Last Friday night, the SEO Community was rocked once again by the newest update by Google – dubbed “Penguin 3.0.”
Typically, the Penguin updates are met with much confusion as it takes a bit of data sifting to identify what the actual target was. This is no exception. Google does not disclose any information about what physical actions they are taking in their algorithm updates, so it is up to the SEO community to identify what to do and what not to do.
Currently, the SEO team at AGI is monitoring a number of websites in an effort to identify a trend. For instance, the last major Panda Update impacted Press Release websites and websites that re-distribute that content. Being as that we are so early into this release, it is hard to identify these trends.
The history of Google Penguin can allow us to make some predictions, however. Google is notoriously involved with the SEO community, with their finger firmly on the pulse of what the newest and greatest trends are. Past Penguin updates have targeted General Web Directories and Article Directories that were excessively used. There is also the aspect of on page spam that was combated as well which caused us to re-think On Page Optimization tactics.
So what do we anticipate to be the red flag now looked at by Google? It is incredibly tough to say. I will however say that because of the last Panda Update, my team will be monitoring websites that excessively use Press Releases as a primary source of backlinks. We will also be monitoring the effect of keyword rich anchor text links even further.
