So Google Chewed You Up and Spit You Out. Stop Crying, Here's How to Fix it

The Aftermath:

Improve Google Search in Google Penguin Algorithm

For the past several weeks, ever since the dawning of Penguin there has been an absolute blizzard of posts on how to fix your rankings. I know you have read about the many different alleged causes for your rankings decline so I won’t waste your time repeating those. Suffice it to say that things changed, some of you (myself included) got burned and now we need to bounce back. Luckily, there have now been a number of examples that people have documented showing how they bounced back. This will be the focus of today’s post, who bounced back and how.

Back to Basics:

In a large sense the Penguin update was a wakeup call for all of us to stop submitting to giant web directories and linking everything that seemed even remotely relevant to our site, regardless of page rank or other key indicators. The key for success going forward is going to be relevance. From Seomoz’s Beginners Guide to Seo (yes, many of us need to go back to the basics) it shows us that relevance to search engines is more than just a few words on a page. We need to dig deeper and stop doing what is easiest and most comfortable.

To put it bluntly, we need to stop being lazy with our outreach and content creation. Our focus needs to be on more out-of-the-box thinking that is going to really be of benefit to your niche and that takes hard work. So be unique, be the expert in the field you’re in and do the things that are uncomfortable, whether it be taking the time to produce really unique content or some great meme’s or ecards for your social media outreach. For creating unique content and great examples of Linkbait this is a great start with links to relevant examples.

Success for the Future:

First, the one message I think Google is sending all of us is something we should be asking ourselves each time we set out to do something from here on.

And that is – Put Your Customers First!

The biggest issue I have seen at two of the biggest companies I have worked with was that they didn’t truly know who their customer’s were or which audience they were targeting specifically. Our websites, emails, presentations, etc, should be easy, educational, and entertaining. Not only will this create higher SERP rankings as more people link to your blogs and product pages but it’s more likely to lead to major bonus points with your Social Media sites.

Second, this should be a no brainer but it is still one of the biggest things I see with our clients. A logical and easy to navigate Sitemap and remember to place the pages that are most important to your site higher up in the path. This is going to help Google know where to place a greater degree of importance as it crawls your site.

The last thing I want to cover is Over Optimization. The best thing I can recommend from what I have both seen and read is that all of your anchor texts need to be natural. I think of it this way – if I wouldn’t describe the site or product I am linking to in terms that I would use to tell my wife or friend with I don’t use it. Take the time to go back over all of your links, especially if you have taken a hit, and make sure none of them are over optimized. Check this article out for a true story about this key steps success.

These are some simple steps and I have provided some great links for more details information. I know this will get you on the right track and help us connect with our customers in better ways than before. It’s going to be hard at first and we all have the tendency to make short cuts. But as we have seen with Penguin, short cuts may pay off in the short term but will come back to torpedo your ship in the long run.

About Author : Colby Hooley is a SEO Specialist.