Maintenance Tips to Help Penguin-Proof your Website Funnel

The “Penguin” algorithm update from Google has certainly taken web spammers down a peg (or SERP ranking) by dishing out penalties for things like overused anchor text and duplicate content. However, it’s not just nefarious websites receiving a penalty. Many well-meaning companies can have spam elements on their site specifically targeted by Penguin. In many cases, these problem areas of a website are a matter of taking some shortcuts with content development. But, there are no shortcuts in quality SEO! If you’re concerned about Penguin penalizing your site, devote some time to these areas:

Titles – To be effective for both user experience and SEO, title tags need to be informative and descriptive. Google has only gotten more critical of title tags – often changing them entirely when a page ranks for certain search results. The title tag is not the place to cram keywords and branding – exactly the kind of thing Penguin is frowning upon. Make sure your titles are true to the theme of their respective pages.

Internal Links – Out of all SEO elements, internal links have probably drawn the most ire of Penguin. When building site content [http://www.morevisibility.com/services-seo-copywriting.php], you are totally in charge of what pages to link to and what anchor text to use. It’s all too easy and tempting to over-link to certain pages and/or continuously use the same anchor text – often a perfectly optimized keyphrase. The same goes for giant page footers filled with internal site links. Overdoing this type of optimization will raise a red flag. Include variety by blending synonyms for your keywords and calls to action in your anchor text.

Back Links – While you have less control over your back links, you should be discerning about them when you can. For your company link building efforts, shoot for variety (with different types of sites, content, and anchor text) and quality (by creating original content for sites that are reputable and relevant to your business).

Content Layout – Of course, your site should be content rich. But when you start repeating yourself, you’re treading on thin ice. Two pages meant to target slightly different versions of the same keyphrase are not helpful to the user and could be flagged by Penguin as being duplicative. Read through your site and ask yourself whether a page really provides new and useful information, or if it just retreads information from another page of your site.