How to Improve Your Website Ranking After Google's Penguin Update

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Every time Google makes a webspam update to their search algorithm, SEO pros, web developers, and bloggers scramble to figure out what they're doing right or what they're doing wrong in the dominant eyes of Google.

Since Google is famously vague about what their new formula is, it usually takes a month or two for the pros to get a sense of it and make the proper adjustments. Indeed, many even attempt to figure out how to game the system to outrank their competition.

However, Google is getting very good at identifying unnatural optimization schemes. In fact, Google's Matt Cutts openly stated that the recent Penguin algorithm update would penalize websites that were "over optimized" or "over SEO'ed".

This did not sit well with some SEO experts. Some even suggested that Google "jumped the shark" with this update in their hunt to display the best content possible in their search results. Others claim it's the end of SEO as we know it.

Well, Google hasn't jumped the shark and SEO is not dead, but it's become much more challenging to game the system -- which is the whole point of the update.

Thankfully, there are still proven ways to improve your website ranking after the Penguin update. Not many of the do's and don'ts have changed, but some have.

Significantly, since Google is punishing unnatural appearances, you should avoid any unnatural mechanisms for optimization and put more emphasis on appearing organic. Feed the Penguin diversity; content diversity, keyword diversity, and backlink diversity.

Here are some basic tips to increase your ranking on Google:

Don'ts

1. Don't use tricks on your website like hidden text loaded with keywords, or cloaked pages with redirects.
2. Don't have multiple pages on your website with significantly similar content.
3. Don't ONLY use the same anchor text for all backlinks leading to your homepage.
4. Don't buy bulk links from web spammers.
5. Don't overuse keywords in articles or throughout your website.
6. Don't ONLY target backlinks from highly ranked websites.

Do's

1. Post as much quality original content as possible.
2. Allow syndication of your articles and write guest posts for a variety of websites with 'do-follow' links.
3. Get your bulk backlinks from social bookmarking sites instead of spam link networks.
4. Diversify the keywords used in links back to your site.
5. In addition to repeating the main keyword phrase once or twice in articles, use a few synonyms as well.
6. Target backlinks from highly relevant websites no matter what their PR strength is.

In conclusion, just feed Google's penguin exactly what it wants and look natural doing it. For instance, if you have 80% of your backlinks coming from PR4's or higher, or if 80% of your backlinks use the same anchor text, or if 80% of your content is promoting the same keyword phrase; Google will likely sense something is unnatural about your website. Diversify in these three areas and your ranking will begin to climb once again.