Why The Google Penguin Update May Have Slapped Your Website

Why The Google Penguin Update May Have Slapped Your Website:from Business 2 Community by Dana Prince
If you have a small business website and follow the topic of search engine optimization, you know that Google frequently makes changes to the rules that they follow for ranking web pages and sending traffic to sites.
The rules are continually tweaked to meet the changing needs of users and to help Google ensure that it does all it can to retain its place as the top used search engine. By operating with continuous improvement principles, Google is trying to keep customers happy by showing them it can find what they want.

Google Penguin ‘Slap’

The most recent major change to search engine algorithms was nicknamed Google Penguin, which aimed to stop web spam sites from ‘gaming’ the system. A Google ‘slap’ is, in essence, being taken from the top of the search engine results pages to a lower status. Some slaps result in a re-rank from page one to not being found within the first several pages of search results at all.
There are a lot of algorithm updates for Google that you never hear about as they never hit the press because they’re minor tweaks rather than major updates. The predecessor to Google Penguin that last made big news in SEO circles was the Google Panda update, which aimed to eliminate sites with poor quality and lousy user experience from the top of the search engine results pages. Many large content mills and low-quality online magazine-type sites lost traffic after Google Panda and it changed the way many website owners approach SEO.
Major changes to the search engine algorithms can impact how your website appears in search engines.
If you previously had a #1 spot on Google for the term “24 Hour Plumbers, Chicago” and got a good chunk of continuous organic website traffic because of that top spot, a search engine algorithm change like Google Panda or Google Penguin might have resulted in re-ranking that gave someone else your top spot. Conversely, you may have inched up when the re-ranking happened because your competition was using unsavory online marketing practices and you were not.
If your business relies heavily on traffic from a few sources and one of those sources of traffic suddenly disappears, it can be crippling to your business. It’s vital to make sure your efforts to optimize your site don’t do the exact opposite and get your site blacklisted instead.
If you saw a sudden drop in traffic after Google Penguin, which occurred in April of 2012, here’s what may have happened:

• Google determined you were buying links for popularity purposes. If you’ve paid other sites to display links to your site in order to drive traffic, improve your page rank (Google’s index of a site’s popularity, so to speak) and organic search engine rankings, you may have lost out. A site ranked with a page rank of PR3 may have been re-ranked as a PR1, for instance. A PR2 site that didn’t get re-ranked after the update may have taken your place at the top of the search engine results pages instead.
• Google thought your website was over optimized. Having a site that’s too keyword dense, (do you have 24 hour plumber, Chicago on each site 24 times?) that has too many keyword anchors that are identical, or that appears to participate in unsavory linking practices could raise Google’s red flags and result in re-ranking. Google doesn’t want to rank sites as top results for popular search terms when the site has a spam-like look or feel.
• You had too much duplicate content on your site. Duplicate content could result in Google looking closer at each site that has the same content to determine which site is more relevant. Being found with too much duplicate content could call your site’s overall integrity into question.

Stay Out of Google’s Bad Books

Google will continually work to try to refine its policies on a go-forward basis so it’s important that you continually work to optimize your website in what Google deems to be an ethical manner. Be sure to stay up to date on the right approach to search engine optimization and you’ll reduce the chances of sudden drops in traffic. Try not to put all your SEO eggs in one basket, too. A variety of SEO techniques instead of just one campaign is highly recommended.
If you are a small business owner, you can increase your chances of Google SEO success by trying to stay up to date on SEO, but this can be an arduous task to take on in addition to running your business. Many business owners opt to partner with a good SEO company who can help them. If this is the route you choose to take, ensure you take the time to find a good company that only uses acceptable SEO techniques. A combination of varied optimization techniques, good user experience, and high quality content will all contribute to your site helping you attract new customers.