Tricks and Tips to Recover from the Google Penguin Effect

On 24th April, 2012 Google released a new algorithm update whose code name is Google Penguin for decreasing ranking of those websites in Google search results that breaks guidelines of Google by participating in link schemes, using black-hat SEO techniques and others. If you are owner of a website and after 24th April of this year, there is a decrease in traffic in your website then you are a victim of this new Google Penguin algorithm.

After its release in April, Penguin has received only a single update till date. The details are given below:
After its original release in April, the first update of Penguin was pushed in may 2012. This is a data refresh of penguin algo. This update affected only 0.1% of  English search queriesOn 24th April, 2012 Google released a new algorithm known as Google Penguin for decreasing ranking of those websites in Google search results that breaks guidelines of Google by participating in link schemes, using black-hat SEO techniques and othersWithin the time from 1995 to 2011, there is a huge increment of registered domains from 15,000 to 350,000,000. So Google released a new algorithm in April, 2012 named as “Google Penguin” for giving lower ranking of those sites that breaks guidelines of Google by participating in link schemes, using black-hat SEO techniques and others. Mainly Google designed this algorithm for the following reasons: To detect hidden Links and Texts.To penalize websites that are using Black-hat SEO techniques and duplicate contents.To detect Cloaking and Keyword stuffingDo not implement Black-hat SEO techniques like cloaking, keyword stuffing and others.Present the same and actual content to search engines that is actually present in your websites. Design pages for your users.Don’t load pages with keywords that are not relevant. To learn more about importance of keywords click here.The pages should not have malicious behavior like viruses, phishing, and others malware.Don’t use products that send programmatic or automatic queries to GoogleDon’t use duplicate content. Use only quality and unique contentCheck the performance of your site and also optimize load times. To check the performance of sites, webmasters can use “Page Speed”, “YSlow”, etc.; as fast sites will improve satisfaction of the usersSocial bookmarking in Google+ and Facebook works great.Collect back links from wiki sites, news sites and quality forums.Your page should contain reasonable number of content links. Make sure that there are no broken links in your pageIf you want to know what links have caused the penguin effect on your site – here is the best resource in identifying the link penalties and also on how to remove spammy links that are pointing to your site.Have you received any warnings in your Google webmaster tools (message – inbox) regarding the unnatural links ? and if your answer is yes, then you need to see this article on how to survive the over-optimization and Google spam link warnings.Also if you are interested, here is a case study about a website named (WPMU.org) on how it recovered from the Google penguin effect. In this article the author clearly mentioned some tips and tricks how he removed huge number of links that are considered as spam by Google.Here are 2 videos about the Google penguin update where a person can learn from a basic point to an advanced level – video 1 and video 2.
Also I want to mention that identifying links that are bad for your site may be an easy task but if they are so many in number and then the situation becomes so difficult. Situation at present is that there is an increase in number of new companies that are working for removing links. I think we usually see companies working for building links and now situation is changed with new demands. The only solution for the people who cannot afford the companies to clean your huge bad/ low quality links is – DISAVOW LINKS TOOL (which is not yet released) from the Google webmaster tools. Let’s all wish that it will come soon !
I hope that after reading this, you can be able to tackle your website problems and can recover from Penguin effect. But if you think that you followed all the above steps and Google accidentally penalized your site, then you can submit a reconsideration request for Google. To submit your site, click  here. If you want to know more about Google guidelines, then click here.
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