Penguin 4.0 what does it mean for SEO Practitioners

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• Vipra Business
  Digital Marketing Agency

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Penguin 4.0 what does it mean for SEO
Practitioners?

• As youre no doubt aware, Google finally rolled
  out its Google 4.0 algorithm update at the end of
  last week.
• Penguin is now part of Googles core algorithm,
  penalizing websites that use various black-hat
  link schemes to manipulate search rankings.
• Vipra Business believes that Google is improving
  their search engine and gain trust of their
  visitors and searchers.

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Important Changes include

• Penguin data is refreshed in real time, so any
  changes will be made as soon as the affected page
  has been recrawled and reindexed.
• Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking of
  the offending page, rather than affecting the
  whole site.

Do you think the new version of Penguin is
fairer? Do you think its an adequate deterrent
when it comes to spammy link-building?

• Kevin Gibbons Yes, being realtime helps to set
  expectations as you wont have to wait weeks or
  months for the next algorithm refresh to assess
  your link removals.

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Continued

• Of course Googles algorithm is always a moving
  target but it is becoming harder to be
  manipulated at scale. In some verticals it can
  even be a game of whoever doesnt have the worst
  backlinks might win. Perhaps having a new domain
  with no link reputation isnt a bad starting
  point any more!
• Gerald Murphy  I think the algorithm is fairer.
  Think about it, you will be awarded for great
  content, instantly. I also think that, with the
  rise of AI, Google will soon be able to
  understand links more. A flower shop on
  Valentines Day, for example, will get away with
  more spam-like links but this wont be the case
  in September. As links will be linked with
  behaviours.

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Continued

• Nikolay Stoyanov  Yes, I think that the
  real-time version of the Penguin algorithm will
  be fairer and will play a very positive role for
  the whole SEO community.

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Short Ideas over Google Penguin 4.0 Algorithms

• Google Penguin is now a part of the core
  algorithm and every change (either a negative or
  positive one) will happen very quickly (maybe not
  instantly but on a daily or weekly basis). After
  more than 700 days of waiting we can finally rest
  assured that whatever SEO mistakes we make we
  will be able to quickly fix afterwards.
• This works both ways though. If we use some gray
  or black hat techniques Google will be able to
  catch us very quickly and punish us for not
  following its rules. So this is a double-edged
  sword.
• Another great change with Penguin 4.0 is the fact
  that it became more granular. This means that
  whatever penalties hit our sites from now on they
  will impact separate pages on the site and not
  the whole domain in general.

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Continued

• I believe that this will be a positive thing as
  it will give us a better chance to fix those
  penalized pages and to learn from our mistakes
  without losing a huge amount of our organic
  traffic (like before).
• Ideally, the latest Penguin update will benefit
  white hat SEO experts like Vipra Business and
  will help us take our SEO to the next level. Same
  goes with end users who will get better results
  to answer their search intent properly.
• Conversely, black hat techniques
  (especially PBNs) will slowly become obsolete and
  will eventually stop working which is the
  ultimate goal.

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Have you Experienced any affect from the Penguin
update?

• Kevin Gibbons None of our clients have seen any
  negative shifts in organic traffic.
• However, in the past we have noticed trends
  of referral traffic dropping as a knock-on effect
  from blogs/forums/publishers that have been
  penalized and as a result of them having less
  traffic, there are fewer outbound link clicks.
• The data we have so far is too early to
  highlight a trend, but its certainly one to keep
  a close eye on
• Nikolay Stoyanov No, I havent seen any change
  on my site or my clients sites since Penguin 4.0
  was launched. I guess its because Im playing by
  the rules but also because its not been entirely
  rolled out yet. Its way too soon to jump to
  conclusions.

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How can webmasters best avoid the risk of being
affected by Penguin?

• Kevin Gibbons Focus on building a brand, not
  links.
• If your activity is just for link building,
  it will leave an SEO footprint. No-one wants
  that.
• Aim to tell your story via content,
  data-driven analysis and knowledge and amplify
  to a targeted audience via multiple channels
  social media, paid search, digital PR etc
• Also monitor the links you have and audit
  these on a frequent basis. If youre in a
  competitive industry, you may have to actively
  disavow negative links that have been built to
  your site that someone else has built!

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Continued

• Gerald Murphy Data analysis is even more
  important to SEO. This most efficient way to
  analyze this update is to breakdown links by
  category, sub category, and page level, and then
  compare this with data, such as, visits, average
  blended rank, and revenue, for example.
• Nikolay Stoyanov Forget about shortcuts in SEO!
  There arent any. The only way to stay on the
  safe side and secure your brand, visitors and
  sales is if you do white hat SEO.
• Write well researched and useful content and
  build quality links to it. Thats it! Nothings
  changed. Hopefully with the real-time Penguin
  thats exactly whats going to happen. Maybe not
  at once but eventually.

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Thanks you Vipra Business