5 Ways to Avoid Google Penguin 2.0 Wrath

Google Penguin 2.0 has been there for over 4 months now and has fired down a huge number of sites which it thought were adding to the spam on the internet.

First of all, let me give you a short glimpse of what Google Penguin is.

Google Penguin is a spam filtering algorithm from Google designed to improve search results for its users and take down those sites which have low quality backlink profile, have content written only with money making in mind and follow black hat SEO techniques.

Recently, Matt Cutts from Google announced that Penguin 2.1 has been rolled out and some 1% of the total searches on Google will be affected.

Those websites following link spam, content spam or any kind of strategies which according to Google were not in consideration with its content guidelines were hit and their organic traffic fell by almost 50-80%.

If you too have been a victim, or rather I should say were punished by Penguin, then there are some steps you need to take immediately to recover and save your blog or website from coming into the eyes of Penguin again.

5 Ways to Recover and Avoid Google Penguin 2.1

1. Quality of Links :- Low quality of links are considered worse than having zero links for your site. Low quality links can land your site into the spam category and it may face the hammer forcing it deep down in the search results. Identify the low quality links which are currently pointing towards your website and try to eliminate them. You can use the parameters such as PageRank to identify the website quality. I would say a site with minimum Pagerank 2 or 3 would be a safe bet to build links on.
2. Quality of Content  :- Do not stuff your content with keywords which are only aimed at ranking high in the search engines or which are highly profitable and competitive. Penguin is very much capable in identifying the content used for the SEO from the content which is used for spamming search engines.
3. Build Links Naturally :- Do not use any software or bot or auto link building services as these can land you in trouble. The biggest drawback in using such services is that the links built by them are of low quality and are built in very short span of time. A huge number of links built for a site in very short duration of time is a red flag in the eyes of Google Penguin. Use natural link building techniques like guest blogging, blog commenting or press releases.
4. Anchor Texts Are Crucial :- A vast number of sites are nailed down because they had unnatural number of anchor texts with money making or related to money keywords. Never keep pressing for only one keyword throughout your blog or site. Use of LSI keywords is a must.
5. Don’t Be Completely Dependent on Google :- One way to escape the timely atrocities of Google is to make Google your secondary or an alternative source of traffic. This might sound awkward but this is the best escape plan. Build a loyal base of readers and subscribers who come directly to your blog looking for information and offers. Most of the biggie blogs are not affected by Google algorithm changes as they already have a huge reader following which doesn’t come through Google.

Though we all know that organic traffic is the best traffic when it comes to conversions, sales and profits. And so far, Google is the sole king of organic traffic providers. Hence we must try not to default against its guidelines.

What steps are you taking to avoid Google Penguin 2.1 penalty? Did I miss anything? Just let me know and drop your views below.