How the Google Penguin 2.0 Update Effects Your Search Engine Marketing

The Google Penguin 2.0 search engine algorithm update was released on May 22nd, 2013 and it immediately had a major effect on around 2.3 percent of English-language Web searches carried out.

While 2.3 percent of searches might not sound like a lot, this does account for well over 100 million searches every day. Some fifty percent of search engine marketers were hit by the algorithm update and, if you are one of them, it is time to change your marketing strategy if you haven't already.

Authority

The main purpose of most of Google's algorithm updates is to weed out low quality websites from the search results. This includes websites which are written by those who are clearly not an authority on their niche and are simply running it in the hopes of making easy money.

Google is working to provide search results containing quality material written by people who know their niche. Those who outsource their content creation should be particularly careful when it comes to ensuring that only quality, completely original work ends up on their websites.

The most effective way to appear an authority on your niche as far as Google is concerned is to build up your author ranking. This is part of the relatively new Google Authorship feature which allows you to link all of your online content together under the same author on your Google Plus profile. Search engine results featuring links to your content will be accompanied by your profile picture and author name.

Anchor Text

Google Penguin 2 makes it more important than ever to diversify your anchor text. Anchor text consists of single words or phrases turned into hyperlinks leading to another location on your website or elsewhere on the Web. Anchor text has long been an important part of SEO but Google's latest update heavily penalizes keyword-rich anchor text. It is now generally advisable to avoid anchor text containing exact match keywords as this makes content look over-optimized both to Google and to your readers.

Fortunately, it is relatively easy to overcome this problem simply by going through your content and modifying your anchor text by choosing from a wider range of key words and phrases. Above all, ensure that it looks and sounds natural. Note that these changes do not affect your entire website – they only affect individual pages.

Link Building

Link building has long been considered a core element of search engine optimization but long gone are the times when quantity took precedence over quality. While Google has never tolerated aggressive link building and, even less so, link buying, as a way to artificially increase the rank of a website, it has become better and better at weeding out sites which fall into these categories. One of the main focusses of Penguin 2.0 is to continue cleaning up the Internet of such websites.

In spite of the changes, links are still important. The emphasis now, however, is on where the links are. Just like your own website, any other website containing your links also needs to be an authority on its niche and relevant to your own. Avoid building links by using outdated and ineffective marketing methods such as article submissions or press release mills containing no actual news.

Other Notes

Aside from the three major changes mentioned above, search engine marketers should not forget past Google Penguin and Panda updates. Google's aim to provide a better quality service hasn't changed and past SEO considerations are only going to continue to become ever more important.