Blog

First Pandas, Then Penguins…Could Zebras Be Next?

It used to be when pandas and penguins were mentioned only thoughts of cute, cuddly, lovable creatures came to mine. Of course that was before April 24^th when Google released it’s new update known as the “Penguin” update. Now the only thing that comes to mind when hearing that name is dropped rankings, penalties, and more dropped rankings. Unlike the Panda update, which targets pages that aren’t of great quality, the Penguin goes after spam. Unfortunately, there is a very thin line between what is spam and what is not, which makes it easy to cross that line without meaning too.

Many sites have taken a hit and are looking for ways to recover. Because the Penguin refreshes itself and updates again and again it can give us a chance to build rankings back up… or drop them even more. There isn’t a quick fix so do not believe anyone who says there is, but there are ways to help boost your chances of improvement. Getting rid of links from low quality sites can help but taking those links down can be tricky. Good news is most of those sites have been de-indexed by Google. If you paid for links that is most likely hurting your rankings as well, stopping payments and getting that link off might be a wise thing to do.

Now do not go crazy with chopping down all of your links, because you still need that link juice. Just be wise on which ones get to stay and which ones don’t make the cut. Another option to consider is your articles and blogs. If you are using thin overstuffed content, try and rewrite it to be more rich and captivating for your audience instead of SEO’ing it to the max. All in all, the SEO world can be difficult, especially with the updates Google throws at you. But the great thing about SEO is there is always a way to improve anything.