Recent news on Penquin 2.0 shows that most of the sites that were affected were porn and gaming sites. A few big brand sites were hit as well, which further proves that no one is immune; sites like salvationarmy.org, dish.com, and REEDs jewelers.
The official release date was yesterday afternoon, according to Matt Cutts. This is the fourth Penguin related launch they have done. Some important factors about this release that were addressed by Matt in the recent video discussing Penguin 2.0 are:
- Create sites that are built for users
- Stay away from SPAM
- Stay away from advertorials that violate quality guidelines. Paid for ads should not pass page rank.
- High quality content
- Build your authority to gain better ranking
- Watch your backlink profiles closely for clusters or unnatural linking signals
- Know who you are linking to and know who is linking back to you.
- STAY AWAY from PORN – it will blind you…WELL maybe not, but definitely don’t link to them or let them link to you. You don’t want a strip club next door to your house, so don’t let your website live in that neighborhood either.
As Google is getting smarter and more sophisticated with their link analysis, we are going to see more sites that have been using questionable link tactics get hit. The best rule of thumb is to provide high quality content on your site that is relevant and useful to your readers.
Providing high quality content is not enough to rank in the top positions, but it does help. As SEO professionals we watch many factors when working with the sites of our clients:
- Site Speed
- Crawlability
- Title Tags and Meta descriptions
- Keyword density
- Link profiles – inbound and outbound
- User generated spam
- Image tags
- Over optimization
- Hacking
- Errors that can affect the sites
These are just a few of the many things involved in maintaining a site and keeping it clean. For more information on what these terms mean, read The Myth of Content Marketing by Search Engine Journal.
If you have a site that has been affected by Penguin 2.0 or you are worried about your site, contact us for a free evaluation today!