Less Spam, More Penguin: Google Penguin Update

If you haven’t had the chance, here’s some basic coverage on the recent Penguin update from Google.

Penguin is generally good news for quality-driven writers and communicators who value well crafted original content. It’s potentially great news for readers, who deserve a fair game and hate being suckered into absurd link trails and deceptive search results.

For many marketing and SEO folk, however, a lot of anxiety has arisen, and Penguin potentially means a lot of work reconsidering how to play the Google game and time spent rearranging their sites to regain lost rankings.

Google’s stated focus is to weed out more spam, and eliminate sites the stuff keywords into their pages in hopes of higher Google rankings. Do no harm.

“In the pursuit of higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don’t benefit users, where the intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be ranked. We see all sorts of webspam techniques every day, from keyword stuffing to link schemes that attempt to propel sites higher in rankings.”

What Penguin looks to reward is the “White Hat” goods, that all of us honest folks strive towards writing and reading.

“‘White hat’ search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines. Good search engine optimization can also mean good marketing: thinking about creative ways to make a site more compelling, which can help with search engines as well as social media. The net result of making a great site is often greater awareness of that site on the web, which can translate into more people linking to or visiting a site.”

 

Here’s the full report from Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts.

Here’s a few reviews from around the neighborhood, not everyone is a fan:

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