Penguin Reverse Engineered VIDEO

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SuperLinks

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An interesting video that proposes that Penguin is strictly onsite, rather than offsite. It proposes some unique theories, most of which have aligned with my research as well.

Key Takeaways:

Panda = Broad Algorithm
Panda looks for low quality content

Duplicate text
Duplicate design
Thin text content
Broad text content
Nonsense/HTML text

Spam Flag Theory

Pages can be marked as "spam" and then discount the trust/linkjuice passed along
Discounting pages means that your backlinks could be discounted as well, thus reducing your rank

Fixing Panda Penguin

Need to fix onpage issues
Penguin based NegSEO is not possible
No need to delete links
Add quality links on your keywords


I thought I'd share this and build some dialogue around the research Josh proposes in this video....

 
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Shared like 3 times today :)

Thanks still, the more people that see it the better. *if the solutions he is talking about is true.

Some other factors:

Site metrics... how fast ur site loads, how long people stay on ur site, how often they return etc.
Navigation (copy amazon)
Add value to site (video, images and internal linking to related topics).
 
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I think there are some things in the video that are true, but I believe penguin is both on-site and off-site seo.

Why does everyone have to think its one or the other? Why can't it be both?

I think this makes the most sense.
 
IamNRE said:
Shared like 3 times today :)

Thanks still, the more people that see it the better. *if the solutions he is talking about is true.

Some other factors:

Site metrics... how fast ur site loads, how long people stay on ur site, how often they return etc.
Navigation (copy amazon)
Add value to site (video, images and internal linking to related topics).
Click to expand...

LOL - I figured it probably had but didn't see it when I searched for it. Regardless it's being passed around the SEO world and thought people could benefit from it :)
 
This is an excellent video. I've seen every type of hypothesis on these boards, other sources etc and this video pretty much wraps up everything into one segment. It explains why negative seo is more complicated than just tossing bad links at a site. Math problems always have to work both ways. If you have the answer, you can deduce the math problem, if you have the problem, you can deduce the answer. Math only works both ways. This hypothesis works both ways and explains why a site looks like it's carrying a site wide penalty when it could be as simple as one bad sub page.

Thanks for the link and I hope others watch this as well. No one is above the theory crafting in this video.

edit: I almost disregarded the video due to the fact it claims Penguin is on-site SEO. After watching it you can see that he doesn't mean on-site for just your site but on-site for your backlinking sites as well.
 
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Mortz said:
This is an excellent video. I've seen every type of hypothesis on these boards, other sources etc and this video pretty much wraps up everything into one segment. It explains why negative seo is more complicated than just tossing bad links at a site. Math problems always have to work both ways. If you have the answer, you can deduce the math problem, if you have the problem, you can deduce the answer. Math only works both ways. This hypothesis works both ways and explains why a site looks like it's carrying a site wide penalty when it could be as simple as one bad sub page.

Thanks for the link and I hope others watch this as well. No one is above the theory crafting in this video.

edit: I almost disregarded the video due to the fact it claims Penguin is on-site SEO. After watching it you can see that he doesn't mean on-site for just your site but on-site for your backlinking sites as well.
Click to expand...

1) Negative SEO is easy as hell, I did it successfully even before this most recent update, but now it's literally a joke to accomplish very good results with it
2) What the hell does "backlink" SEO even mean? The entire notion that someone backlinking to you from a bad neighborhood harming your rankings is the fundamental definition of negative SEO
3) Penguin is 100% offsite... and 100% a punishment algorithm. My site with over 10,000 indexed and stable web 2.0s linking to it, and tons of other various links is not even #1 for its exact brand name anymore (and the brand name is not shared among any other retailers at all). The site's facebook page, with no links, outranks the site.

That is the very definition of a "punishment" algorithm.

Just a whole bunch more "smoke and mirrors" and "buy my service" crap.
 
Expertpeon said:
1) Negative SEO is easy as hell, I did it successfully even before this most recent update, but now it's literally a joke to accomplish very good results with it
2) What the hell does "backlink" SEO even mean? The entire notion that someone backlinking to you from a bad neighborhood harming your rankings is the fundamental definition of negative SEO
3) Penguin is 100% offsite... and 100% a punishment algorithm. My site with over 10,000 indexed and stable web 2.0s linking to it, and tons of other various links is not even #1 for its exact brand name anymore (and the brand name is not shared among any other retailers at all). The site's facebook page, with no links, outranks the site.

That is the very definition of a "punishment" algorithm.

Just a whole bunch more "smoke and mirrors" and "buy my service" crap.
Click to expand...

I tend to follow what you and another member "Lancis" have to say in various threads. I have respect for both of you. I'm not saying Negative SEO isn't possible but rather it has to be targeted towards what will work against the competitors on-site SEO.

The video suggests that backlink sites with bad SEO are devalued. Lancis mentioned this in another thread. That's why pumping more backlinks to your site after Penguin still works (or works until the next passing of Penguin). It's going to be more hit and miss.
 
