[Penguin 2.1]I'll give you guys a nudge in the right direction

gorang

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There is a lot of useless speculation in the forum right now which is completely off the mark, so much so that Matt Cutts is laughing at us. There has not been enough attention on the history of Penguin, how Google likes to deploy updates. I'll be writing an in-depth blog post on this in the next few days, I'm still researching.

But to point you guys in the right direction lets look at the history of Penguin.

Penguin works on a page by page basis, if you've been hit by penguin you may notice that only part of your rankings were hit. If you separate your keywords by landing page you'll likely notice that your site was hit only on specific pages, other pages will have rankings intact. Penguin 1 only targeted your homepage and the backlinks pointing to it, Penguin 2.0 dove deeper and started to look at your inner pages too, then back in May Google released this video in which Matt Cutts talks about going "upstream" and examining even further into the backlink profile, what he is talking about is tiered linkbuilding.
http://youtu.be/xQmQeKU25zg?t=3m11s

Targeting tiered linkbuilding leaves us in disarray, it takes out blog networks supported by it it takes out many many techniques we once used. With this type of targeted update, Google can take many methods in one swipe as most methods are supported by tiered linkbuilding, including blog networks.

He also talks about a new technique to filter webspam, this is likely a combination of hummingbird and Penguin. Hummingbird provided Google with a deeper understanding of search queries and keywords, combine this with webspam filters and Google will have an increased ability to detect webspam, especially spun content.

Next, i'm sure Google releases several updates on the same day to specifically add to the confusion of why a site was hit. It stops us finding a pattern among penalized websites.

Google recently increased their rhetoric about sites not using any SEO at all. This makes sense with the release of hummingbird, since hummingbird has a greater understanding of keywords and meanings, it also means that they may have turned the sensitivity up on their triggers for penalties.

Partial match keywords have never been more important in anchor text. With hummingbird, you may not need to place your exact match anchor in your backlinks at all. A recent data chart by Moz showed the importance and strength in partial match keywords, I assume this is taken even further by Google after the past month.

Link velocity. Google's rhetoric has also echoed the concept of having sites rank with very few backlinks, this is also congruent with the idea that Google doesn't want webmasters having to do SEO.

Now, before you make any new threads on BHW, please do this;

Google the keyword your were penalized for and analyze each site currently ranking to see what they're doing differently.
 
I can confirm that personally, the patterns I am seeing on my couple of websites (that have gone down as well as those that held their positions) is similar to what you have written here. Good post (although its still/also speculation.. unless you work for G?)
 
I can confirm that personally, the patterns I am seeing on my couple of websites (that have gone down as well as those that held their positions) is similar to what you have written here. Good post (although its still/also speculation.. unless you work for G?)

I admit, it is speculation, we can't be 100% sure of anything, but my gut really is whispering "Tiered linkbuilding" either that or its saying "Tea! Brew!", with that in mind i'll have another cup of tea!
 
I made a post earlier about websites with a mainly raw URL link profile doing to best throughout this update, but I'm not sure if anyone concurs.
 
I made a post earlier about websites with a mainly raw URL link profile doing to best throughout this update, but I'm not sure if anyone concurs.

I think the important things to ask are;

How many sites did you test and how many were not hit?

How much backlinking did you do?

What link types did you use and was their any tiered links supporting them?
 
I too see only my homepage disappeared but inner pages still rank for some keywords.And i am really tired after going through series of posts here in BHW about the update thanks but you have valid points to take an action.Also what you recommend on using spun content and the use of anchors after this update ?
 
I too see only my homepage disappeared but inner pages still rank for some keywords.And i am really tired after going through series of posts here in BHW about the update thanks but you have valid points to take an action.Also what you recommend on using spun content and the use of anchors after this update ?

Personally I won't be using spun content anymore. We can see sites ranking with very few links. I'm going back to a more hands on manual strategy, sourcing low amounts of powerful links. I'll also be very cautious with anchor text, using the partial match theory. I'll try to be intelligent with anchor text and use what is logical for the situation. For example, if it is a blog that is being promoted, it should be the blog posts that get the links too, and they should be specific to the content of the blog posts. In that scenario, you'd expect to see the raw URL mostly as people cite you on the net. The same is often true of an ecommerce store, people linking naturally will not link "Leather shoes", they will link "http://www.theshoestore.com". Make everything as natural as possible, I know we've heard this 1,000 times, but now it really is true.

This doesn't mean we go whitehat, we just understand the algorithm's boundaries and we take advantage of the lack of competition we now have. The smart players will take advantage of Penguin 2.1, now is a better time than ever to quickly hit very competitive keywords :)
 
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Although what you said is speculation it is also very insightful

I've found the more I put effort into diverse linkbuilding the more risk I'm taking. ex: the more you have web2.0,comments,forum posts etc. to get caught using blackhat methods the more likely you will sustain a penalty in some form

If it's a client, I'm going directory / social to new content / guest posts with any blackhat being 10-20% of overall inbound link effort
 
Great post gorang,

I have been digging through posts for the past 3 days and this post is definitely getting the SEO community in the right direction. I manage 29 websites half are mine, half are clients. About 80% of the website got hammered and I mean toast!

