By Updated 24th October 2014 – I have written a followup article: what to do if either you have been effected by Penguin 3.0, or you didn’t see any positive results despite working to remove a Penguin algorithmic issue.
It seems like a long time ago since Penguin 2.1 launched on 4th October 2013, and that’s probably because it was over a year ago!!! Now that’s a very long time when your business is suffering from an algorithmic devaluation of some of your main keywords in SERP rankings. And as we know, it may even take two Penguin refreshes or updates for your rankings to be restored fully.
There are mixed reports coming through that Penguin has at last refreshed. I bet there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people across the world praying that this latest Penguin update will reward them for all their hard work cleaning up shoddy link profiles.
It’s all very well saying that marketers should diversify their channels and not rely on Google for traffic. However, the reality for many businesses is that they need Google organic search traffic to survive, and this Penguin update will surely come as a very welcome surprise for those fortunate enough to recover.
But what if it doesn’t help your site?
Well it’s a bit too early to understand the full extent of Penguin 3.0 (which is still to be confirmed by Google ATM) here in the UK, so don’t panic just yet; it might take a couple of days to roll-out, like previous Penguins did.
There is also the Google Venice algorithm to bear in mind. In the past week we’ve seen loads of new primary keywords rank locally for clients (even on my own site). I’ve, for example, ranked well for ‘SEO agency Leeds’ for quite a while, but all of a sudden I’ve now started to rank for ‘SEO agency’ if a query is made from a location close to Leeds.
This has of course nothing to do with Penguin, but in the past I’ve found it useful to check if a site has an algorithmic keyword devaluation for a primary term.
If you still don’t seem to be ranking for keywords which you knew to be under Penguin algorithmic devaluation, you should check from different geographic locations. Google Penguin may have released you from it’s clutches, but that doesn’t mean you deserve to rank in all locations. This was something that I noticed after the Penguin 1.2 update.
More information about Google 3.0 coming as we see how things unfold.
Good luck everyone!