As usual, the latest search engine algorithm update by Google has caused panic among online marketers and businesses. The previous updates – Panda and Penguin, had resulted in many websites losing their rankings and even being blacklisted. As the name suggests, Penguin 2.0 is the next version of the original Penguin algorithm. Where Penguin checked a website’s homepage, Penguin 2.0 delves much deeper and checks all the webpages or sub-pages of a website.
Essentially, the Penguin algorithm updates sniff out bad SEO and linking practices and helps Google penalize such websites. Google is constantly looking to provide the most informative and relevant search results to users and wants to remove spammy content and websites as much as possible. However, marketers have nothing to worry about if they have always been producing great content so far. In fact, Penguin 2.0 will improve your content marketing strategy. If you ensure that your content marketing strategy is optimized for Penguin 2.0, you are naturally making your content more relevant and interesting to your audience.
What is Penguin 2.0?
Penguin 2.0 is far more efficient at spotting bad SEO and link building practices that its predecessor. The aim of Penguin 2.0 is to make link building as natural as possible and content creation and publishing as natural as possible. If your firm is practicing suspicious link building practices like link spamming, advertorials, irrelevant infographics, etc. then be prepared to take a hit from Penguin 2.0.
With Penguin 2.0, Google is also looking to find authority sources of information in various domains. AuthorRank is now an important signal of quality and if you or your brand is known as a good source of information and readers keep coming back to you, then Google will notice this and positively impact your search rankings.
How does Penguin 2.0 affect your content marketing strategy?
Experts agree that Penguin 2.0 will have a positive impact on content marketing strategies of businesses. If you think your content marketing team is using unsavoury link building practices, then get them to stop at once. Remove all the links that you think are suspicious. Titles and descriptions for your content are of the utmost importance in the post-Penguin 2.0 era. Make sure they are not too long and duplicates.
Your content team does not have to focus so much on keywords anymore and keyword stuffing is a complete no-no. Google wants original and high-value content. Don’t stuff keywords into anchor text either if they do not fit naturally. Are you buying links? Stop this practice immediately and remove all inbound and outbound links gathered the wrong way. If not, your website could stand the risk of being removed from the Google index altogether.
Also, make sure that your website does not look like it’s built only to support ads. A few ads are alright but don’t cover your webpages with ads. Infographics are another thing you should be worried about. They are in huge demand as they are informative yet visually appealing. Don’t include infographics in your website if they irrelevant to your site or the content. Infographics tend to be shared a lot but make sure they match your brand and website when you are sharing popular infographics.
About the author
Grace Beckett is a content strategist, associated with Godot Media. She has several years of experience as a blog writer. Her other interests, besides social media management, internet marketing and search engine optimization, are technology, sports and fashion.