Google regularly improves its processes, among them the algorithms implemented by its search engine. Google updates its algorithms every now and then to resolve loopholes which may lure website owners to use illegal Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tricks and make their sites rank higher than what they actually deserve.
SEO Filters: Penguin And Panda
Two of Google’s biggest updates are named after popular animals, the Panda and the Penguin. The Panda is designed to rank websites with the highest content quality. It favors pages with original content and punishes those with duplicates. The Penguin on the other hand detects and sanctions sites that abuse Search Engine Optimization techniques. It lowers the ranks of sites that stuff keywords, hide texts, and post irrelevant links, among many others.
Penguin is believed to have the ability to detect sites that post invisible content or fake pages with the aim of tricking search engine spiders. Instead of spending their energies on undesirable SEO techniques, site owners are recommended to focus more on making their content more useful and helpful to users.
Penguin-Friendly SEO
Sites that experience decreasing traffic starting in April of 2012 may have been affected by Google’s Penguin. Before it is too late, site owners have to overhaul their optimization scheme as soon as possible.
One sure way to be in Penguin’s favor is to remove all content stuffed keywords. Google offers both free and paid tools that help identify, analyze, and use key words and phrases for the right campaign, and site owners are strongly encouraged to use these tools.
It is important to note that Panda and Penguin do not only take notice of bad SEO in websites and site owners with ill intentions. As mentioned, the algorithmic updates also reward sites that have high-quality content and exemplary website design. To win high rankings, it is crucial then that owners make user experience more pleasurable though improving the site navigation, properly using tags and titles, and making the layout clearer and the content very readable and visible.
