GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 26 - October 2013

Saving a sinking ship: How to identify and survive a Google penalty By Mike Litson M anual, algorithmic, Penguin, Panda. . . . You’ve probably heard one or two of these terms used in conjunction with “Google” and “penalty” in recent times. In fact, there is currently a great deal of confusion and misinformation about penalties – especially their diagno- sis and removal. So you think you have a penalty? What’s next? Unfortunately all penalties were not created equal, and understanding how your site has been affected and why is key to rectifying the problem. Like a sick patient, you must play doctor to your domain, diagnosing the problem before prescribing treatment and nursing your site back to full health. And perhaps more like a vet, you need to know when to put the site down. It seems that penalties have again come to the fore following Google’s Penguin 2.0 update, so it’s worth a quick refresh on what that update entailed before taking a closer look at penalties themselves. Key algorithm changes for affiliates • Penguin (bad backlinks) • Panda (poor quality content) • Above the Fold (too much advertising at the top of the page – often missed) • Fresh (mostly important for sports- book affiliates and simply involves Google promoting new content over old when it’s more relevant; specific foot- ball match terms are a good example) • Venice (with this update finally im- pacting casino and poker search, it won’t help affiliates because it boosts sites with a local land-based presence) While you can’t do a lot about Venice, you have complete control over Above the Fold (ATF) and Panda. And ATF is the easiest to deal with in terms of removing negative consequences. Panda has done the majority of its dam- age; most of the issues involved are a re- sult of old legacy content which in most cases you’re better off deleting rather than trying to reword. Saving a sinking ship: How to identify and survive a Google penalty