Google’s Penguin Update
Announced April 24th 2012
Target:
Google’s Penguin Update was an update that targeted and penalized websites with extensive unnatural link building. This primarily included unnatural anchor texts and also links that were placed on website not relevant to their niche market.
Prevention:
- Make sure backlinks come from relevant websites.
- Diversify Backlinks, have them come from more than one source and vary the type of backlink.
- Have links placed within an article/content specific to the keywords you are wanting to rank for.
- Balance between “follow” and “no-follow” links.
- Use naturally branded anchor texts (Ex: Click Here, Learn More)
Recovery:
If you are hit with a penguin penalty, take the following steps to recover your website’s rankings:
- Audit Links: Do a complete audit of your links to figure out where the negative links are coming from. Ahrefs Link Auditor is our favorite link auditor.
- Remove: Remove whatever negative links are pointing at your website, if possible.
- Disavow: In your Webmaster Tools, “disavow” those bad links that are directing to your site.