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GOOGLE PENGUIN UPDATE:IS YOUR SITE READY?

MEROVE HEIFETZ & BONNIE HERMANMARCH 23, 2016

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INTRODUCTIONS

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TODAY’S AGENDA• Google Algorithm Updates:

Background

• Penguin: What Is It, Why Is It Important & When Is It Coming?

• How To Tell If Your Site Is Impacted

• How To Prep for Penguin and/or Combat Its Impact

• More Recent Google Updates: RankBrain, AMP & Mobilegeddon

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64%21%

12%3%

Google Bing Yahoo Other (AOL, Ask)*comScore

SEARCH ENGINE MARKET SHARE (FEB 2016*)

GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES: BACKGROUND

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GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES: BACKGROUND• Google’s focus is on delivering the highest quality

content to users.• Updates to Google’s algorithm happen 500 – 600

times a year, some reports note up to 2000 times per year!

• Most changes are very minor – public will not notice.• Major updates that impact search:

https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

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MAJOR GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES

PANDA & PENGUIN

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PANDA

• Initially released February 2011.• Importance: Seeks to reward sites with higher quality

and valuable content and results in down-ranking of pages that are considered low quality.

• Penalizes websites with:• Low quality content• Duplicate, thin or poorly-written content• Keyword stuffing • Off-topic content

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HAVE YOU BEEN PENALIZED BY PANDA?

Look for sudden drops in organic traffic & organic keyword positions around the time when previous updates have occurred.

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HAVE YOU BEEN PENALIZED BY PANDA?

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“

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RECENT PANDA CORE ALGORITHM UPDATE

Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.

JANUARY 12, 2016: GOOGLE OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED THAT PANDA IS NOW PART OF THE CORE RANKING ALGORITHM.

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We will never see another Panda update like we have in the past because it will run with Google’s main core algorithm.Websites with low-quality content now have an ongoing risk of being impacted.Quality, unique content continues to be extremely important - both technical SEO and on-page content for the user.

Note: This is important for both your own site AND your content on third-party sites like Amazon, Walmart & external blogs.

RECENT PANDA CORE ALGORITHM UPDATE

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN• Initially released April 2012.• Importance: Seeks to reward quality websites and

penalize sites using black hat or “over optimization” techniques. Primary focus is on link quality.

• Penalizes websites with:• Spammy link profiles (links from “bad

neighborhoods”)• Off-topic link profiles• Overly optimized anchor text links• Keyword stuffing• Forum spam (linking from comments)• Paid or Sponsored Links

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN

PENALIZES: SPAMMY LINK PROFILESLinks from “bad neighborhoods” or spammy websites linking to your websiteAvoid links from “Bad PPC” websites: Pills, Porn and Casinos

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN

PENALIZES: OFF-TOPIC LINK PROFILESOff-topic links are when sites that are unrelated to you are linking to your site.

YOUR WEBSITETopic cars (example)

Linked Site1. Topic Travel

Linked Site2. Topic Food

Linked Site3. Topic Health Blog

Linked Site4. Topic Hair Styles

Linked Site5. Topic Viagra

Linked Site6. Topic

Insurance

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN

PENALIZES: OVERLY OPTIMIZED ANCHOR TEXT LINKSRoughly 80% of the anchor text of your links should be your brand name or the website URL

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUINPENALIZES: KEYWORD STUFFING"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose).

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUINPENALIZES: FORUM SPAMUnrelated links with optimized anchor text found on forums

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN

PENALIZES: PAID OR SPONSORED LINKSBuying or selling links that pass PageRank or “link juice.” This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links.This does not include paid ads like Google AdWords, content syndication through tools like OutBrain or affiliate marketing links.

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN

WHEN IS IT COMING?• Last updates:

• Penguin Everflux - December 2014Google announces continuous Penguin updates going forward (Search Engine Land)

• Penguin 3.0 – October 2014• Next major update: Penguin 4.0:???

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUINWHEN IS IT COMING?

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MAJOR ALGORITHM UPDATE: PENGUIN

ACCELERATION PARTNERS’ HYPOTHESISGiven Panda’s integration into the core algorithm, it’s likely that Penguin will be integrated within the core algorithm at some point, too.

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HAVE YOU BEEN PENALIZED BY PENGUIN?

We don’t know what impact Penguin 4.0 will have – it may be a one-time filter like it was in 2012 & 2013 or it may be an ongoing update like the recent Panda update to the core algorithm.

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HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUINYour site can potentially benefit from the next Penguin update if you follow best practices before it launches:

TOOLSUse a variety of tools to check your backlink

profile – we will note some options in a moment.ANCHOR TEXT DISTRIBUTIONVary your anchor text keywords to make sure

most are branded or URL.MONITOR BACKLINKSLook for sudden spikes or anything out of the

ordinary.

