Penguins may seem all cute and cuddly but, when they’re owned by Google and they’re looking for low quality paid links to your website, they can be vicious, powerful little blighters ready to take your site down in a flurry of screams and feathers.
Penguin is the adorable name Google gave to one of its big updates over the last 12 months. Penguin’s job is to crack down on the low quality paid links some websites and SEO companies have relied upon to gain better rankings.
Google is always keen to clean up its rankings of sites that don’t deserve to be there by identifying sites which have used paid links instead of building up quality, useful content and attracted natural links. This update affected approximately of 3.1% of search queries in the English language, and a further refresh of the update recently affected an additional 0.3% of queries.
The long and the short of it is many websites lost rankings, suddenly and dramatically, causing detriment to their business.
To recover from a Penguin attack you must first identify the low quality links to your website. If you used an SEO company in the past they may know which links are responsible – they may even have built them. You must then get those links removed. Finally, through Google Webmaster Tools, contact Google and tell them what happened and what links were removed. Only then might your rankings recover from the Penguin attack.
Oh yes, and don’t use an SEO company which relies on low quality links!
Have you, or someone you know, been savaged by a Penguin?