Anyways, I can definitely agree that the Homepage and a couple of innerpages that I focused on creating links to disappeared. Oddly enough other inner pages that I didn't build links to like /about-us are now ranking on pages 7-9 on almost all of the websites that got hit.

I look at this update as a real eye opener. I am happy that this wasn't a manual penalty against all my sites because it gives us an opportunity to "fix" the issue. What the issue is, I believe will be identified after going through the 29 websites main keywords for each, and seeing what the top results have in common.

I will create a spreadsheet and post it back up here, Gorang would you mind doing a similar analysis of the top results for your websites niche?
 
Matt Cutts is laughing at you because the advice is really bad.
 
well, to be honest, i believe this can be i a valid idea and crossed my mind few times during last days.
1. tier link building...tier link building....tier link building it's all seoers talked about for the last few years. And google is always after things that are used in masses, . (ALN, SAPE, EMD ... etc etc.) (they don't have time/resources/brain power (whatever) to go after small system (algorithm) abuses)
2. tier link building leaves huge footprint. A web 2.0, pdf, youtube, blogpost link appear in your backlink profile and suddenly is powered up by thousands of spammy links? how common and natural this is?

Not saying that OP is definitely right about this, yet i would not be surprised at all if he was.
 
There is a lot of useless speculation in the forum right now which is completely off the mark, so much so that Matt Cutts is laughing at us. There has not been enough attention on the history of Penguin, how Google likes to deploy updates. I'll be writing an in-depth blog post on this in the next few days, I'm still researching.

But to point you guys in the right direction lets look at the history of Penguin.

Penguin works on a page by page basis, if you've been hit by penguin you may notice that only part of your rankings were hit. If you separate your keywords by landing page you'll likely notice that your site was hit only on specific pages, other pages will have rankings intact. Penguin 1 only targeted your homepage and the backlinks pointing to it, Penguin 2.0 dove deeper and started to look at your inner pages too, then back in May Google released this video in which Matt Cutts talks about going "upstream" and examining even further into the backlink profile, what he is talking about is tiered linkbuilding. Targeting tiered linkbuilding leaves us in disarray, it takes out blog networks supported by it it takes out many many techniques we once used. With this type of targeted update, Google can take many methods in one swipe as most methods are supported by tiered linkbuilding, including blog networks.

He also talks about a new technique to filter webspam, this is likely a combination of hummingbird and Penguin. Hummingbird provided Google with a deeper understanding of search queries and keywords, combine this with webspam filters and Google will have an increased ability to detect webspam, especially spun content.

Next, i'm sure Google releases several updates on the same day to specifically add to the confusion of why a site was hit. It stops us finding a pattern among penalized websites.

Google recently increased their rhetoric about sites not using any SEO at all. This makes sense with the release of hummingbird, since hummingbird has a greater understanding of keywords and meanings, it also means that they may have turned the sensitivity up on their triggers for penalties.

Partial match keywords have never been more important in anchor text. With hummingbird, you may not need to place your exact match anchor in your backlinks at all. A recent data chart by Moz showed the importance and strength in partial match keywords, I assume this is taken even further by Google after the past month.

Link velocity. Google's rhetoric has also echoed the concept of having sites rank with very few backlinks, this is also congruent with the idea that Google doesn't want webmasters having to do SEO.

Now, before you make any new threads on BHW, please do this;

Google the keyword your were penalized for and analyze each site currently ranking to see what they're doing differently.

I agree with a majority of what you said, and other factors do come into play as well so you are definitely getting people going in the right direction. None of my sites were hit and I don't use spun content for anything, and I also don't use tiered links for my authority sites because of the problems that can come along with it, and this update has not had any affect whatsoever on me.

The point you made about hummingbird is very valid. This is why a lot of people with link diversity still got hit when they mixed their same keywords phrases around on their anchors. I have been looking at a lot of peoples profiles that got hit and there is not as much room for trickery this time around with link building. Very generic anchors are a safe bet, and I have had pretty good success with this since building my latest sites. No need to point out the obvious to Google unless we want a slapping.

Rep added ;)
 
Well written and well thought out.

Only one problem, while it is a small sample size I did the opposite of what I normally do to one "site" and a bunch of keywords moved up to page 2, some from nowhere.

I typically do slow, methodical, hand built seo but those sites stayed still for the most part +/- 5 or so, nothing serious. The only site that saw rapid upward movement was the site I spammed.

Go Figure.
 
Well written and well thought out.

Only one problem, while it is a small sample size I did the opposite of what I normally do to one "site" and a bunch of keywords moved up to page 2, some from nowhere.

I typically do slow, methodical, hand built seo but those sites stayed still for the most part +/- 5 or so, nothing serious. The only site that saw rapid upward movement was the site I spammed.

Go Figure.

What did you spam it with and what type of anchors were they?
 
I think this is the right direction and its been going that way since that last few updates

But I still think its too early as google has now got in the habit
of rolling back the updates over the next few weeks
 
Excellent post, gorang. I think you're spot on about the partial link keyword anchors, I've been seeing this as well.
 
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