have seen an array of Algorithm changes at Google to help it combat spam.
What are the Panda & Penguin Updates?
Google introduced the Penguin update on the 24th of April 2012 as a follow up to the earlier released Panda Update.
The Panda update simplified
The Panda update was launched in April 2011 to clamp down on low quality sites that were “thin” on content and had duplicate content. In this instance article farms, links farms and low quality blogs were hit.
The Penguin update simplified
The Penguin update was introduced to further cut down on low quality sites, but this time Google targeted websites that were over optimised. This is described by webmasters who used black hat techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content and others.
Have you used a “Cheap” or “Off-Shore SEO Agency”?
If you have in the past used a low cost or off-shore SEO agency then more often than not they would have used black hat SEO tactics that are likely to be penalised by one of the above updates. I have seen this happen very often, and the number of businesses coming to me for help after their site has been penalised is alarming!
Has your site been penalised already?
If your website traffic has suddenly dropped off then you may be the latest victim, get in touch with your SEO agency and ask them to have a look and give you a full report on their findings. If you would like a 3rd party to have a look then get in touch.
A penalty does not always result in a drop in traffic, I have seen sites that have lost ranking positions but maintained a healthy proportion of natural traffic to the site.
If you have any questions or doubts around your current SEO campaign feel free to get in touch.
Kaled Miah
www.SEM-Specialist.co.uk
kaled@sem-specialist.co.uk
