So I’m excited today because I get to write about “Penguin”. You’ve probably heard about Google’s latest update to their search algorithm called “Penguin”, and chances are you got a little scared for your business or your blog’s traffic–but most of you shouldn’t be… plus, it’s a great excuse to put pictures of penguins in blog posts. 🙂 See, look! Penguin pictures!!!!
See now these guys look like they are having a good time… but I like a fiercer penguin… kind of like ole’ Ralph here…
The Google Penguin, however, has a bit of a bad rep these days… kind of like he’s taking a chainsaw to your rankings…
Alright… so let’s talk about fearing the penguin. You should only be afraid of the Penguin update if you’ve broken the rules that Google sets in their terms of service–something you agreed to as soon as you allowed them to index your site. Everything has rules, and the rules are there for a good reason. They try to keep things in order for most people–and most people in Google’s world are not the people who own the websites; it’s the people who actually use their search engine… you know, the end user. If you don’t play by their rules, then you are probably going to be punished. If you break the law, you go to jail, it’s the same type of situation. Well, in Google’s case, if you break their terms of service and get caught, then you lose the privilege to tap into the most lucrative source of referral traffic–really, it’s only fair.
Google sets these terms and conditions to be sure these end users are getting quality results. I’m sure almost everyone who is reading this blog post right now has experienced a time where they’ve found themselves clicking on a link on the first page of Google just to ultimately be hitting the back key to find something that’s actually helpful and not trying to sell you a product/service. It’s annoying when this happens, and you probably feel like those links are a waste of time, right? So why would you want to do that to someone else? I like to think of it as the digital age version of “Treat others how you want to be treated.”
You hear so many people complain about how their sites have gone down in rankings, and I’ll be honest with you – they probably had it coming. I’ve been hearing all kinds of silly rumors on how to prevent yourself from getting hit on Google updates. My personal favorite was when I actually had someone ask me if it’s true that they should remove Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools from their website because it gives Google too much information about what you are doing. 🙂
This is laughable for a couple reasons.
First of all, Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools are optional… believe me, Google is going to find out about your site and they will index it unless you specifically “noindex” your site. If the end user cares about finding your site, then Google will do everything they can to index that information for them. The only way to avoid Google is to block them and if you block Google… well… good luck with Bing. The other reason is Google Webmaster tools are the absolute BEST thing you can possibly have to avoid these kinds of problems! Webmaster tools will often alert you when you have errors or are doing something wrong so you can address them and move up in rank–it’s a great gift from Google, and I am honestly surprised it’s free. Use it. Whoever had the idea to remove Google WebMaster Tools to “hide from Google” probably isn’t practicing the best Search Engine Ethics.
If you know you’ve not done any blackhat stuff, you might want to take a moment and wonder if you’ve hired someone who doesn’t play by the rules. Yep, that’s right. A lot of those SEO companies out there are completely bogus and are more concerned about cutting corners to impress you with quick results than actually building you a strong SEO core. I personally like to tell people to always remember to hire SEO’s, not SEE’s (Search Engine Exploiters). Doing it right is something that takes time and is honest, hard work. It involves writing unique content, building relationships with other sites for quality backlinks, and obeying the anti-spam rules that Google has set. If you’ve hired an SEO company and they’ve got you pulling SERPs that seem too good to be true, they probably are! I suggest undoing it all, or demanding they explain what they’ve actually done. These types of people can get you in a lot of trouble.
In summary, to be successful on Google, just don’t be a cheater. These updates are not made because Google hates you or your business, it’s not done to mess with your business, it’s done to make the experience better for the end-user–and it works! Google isn’t trying to hurt anyone, they are trying to help users. In fact, it wasn’t too long ago that users were crying to Google to “remove all the crap”–shortly after that, we saw Panda. The real question is how long will people continue to break the rules and lose their traffic before they break down and do it right.