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HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUIN

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FREE SEO TOOLS

HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUIN

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INTERNAL DOCUMENT

PAID SEO TOOLS

HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUIN

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DISAVOW LINKSFor the super spammy links you cannot remove, disavow the links in Google Search Console.

It’s absolutely critical to follow Google’s disavow directions exactly, or you can do some damage.

BUILD AUTHORITATIVE LINKSCombat the negative impacts of negative links with gaining positive ones –those that are highly relevant from sites that have higher domain authority than your own site.OPTIMIZE INTERNAL LINKSMake sure that your internal links flow in a natural way. Add related products to product pages, maintain as much of a hierarchy as possible, use canonicals.

HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUIN

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COMPETITOR BACKLINK ANALYSISOne of the best places to find relevant, strong inbound links is by looking at the backlink profiles of your competition. Use Moz’s Open Site Explorer.

CITATION MANAGEMENTOn a weekly basis, check the web mentions of the brand to ensure that all citations are linking to the website. Use Moz’s Fresh Web Mentions.

BUILDING LINKS NATURALLY

HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUIN

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OVERALL TAKEAWAY Your website will be re-evaluated by Google when the next Penguin update hits. Your site may potentially benefit from the next Penguin update:

• If you have been consistently monitoring your backlink profile and following best practices and white hat techniques.

OR

• If you have recently addressed negative backlink issues(in advance of the update).

Your site may be penalized if you have negative backlink issues that aren’t addressed…

HOW TO PREPARE FOR PENGUIN

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MORE RECENT UPDATES FROM GOOGLE:

RANKBRAIN, AMP & MOBILEGEDDON

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GOOGLE RANKBRAIN• Rankbrain, which was rolled out in early 2015, is

Google’s name for a machine-learning artificial intelligence system that’s used to help process its search results.

• It is part of Google’s overall search algorithm.

• Machine learning is where a computer teaches itself how to do something, rather than being taught by humans or following detailed programming.

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GOOGLE RANKBRAIN• RankBrain is the third-most important factor for

ranking web pages (according to Google). Although Google won’t tell us what the first two factors are, people speculate that links are number one and content is number two.

• What does it do? Everyday, 15% of queries are ones that Google has never seen before. That is 450 million new searches a day.

• Among those searches can be complex long-tail queries. RankBrain is designed to help better interpret those queries and effectively translate them, behind the scenes, to find the best pages for the searcher.

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GOOGLE RANKBRAINWHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SEO?• There is no affect on crawling nor indexing of

websites.• RankBrain may weigh existing algorithm signals

differently.• RankBrain is so complex, Google has said they don’t

fully understand how it works.• More information: http://searchengineland.com/faq

-all-about-the-new-google-rankbrain-algorithm-234440

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ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES: AMP

• Officially launched on Feb. 23, 2016. • A Google-backed project intended as an open

standard for any publisher to have pages load quickly on mobile devices.

• Supported by Twitter, WordPress and other publishers.

• WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SEO? Google will be encouraging its use by integrating it heavily into its platform - websites using AMP will see a ranking boost as early as May.

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ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES: AMP Currently, there is a green lightning bolt next to AMP pages on the SERPs.

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HELPFUL AMP RESOURCES

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MOBILEGEDDON…AGAIN!

• Initially released April 2015.• Importance: Rewards mobile-friendly websites and

penalizes mobile unfriendly websites.• Up next: May 2016

• Google: “…beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.”

• Is your website mobile-friendly? Check here:https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

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OVERALL TAKEAWAY Your website will succeed if you consistently produce high-quality content that addresses your users and searchers needs, which in turn will inspire high-quality and relevant backlinks.

Spammy or black hat techniques will backfire!

GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES

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ARTICLES• Search Engine Land How to Get Started with AMP • SEO Roundtable AMP is Live• Search Engine Land FAQs About RankBrain• Moz Major Google Algorithm Changes• Search Engine Land

Penguin Shift Continuous Updates

TOOLS• AMP Project How To Get Started with AMP• Google Mobile Friendly Test • Moz Mozcast

RESOURCES

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Boston617.963.0839

New York646.664.1036

San Francisco415.523.0398

Chicago312.973.3864

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QUESTIONS?

MEROVE HEIFETZAssociate Director, SEO & Digital Strategymerove@accelerationpartners.com

BONNIE HERMANSenior Account Manager, SEO & Digital Strategybherman@accelerationpartners.com

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Boston617.963.0839

New York646.664.1036

San Francisco415.523.0398

Chicago312.973.3864

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THANK YOU!

Visit the Acceleration Partners blog for more tips on SEO, User Experience, Site Strategy, Paid Marketing

& Affiliate Marketing:http://www.accelerationpartners.com/blog/