Google Penguin has hit with many websites taking a hit to their search engine rankings, with some saying more is yet to come, but what does this mean for you and how do you recover from it?

Quite simply put it means more penalties on those who have been performing poor SEO on their websites. This latest update is believed to target those who:

–          Have backlinks from low quality websites – Spammy web directories etc

–          High percentage of backlinks with keyword rich anchor text – lots of links from websites with your keyword as the link back to your website.

This latest update will not give you a manual warning in your Google webmasters account – it’s what’s known as an “algorithm” penalty and so you will see a drop in your position in search results and not receive a notification in your Google webmaster account.

To recover from this you need to first check Google Webmasters to find a list of all inbound links to your website, if you see lots of links from article directories, sponsored reviews and link exchange websites with your keyword repeated over and over then you need to attempt to get these removed.

Contact the site owners to have your link removed or changed and also use the “Disavow” tool that’s available in Google webmasters.

If you are having difficulty with any of this and have been effected by the recent Google updates, drop us a call on 0121 663 0202 to learn how we can help you recover.

Why do these changes keep happening? Remember: Google does NOT make money from organic search listings, only PPC, these changes are forcing a lot of people to abandon organic SEO and focus on PPC, generating more cash for Google!

2020 Update

Google penalties aren’t as harsh in 2020, although they still exist.

It is thought by many SEO marketing companies that rank brain now knows the difference between good and bad links and things such as negative SEO, which used to possible 10 years ago are no longer possible.

Google does still deliver core algorithm updates and the best SEO agencies are usually on the right side of the update.

We have seen certain niche sectors get hit hard over the last 2 years and with each google core algorithm update that is likely to continue.

With your SEO and digital marketing it is always best to stay on the right side of Google and follow their best practices, do not try anything blackhat or short term as Google will penalise you.