What Does the Google Update Penguin 4.0 Mean For You?

SEO isn’t a static practice, it’s fluid and always evolving. Anybody that’s worked in the industry can attest to that.

There was a time when everyone was bolding, underlining, and italicizing keywords to help boost their rankings.  Now you’ll rarely see stylized text outside of headlines and section breaks.

These old SEO practices didn’t fall out of favor because of a random decision. Changes in SEO occur when there’s a Google update, and the latest one could mean major changes are in store for your site.

A bit of background

Before we dive into Penguin, there are a few things you need to understand about Google updates and Penguin itself.

Google is constantly making updates to their algorithm to make sure that they’re giving people the most relevant content possible.

Sometimes updates won’t affect your website and you won’t see any changes. Other times, the updates can be drastic and could negatively affect your rankings.

It’s also important to know that Google doesn’t have one single algorithm. There are a variety of algorithms that do different things, and they all work together to properly rank and sort sites.

The same algorithm can be refined and changed over time. In fact, this isn’t even the first update to specifically effect Penguin.

Now that you have some background on the nature of Google updates, let’s talk a bit about Penguin.

Penguin’s main function is to monitor links.

Link building is vital to SEO and rankings. A website that’s referenced a lot on different sites can make the company or person that owns it look like an authority on a subject.

People caught on to the importance of link building very quickly, and some would load their site with as many links as possible.

But to Google, any link won’t do. The link should be relevant to the linked text and shouldn’t be spam. When Google would detect a suspicious amount of low quality or irrelevant links, their rankings (in simple terms, their visibility on Google) would decrease.

The Google Update Problem

In the past, Google had a simple way to remedy ranking issues.

After an update would occur and a site would be penalized, someone could make a request for Google bots to crawl and re-analyze the site after appropriate changes were made.  After the site was checked it wouldn’t take too long for the site to climb up in rankings.

That wasn’t the case with the first introduction of Penguin.

Getting Penguin penalties forgiven would take a long time.  Site owners would have to wait for the next update to have their site crawled.  Depending on timing, they could be waiting for months to see a change.

A new and improved Penguin

SEO specialists and site owners were concerned about what the problems Penguin 4.0 would bring. Luckily for them, this update actually benefited the average website.

The wait time for a site re-crawl and re-index has been dramatically lowered in the latest Google update. Now data can be analyzed in real time.

The drastically decreased wait time is only one great part of the update. The other deals with the links themselves.

In the past, sites that had bad links would receive a heavy penalty. Now the penalty will affect the actual site that contains the link and not the site that it is linking to.

Penguin 4.0 penalties and changes have also been described as “granular”. If you do end up getting hit with a penalty, it won’t affect the overall domain, just the pages that had the bad links.

Penguin 4.0 should be a boon for any site owner or SEO specialist. No more long and troublesome wait times in case you’re hit with a penalty. No more crippling penalties for having a few bad links.

Do I need to be worried about the latest Google update?

In short, the answer to that question is no.  Most small business owners won’t notice any changes from Penguin 4.0.

People that have been using questionable link building techniques should be worried, but not as worried as they may have been in the past.

Google’s latest “forgive and forget” attitude for linking penalties should make it very easy to fix your mistakes. If you want to start building your links the right way, follow these tips:

Stop paying for links

There’s no way to get around this. If you don’t want to get hit by Google Penguin or a future Google update, you simply can’t pay for links.

It isn’t uncommon for some people to go to a micro job site and pay someone a few dollars to link build for them. It may seem like a great deal, but it will hurt you in the long run.

Having a lot of links on the web isn’t enough anymore, they need to be high quality.

Create great content

The easiest way to naturally build links is to create great content that other people want to link to.

Write content that entertains, educates, and entices your readers. Establish yourself as an authority in your industry and promote what you write.

Every time you have a new blog post or update content on your site, post about it on your company’s social media accounts so people can see.

Contribute to a discussion

Building links in a natural way can be easy when it’s brought up in “conversation”.

Are you a part of an online forum that’s geared toward your profession? Drop in a few relevant links to your website in discussions.

If you’re part of a Facebook group that’s relevant to your business, feel free to make a comment with a link to your site.

Above all, it’s important to remember to…

Never force it

Whenever you link to a web page it has to make sense.  Make it organic and don’t put in links for the sake of having them there.

If you stick to that rule, you’ll won’t have a problem with Penguin or any other Google update related to linking.

Your turn

A Google update used to be a cause for alarm, but the latest one could actually benefit your website.

Have you ever had to deal with a Google penalty?  What did you have to do to fix it?

Feel free to drop us a call or email so we can talk about the best digital marketing practices for your business.