Have you noticed a sharp drop in your website rank within search engine results?
If this has happened before the end of May 2013, and you have been left scratching your head wondering why the sudden drop in position within the search results, it’s quite likely you’ve received a Penguin penalty for 2013.
Penguin was heralded as quite a significant upgrade, and sent many website owners running for the panic button.
The whole purpose of these upgrades, is to sort the wheat from the chaff- to get web masters’ link building policies squeaky clean, without trying to game the system.
Our Melbourne SEO services experts have received many calls for help from new clients wanting to get the loss of their website rank addressed.
Too many links, created too quickly, from less than ideal, dubious sources. Websites selling real estate shouldn’t be providing directory pages linking to service providers, links should not be placed on pages with low quality content and almost no user-experience except for a quick press of the “back” button… it goes on.
Some websites have low quality directory pages, and these are often buried several levels into the website architecture, hardly the hallmark of content worth visiting.
This type of seo malpractice has gone on for long enough, and Google has simply said “that’s it-the party’s over!”
One by one, clean them up, using the following criteria:
Here’s some clarification of some of the points above.
Uniqueness of content at page level, is very important.
There’s no value to the visitor by simply expanding out a list of bullet points with wide spacing, and calling it a page of content. Make sure the page has at least 70%-and preferably more- content within the page, that is unique to it.
If the page struggles to gain depth, perhaps that content would be better off living on another page in a sidebar instead.
The page should be unique- not only to the rest of your website, but to the internet in general.
The single biggest mistake in this arena, is people copying a manufacturer’s website product description, onto their own website– this should be avoided at all costs.
Take it slow, work through one page at a time, and keep your website safe from Google updates. Shake the Penguin Penalty- go through all your inbound links with the same fine-toothed comb approach, and you’ll be fine.
If this has happened before the end of May 2013, and you have been left scratching your head wondering why the sudden drop in position within the search results, it’s quite likely you’ve received a Penguin penalty for 2013.
Penguin was heralded as quite a significant upgrade, and sent many website owners running for the panic button.
The whole purpose of these upgrades, is to sort the wheat from the chaff- to get web masters’ link building policies squeaky clean, without trying to game the system.
Our Melbourne SEO services experts have received many calls for help from new clients wanting to get the loss of their website rank addressed.
Loss of Rank to Penguin 2013- the Likely Causes
The most likely causes of your website losing rank under Penguin 2, would be the lack of quality of your inbound links.Too many links, created too quickly, from less than ideal, dubious sources. Websites selling real estate shouldn’t be providing directory pages linking to service providers, links should not be placed on pages with low quality content and almost no user-experience except for a quick press of the “back” button… it goes on.
Some websites have low quality directory pages, and these are often buried several levels into the website architecture, hardly the hallmark of content worth visiting.
This type of seo malpractice has gone on for long enough, and Google has simply said “that’s it-the party’s over!”
Avoid Penguin Penalty Setbacks- Follow These Steps
Run a Google site query- do a thorough search on all the URLs within your website. If you have a sitemap- or you once had a sitemap, now is the time to refresh it and check every URL it lists. I’ll bed there will be some you never knew existed- in various states of neglect and content-decay.One by one, clean them up, using the following criteria:
- How much value to your website’s aggregate quality score does the page contribute?
- Does the page have a depth of quality content that’s worth linking to- that a visitor would think was a worthy click in the limited spare time they had?>
- How unique is the page, in the scheme of things, as it relates to your website- and the internet in general?
- How much generic content is on the page versus standalone content?
- If the content of the main part of the page is a bit light, perhaps consider creating page-specific widget and sidebars to reduce the amount of website-wide common content found on the page
Here’s some clarification of some of the points above.
There’s no value to the visitor by simply expanding out a list of bullet points with wide spacing, and calling it a page of content. Make sure the page has at least 70%-and preferably more- content within the page, that is unique to it.
If the page struggles to gain depth, perhaps that content would be better off living on another page in a sidebar instead.
The page should be unique- not only to the rest of your website, but to the internet in general.
The single biggest mistake in this arena, is people copying a manufacturer’s website product description, onto their own website– this should be avoided at all costs.
Take it slow, work through one page at a time, and keep your website safe from Google updates. Shake the Penguin Penalty- go through all your inbound links with the same fine-toothed comb approach, and you’ll be fine.