Penguins have always been a little evil.
Google made them evil-er…
Because they do their share of Evil, don’t they?
SEO’s think so. Webmasters think so.
It comes from being a monopoly.
Google has moved their Penguin search algorithm from scheduled updates to a continuous unscheduled update frequency. They are more confident in its performance combating what they call link spam, and now it’s harder for SEO professionals, as well as other SEO concerned people, to know if an algorithm update triggered a penalty or other SEO related change to their sites’ rankings, since if no one knows when the last update was it’s just harder to quantify. In short, it’s now a moving target for anything concerned with how this Google search algorithm update affects the sites they’re concerned with.
This is but one of the things that bloggers need to know about SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you want your site to be search engine friendly, then you need to make sure that you do the proper SEO to your site. Proper means more than none, but not too much, since over optimization can trigger red flags to the algorithm, and as a result your site can get penalized in the search rankings if Google Penguin thinks it’s “spammy” or that you are using tricks, like buying back links in order to raise your rank in the search results. Since Google weighs relevant back links pretty heavily, people have tried to game the system and buy links, since getting them naturally is not so easy to do. With the rise of the Google created “nofollow” link, not every link to your site is a true back link. Only non nofollow, or the original “dofollow”, links pass “link juice” from a one site to another.
What does all this mean?
It means that for you to get a rise in your website ranking and authority, you need some of the link juice from a well ranked site, or many sites that are relevant to the subject matter of your site, to pass dofollow link juice to your site. Many site masters have resorted to buying links, and Google has called that “link spam”, since they wouldn’t have gotten those links without either buying them or doing something else shady to get them.
This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to rank your site for highly competitive keywords.
Now, some people use more under the radar black hat methods for link juice. For example, some savvy people have set up private blog networks using high domain authority expired domains that they buy, and then they set up real looking dummy blogs that pass massive link juice to their “money sites”.
So it’s an arms race, and Google gets the last laugh if they deem your site a violator by discovering paid links or a blog network that’s not kosher.
Google Penguin was just one of several algorithm updates that has been updated lately. I’ll write more about the others soon enough.
For updates on this just look for what the Google Webspam Team says in their P.R. communications. Every so often a site gets whacked by them, and basically they hold people’s fates in their hands, especially when they rely on the income from these sites. Every so often a big site is made an example of and it send shock waves through the SEO world.
So many people are so concerned with SEO and back linking because if you don’t rank well in search results, you get no traffic.
No traffic, no views.
No views, no leads or conversions.
So what is a poor lowly blog master to do?
Well, there are legal ways to do it but you have to work your butt off and be patient.
You will eventually rank for lots of long tail keywords and even some moderately competitive ones if you fly under Google Penguin’s radar and behave.
Your domain, or the domain you are in, needs to mature and hopefully as long as it stays good in Google Penguin’s eyes you will climb in the ranks and get views.
You can build legitimate back links by some (but not too much) guest blogging and also just getting noticed by others. That’s not always an easy thing in the “make money from home” space since lots of blog people out there are anti business and anti making money so they see everything like that as scammy or spammy and they’ll never give you a link even if they like the way you write or like your article. If you are in a more innocuous niche you stand a better chance.
Just keep blogging your pants off and going after tons of long tail and medium competition keywords in your chosen niche and NEVER GIVE UP!
Blogging and site building is an art and it’s hard work, but if you work hard and long enough you can make your sites rank pretty well for lots of searches and that traffic will come in.
When the traffic comes in, getting leads from a percentage of that traffic is a numbers game.
So don’t piss off Google or do anything massively stupid or it can all come crashing down. If your site gets penalized, you’re toast. there are recover measures, such as undoing what you did to get penalized and asking for a manual review, but that can take time, and who has that much time?
Don’t panic if your rank moves around. Sometimes the algorithm plays games and they call this the “Google Dance”. The sites’ rankings usually bounce back as long as you haven’t hit any new flags that Google Penguin is scanning for.
Do your keyword research, but don’t over optimize.
Don’t optimize every post.
Why?
Once you are comfortable writing for your niche, you will naturally write lots of keywords into your posts as a matter of course, since any niche or topic is rich in certain repeating related thoughts and ideas.
I learned that tidbit from Dave Wood. I read that on his blog and he is right. It just makes sense. I was starting to panic a while ago when one of my blogs was doing the Google dance and I was worried it would never pull in any views, since I was too afraid to buy links and I couldn’t get many quality links for it. I figured, why am I bothering this? It will never work. In that article Dave was like, and I’m paraphrasing, “Chill out” and, “just write and you will rank for all kinds of long tail keywords and all of those ADD UP to LOTS of search viewers who will be pulled into your blog.”
He was right. Last time I checked that blog, the daily views were well over what it used to get in a week or two.
I hope that this article provided some value and peace of mind for those who are trying to learn about blogging and site admin, and SEO. Terms like back linking and the Google Dance leave many scratching their heads, especially newbies.
I like to level the playing field and also show you that I know what I’m talking about here, and also to quell any fears you might have. Don’t listen to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) coming from some quarters, or from your own pessimistic mind.
If you are a hard worker and don’t give up, and don’t succumb to the instant gratification mindset that you have to get rich overnight which will MAKE YOU POOR, then you can make it online.
Check around my blog for more interesting insights, and come back often.
Comment too if you want. I like to connect with good people.
If you want to be on my blogging team, join me. (see below this post, the video from Dave)
We’ll own a piece of the Internet together.
