Penguin Power: What’s Next For Google’s Algorithm?

Google Penguin is heading for another update, what’s going to change?

Google has already announced that another Penguin update is in the works, with that update turning the famous algorithm into a real-time one, making it slightly easier to recover should you receive a penalty (and we have the guide here). However, should you require to clean up your site and take away those bad links, links that are regarded as such can still pass link juice if they haven’t been penalised by Google which means you can lose the authority of your site just as easily as you might have gained it. This year marks the year for links being the key performance indicator for marketing, so what’s next for SEOs?

Google Penguin is getting another update

What’s classed as a good quality link?

The Panda algorithm began making people collect the most valuable links and not horde as many links as possible in an effort to gain more authority, now SEO is down to one mantra: quality over quantity. Penguin reinforced this fact by implementing an algorithm where users had to follow Google’s Webmaster Tools, and now over 50% of traffic is gained from organic search, but the content within those links adds the quality to them. What it takes to make a link of quality is relevance, human value, authority and trust.

Relevance

It’s a no-brainer to understand that relevant links are the only links you should be linking to since the algorithm deployment. The best ways to determine whether the links you’re linking to are relevant is by asking these questions:

  • Would you be happy to share the content to your friends and family?
  • Would you be happy to share the content to your clients, fellow SEO experts and the like?

If the answer is yes, then you’re likely to have the link you want to be linked to. A link can be related to your niche and website in four ways:

  • Domain to domain
  • Domain to page
  • Page to page
  • Link to page

Human Value

This comes down to the logic of where you believe human users will find your content, which comes down to the structure and layout of your website. It also comes down to how the user feels when they’ve found and read your content, whether it was useful to them, did they feel happy to come across your content and possibly if they shared your content with their friends. This is where it’s good to analyse your audience insights on a regular basis and see when your users navigate away from your site.

TLDR: if you’re making content that doesn’t hold any value to the user they’re bound to leave pretty easily, not to mention the ease of access to your site, the purpose of your business and how you can help them.

Authority & Trust

Google mainly uses links to your site to determine how much authority and trust you hold, meaning you’ll need to provide links to and from your site that spark relevance and quality to reflect that. Checking the authority of your site and those that link to you can be done using tools like MozBar and Majestic; any sites can be checked with this tool to weed out any sites deemed not worthy and you can also assess their backlinks too just in case they’re linking to too many spammy websites. Even the smallest of research on the backlinks you gain can make or break those follow links; you want to be in the right crowds to up your street cred.

Rounding up

Before the next phase of Google’s algorithm deploys websites ought to scrub up before it rolls out, which doesn’t do any website harm to do to ensure they maintain their authority status on the internet. Everyone’s working to make sure their sites are not penalised and above all – it’s quality over quantity.

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