So the Google Penguin update hit us six days ago on April 24th and you are one of the many impacted by it - what can you do to recover?
Honestly, I doubt anyone has recovered yet but that doesn't stop SEOs from sharing tips and techniques they are using in an attempt to break lose from the Penguin's grip (do they have grips?).
The first thing you should know is that this is an algorithmic update, so if you make the right change and Google recrawls, indexes and processes your site - the next time Google runs a Penguin refresh, your site will start ranking again. Submitting a reconsideration request will not help you re-rank if Penguin hit you.
Second thing is that Panda hit a few days before and people are confusing being hit by Penguin versus Panda.
Having said that, here are the tips being shared by two WebmasterWorld threads and a HighRankings thread. I scanned through hundreds of posts and pulled out recovery tips mentioned in them - again, I have no idea if they do work because no one has recovered yet.
Disclaimer: The "tips" below are a collection of ideas from SEOs at WebmasterWorld. This is a summarization of the thread and in no way should be conveyed as actual strategies that are proven to work. Like I said above and below, since no one has recovered from the Penguin update yet, these tips are not proven.
Google Penguin Recovery Tips:
- De-optimize the web site
- Increase quality links to pages
- Make sure link anchor text is more natural
- Remove links from blogrolls
- Scale back the internal link anchor text
- Exact match domains hurt
- Practice negative SEO
- Move content to a new domain
- Build a smaller site with very few pages
- Write better content
- Add more social elements, i.e. Google+ Sharing
- Site audit to determine problem areas
- Think more long term with my site, stop taking short cuts
There are also early articles from Search Engine Land and WebProNews on this. But this list above is directly from SEOs in the trenches, in the forums.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and HighRankings.
Image credit to ShutterStock for school penguin
