With the recent “Penguin” Google update (summarized well by Search Engine Watch) many websites saw their content and ranking completely changed. This however shouldn’t be a shock for most people, it is because in most cases they didn’t listen to their SEO experts (or their SEO experts were scamming them to start).
The basic story behind the “Penguin Update” is that Google has made a decision to change what they look at (or start enforcing their guidelines) in terms of “unnatural links”. So in concept one would say that if you didn’t have any “unnatural links” your site should remain in the same position. Well this isn’t necessarily true as other sites have changed blah blah blah.
But what do you do if you were effected. Take this as an opportunity to get back to the basics.
- Review your content, and make it attractive.If people like your contentthey will find it, and link to it naturally
- Act like a magazine, and write about all kinds of stuff. Remember you are an expert in your field or business because you know more than everyone else… take time and put your knowledge out there
- Write a Blog and write it often! A simple method to accomplish number 2 is to use a blog. Write stuff down and post at least once a week
- Leverage Social Media. There are a ton of ways to take your site social, and using number 3 is a good start. Ensure you post your entries to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tubmlr, and Pinterest (now the 3rd most popular site in the US)
- Pay it forward. A simple way to get other people to link to you, is to link to them. Take time on their websites, and interact. Like their Facebook page, follow their Twitter, and offer to write content for them. From there you can get people to do the same back
- Use every channel possible (and for free). Almost every one of the web site management programs, e-commerce platforms, etc has free widgets that let you “cross post” your information to other channels. Things like Beetailer let you post a Magento or Shopify store directly to Facebook for free. Why not use this. The more people that see your stuff, on the channel they use, the better. And if it doesn’t cost you anything (money or time) it is a simple, free marketing campaign.
- Remember that there will be a new “quick fix”. SEO
Search Engine Watch's Google Lifecycle
has been plagued by what I call the techie factor. Every techie looks for the quick fix, or way to “hack” the system. Trust me there will be new quick fixes to get you back to the top, but this is likely why your site got hit in the first place!
There you have it. If your SEO guys weren’t telling you this before, look for someone else! If you weren’t doing it before, well you likely got hit by the Penguin, and now have no where to go but up!