On Monday, Google’s webspam administer, Matt Cutts, published a video on his blog titled “What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?”, which focuses heavily on Google’s upcoming search engine algorithm update, Penguin 2.0. Since then, my Alltop newsfeed has been flooded with mindless speculation and theory as to what those in the SEO (search engine optimization) world should expect from Penguin 2.0, and quite frankly I’m sick of reading about it.
With that being said, this isn’t going to be another one of those cookie-cutter articles about what you need to do in order to prepare for the webspam-fighting Penguin 2.0 update, but rather three reasons why Penguin 2.0 shouldn’t matter to you, or your current SEO processes.
You’ve been producing engaging, sharable content
At least I hope you’ve been doing this. Some of the most highly-respected SEO gurus, like Rank Fishkin and Neil Patel, will tell you over and over again that content is king, and they’re right. If you’ve been creating high-quality, intriguing content for your brand on a daily basis, and have been sharing it throughout your social media channels, then you’re setting yourself up for long-term success. Keep it up!
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factor
Link building hasn’t been your main focus
If all you’re thinking about is how you’re going to acquire that next backlink, then you’re in trouble. Yes, backlinks are still important for SEO, but you should let them come naturally. If you’re creating captivating content that people are sharing throughout the web, link building will take care of itself. Plus, old link building tactics that used to be effective, like web directory submissions, blog commenting, social bookmarking, buying links, article spinning, and link exchanging, are simply not worth the squeeze anymore, and will most likely do more harm than good.
Your inbound link profile is Penguin-friendly (most important)
Have you conducted an inbound link analysis lately? If not, I highly recommend you do. It’s crucial that you research and analyze the links pointing to your website, especially before penguin 2.0 rolls out. If you have low-quality links pointing to your site, now’s the time to take action on them, and perhaps contact webmasters and site owners to see if they’d be willing to remove the link to your website. If you can’t distinguish a low-quality link from a high-quality link, then I suggest you read this article.
Besides the quality of your backlinks, it’s important to understand the anchor text distribution of your backlinks. Are more than half of your backlinks using commercial, or keyword-rich, anchor text? If so, I would start using branded anchor text to balance things out. It’s unnatural for most of a website’s backlinks to be keyword-rich. Google Penguin targets unnatural, spammy link activity, so I would be cautious in this area.
That’s all I’ve got for today! Happy optimizing!
