The Penguin algorithm was launched in April 2012 by Google to trace proofs of “web spam” happening on the internet. It was devised to prevent websites taking spamming measures to manipulate their website ranking in search result pages. The Penguin Penalty traces unscrupulous behavior undertaken by sites, both off and on the site, and severely decreases their visibility in result pages.
The Penguin algorithm discovers external links, which is the primary ranking constituent. Sites that show valuable, relevant and authoritative links built up naturally are rewarded. on the other hand, the sites that are found to have developed unnatural links and links to manipulate their web search rankings only are penalized. Penguin update can affect any website. It’s the counterpart of Google’s Panda algorithm.
Recovering From the Penguin Penalty
If Google has penalized your website, it is of paramount importance to rectify the problem as quickly as you can. When the Penguin penalty hits you, Google initially reduces the visibility of your website in SERPs. The penalty then affects your web traffic and ultimately your conversions. This can spell disaster for your business. Because a website or business that can’t be found when needed is as good as useless. Luckily, you can recover from Google penalties. But, it can be a lengthy process, taking up weeks, or even months to show any signs of improvement. Therefore, you should get started to earn the right graces of Google right now.
Penguin Recovery Steps
Penguin punishes low-quality backlinks, excessive links with optimized anchor text, text advertisements passing PageRank, excessive link exchanges and so on. You should start by following these steps.
1. List your back links
Use tools like Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, or Ahrefs for this. Consider comparing reports from multiple tools to cross-reference your information. You can export the reports and combine them into a spreadsheet file which will help you keep track of your links for the future.
2. Do a quality check on the Links
You might have been penalized because of having several manipulative links leading back. You have to distinguish between them to weed out the bad ones. Google is extra cautious while monitoring these links below:
- Links from irrelevant, untrustworthy sites
- Links from non-indexed sites
- Website-wide links
- Links from websites with poor pagerank
- Disproportionate use of anchor text
- Article directories & forums
- Links from blog networks
You can speed the process up by marking the links as ones that need a second look, ones that are fine and the ones that need to be ousted.
3. List the bad links
Prepare a unified spreadsheet of the links you want to remove and the ones you would keep. Doing this will help you keep track of changing link quality. Add necessary information like contact data of the Webmaster, link edits, URLs, etc.
4. Communicate with the webmasters and start to disavow links
Communicate with the webmasters of the links you want to remove and request them to do so. It’s an acceptable action. Move on to use the Google disavow tool after that. This should happen after link removal calls. Finish it up using the Disavow tool.
After a Penguin recovery, make sure you not to be penalized again. Only follow white hat policies and know your links.
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