Google Penguin 3.0 Update

Last Updated: October 28th, 2014
By Adam Bilter

In mid October 2014, Google released the 6th update in the "penguin" category, which was termed as the Penguin 3.0 update. It has been about one year since the last major roll-out. The last update affected about 1% of search queries. This update is expected to affect much more. The major target of this update is spammy links. Spammy links are links that some site owners use to artificially promote their site. It goes along the same lines of the quality versus quantity arguement. In the old days, the more links you had, the more "votes" your site had and therefore the more relevent it was viewed to be by the search engines. Now, it is more important to have quality links rather than quantity. In Google's opinion, a site with good unique content will automatically get links built to their site but is that really the case? I can see someone sharing an article or a good review, but is someone really going to share the local plumber's "about us" page? Probably not. Site owners are motivated to get some links, and therefore usually build them themselves or pay for them. But be careful who you buy them from. Just remember, quality over quanitity.

So the whole point of the algorithm update is to put far less emphasis on links Google now views as "spammy" and perhaps even penalize the site in rankings if they see fit. So how do you avoid any penalties? First, make sure you are creating good, unique content for your site. No duplicate content anywhere. Second, share your links naturally. third, buy links with caution. Fourth, clean up your toxic links.

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