Penguin 4.0 Thoughts

As you are most probably aware by wow, Google has rolled out its latest Penguin penalty update which according to reports will be the last one that is announced. It has been over two years since the time the Penguin appeared last in 2014.

During early September 2016, many people in the SEO industry noticed some turbulence with their own or client rankings and although nothing was announced officially at the time, many predicted that an update was about to come and disrupt the industry.

So what does this mean and what does the future hold for SEO enthusiasts the world over?

This update is targeting low quality link building tactics that black hat marketers may use to move their sites further up the search results. This in Google’s view gives a false impression of the top ten results as lower quality websites are outranking pages of true value that would benefit the searcher with real information that they are looking for to solve their query.

Google has stated themselves that backlinks are one of the 200 ranking factors so they are still of importance but it is the quality of the links and not the quantity so the sites with spam type backlink profiles will suffer.

This new algorithm change is made in real time, so results can now change for better or worse in a blink of an eye. This is a rolling update that will continue throughout with no more announcements and people nervously waiting for the next big hit.

This update also has partial penalties where one page of site could be de-indexed instead of the whole thing. This has not happened before and is more technologically advanced. It must be noted that you can still get a Google Panda style penalty for thin or poor quality content on your pages but unlike Penguin 4.0 it not a real time update.

In conclusion, I personally feel that it is easier to track your SEO efforts due to Googles real time nature. If you perform a task and you’re your rankings drop, you will be able to track back and have it corrected. There will also be no more waiting or guessing of what may be up Googles sleeves in the coming months and years.

If you concentrate on producing good content which encourages quality sites to naturally link to you and be active on many authority Social Media channels, then you are going in the right direction.

Avoid buying cheap SEO services that don’t work and will only harm your business and avoid all dodgy spam techniques and concentrate on the Google compliant safe methods above things will work out fine.

You can read more of our thought and articles at the ClickDo blog.

Author Profile

Stuart Anthony: I am an SEO Consultant at ClickDo Ltd's Canary Wharf office in the heart of London. Specialising in the latest on and off page Search Engine Optimisation techniques, I help our clients increase there rankings to improve traffic and profit.