Interesting video, but the part about alt texts seems regressive. I thought that properly filling them out was to help accessibility issues, so people can understand what the image is, and obviously this is usually your keyword (at least for ecommerce).

And so meta tags can be used against you? I thought they weren't taken into account anymore?

EDIT: this also seems to go against the analysis micrositemasters did which seemed to prove it was influenced by offsite. Confusing!
 
ben10023 said:
Interesting video, but the part about alt texts seems regressive. I thought that properly filling them out was to help accessibility issues, so people can understand what the image is, and obviously this is usually your keyword (at least for ecommerce).

And so meta tags can be used against you? I thought they weren't taken into account anymore?

EDIT: this also seems to go against the analysis micrositemasters did which seemed to prove it was influenced by offsite. Confusing!
Click to expand...

i don't think the micrositemasters analysis proved it was off-site seo causing the problem, but it was a well done analysis and its a really good theory...
 
I see, so putting keywords in image alt tags, meta description, and meta keywords is absolutely off limits...aside from the fact that:
  • The meta keywords tag is still supported by current HTML standards, and as such, I would expect a site's keywords to be in the keywords tag.
  • The meta description is a snapshot of what the page is about, and Google uses this in the SERPs, and I imagine it's quite possible that your keywords may just show up in your description since that is what the page is about, after all.
  • Given that current HTML validation standards require every image to have an ALT tag, I suppose there is a high probability that one of the images may be about your keyword, and therefore you should describe it as such.

Guy's claim of that kind of ruined his credibility for me.
 
artizhay said:
I see, so putting keywords in image alt tags, meta description, and meta keywords is absolutely off limits...aside from the fact that:
  • The meta keywords tag is still supported by current HTML standards, and as such, I would expect a site's keywords to be in the keywords tag.
  • The meta description is a snapshot of what the page is about, and Google uses this in the SERPs, and I imagine it's quite possible that your keywords may just show up in your description since that is what the page is about, after all.
  • Given that current HTML validation standards require every image to have an ALT tag, I suppose there is a high probability that one of the images may be about your keyword, and therefore you should describe it as such.

Guy's claim of that kind of ruined his credibility for me.
Click to expand...

Meta keywords has been dead for a long time. Bing and Yahoo may still put weight in it but Google stopped putting emphasis on it. People used to abuse that.
Meta Description is a snapshot of what the page is about but your title tag is the basis of the page.
Image tags will almost always have your keyword since it's relevant to the page but I believe the point is to make it more natural.

The point is don't spam the money keyword through everything. If it's noticeable you're trying to manipulate rank, then you probably are. That's the point.
 
manny521 said:
i don't think the micrositemasters analysis proved it was off-site seo causing the problem, but it was a well done analysis and its a really good theory...
Click to expand...

Manny, you're one of the few that showed positive signals after Penguin 1.1. Are the ranks still holding? I know from talking to you in PMs that you put a lot of focus in "deoptimizing" your pages and of course spreading diversity.
 
@Expertpeon : Far from me the idea to wake the beast in you, however i'm wondering a few things.

First, you mentionned several times that your websites went fine, and now you mention one of your website has been hit, did it come with the Penguin Refresh ? Did you change anything this month ?

Second, you seem to be convinced that penguin is a punishement algorithm and to be honest, i tend to buy that theory, however, you said it is extremely easy to perform a negative SEO campaign thanks to penguin, but i believe you wouldn't have been able to perform it as Penguin is refreshed once a month apparently.

Once again it isn't to remove credibility or so, but to try to see clearer in that damned update.

Dealing with OP post, my conclusions seems to tend to a link devaluation in some case but not in others. What trigger the link devaluation is all the question though.

For the fun if any, in order to mess more with my mind, i had a DMCA complain on one of my personal website which i have understood as a Penguin slap as the website vanished and it confused my theories...
 
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All my analysis has shown that it is definetely both - onpage and offpage.

If you have high keyword density and/or overly good onpage seo (title, h1, alt etc. contains keyword) then you really have to have a good link profile without excessive usage of matching anchors and/or good social presense. On the other hand, if your onpage seo is more "general" you can get away with a lot more exact anchors.

Best way is try to stay in the middle of all.
 
Mortz said:
Meta keywords has been dead for a long time. Bing and Yahoo may still put weight in it but Google stopped putting emphasis on it. People used to abuse that.
Meta Description is a snapshot of what the page is about but your title tag is the basis of the page.
Image tags will almost always have your keyword since it's relevant to the page but I believe the point is to make it more natural.

The point is don't spam the money keyword through everything. If it's noticeable you're trying to manipulate rank, then you probably are. That's the point.
Click to expand...
I understand all of that, but the point is that the guy clearly stated that "you cannot have any keywords that are hidden" and prior to that statement he explains that any keywords in the actual code are considered "hidden text," including meta tags and image tags.

If the point was to make it look more natural, he would have said so. Instead, he said you can have anything in your "hidden text" except for​ your keywords.
 
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