Penguin 4.0: What You Need to Know and What We’ve Learned
Alas, the long awaited Penguin 4.0 update has finally been rolled out! SEO agencies and eCommerce companies have been desperately waiting for this Google algorithm to drop. Mainly, because many sites have suffered and have been penalized from spammy link-building tactics. To give you a refresher, the Penguin algorithm is focused on devaluing websites that use spammy link-building practices. The penalties can be mainly algorithmic or even resulting in a manual penalty, depending on the severity of the issue. The new Penguin update is being praised in the SEO and eCommerce community and we are about to tell you why.
What you need to know:
- Penguin 4.0 is a real-time update to the core algorithm, which means the data will be refreshed in real time. This will allows for changes to be made immediately as soon as Google re-crawls and indexes a web property.
- Google confirms that the Penguin update is more “granular” and will focus on specific pages instead of sitewide. This allows SEO agencies to identify which pages are being penalized, or vice-versa, which pages are excelling. This offers tremendous opportunities to identify campaign strategies that are working and where you need to improve.
- The real-time update will allow for a quick recovery from using a black-hat SEO agency or practicing spammy tactics. It will also allow websites to reap the benefits from using an SEO agency that abides by Google Best Practices.
- The SEO industry will become more transparent, as the bad SEO agencies will be weeded out due to the ease of catching them in real time.
- As far as we know, this will be the last Penguin update. Hooray!
What we’ve learned:
- Our SEO strategies have been on the right track all along. We have seen significant increases in client rankings and traffic since the Penguin 4.0 confirmation on September 23, 2016.
- After Google confirmed the rollout of Penguin 4.0, an Act Bold SEO client received a 23% increase in organic traffic.
- Our SEO team has been providing our clients with numerous techniques, such as on-page optimization, building a keyword-specific content strategy, and acquiring high quality links through our digital PR campaigns.
- We believe the main strategy we can attribute our clients success is our Digital PR campaigns, a strategy that focuses on reaching out and acquiring links on relevant and authoritative blogs and publications. Check out this relevant brand mention for our client Musicnotes.com
- Quality, Quality, Quality! Three words that have never ringed more true in the link-building world. A good link-building strategy focuses on creating unique, informational on-page content and linking to it from a highly reputable source off-site.
- Creating a piece of content like an Infographic or Animagraphic is an excellent form of link bait. Link-bait is a natural way to acquire numerous amounts of high quality links through a shareable piece of viral content.
- Here’s an example of an Animagraphic campaign coupled with Digital PR and Social Push.
- The Animagraphic was distributed to many relevant blogs and publications with a high domain authority, along with distributing the piece of content across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
- It went viral and was shared over 200,000 times! This allowed for thousands of links back to their site in the most natural way possible.
- Check out the Animagraphic hosted here!
Overall, Penguin 4.0 has been a blessing to the SEO and eCommerce community. The real-time update has frightened many spammy SEO agencies that have diluted the industry for far too long. It has also freed many websites from being locked into previous penalties. Lastly, here are some quick takeaways to apply to your current SEO campaigns.
- Focus on quality link-building, and not quantity link-building.
- Concentrate on building your brand through Digital PR and the links will follow!
- Make sure your agency is following best practices and acquiring links in a safe and natural way.
- If you are authoritative and dominate an industry, be sure to share your knowledge and content, as Google will greatly reward you for it J
- Lastly, if you are good at what your offer/provide, you deserve to rank for it!