Right from the time of its emergence search engine has been giving more importance to content than any other factors. And with Penguin update Google has reiterated the same, though the approach is pretty different from previous updates like Panda. With this update search engine optimization has become more demanding and challenging and mandating webmasters to stick to Google’s webmaster guidelines.

What is Google penguin update?

Penguin is the latest update put-forward by Google. The update was released by Google on 24^th April 2012. The update is meant at punishing and hammering those webmasters who were indulged in unfair link building practices.  Unfair link building practices include keyword stuffing, link exchanging, dis-proportionate use of money keywords, getting links from low quality and unrelated sites. As a whole we can say that anything that can let Google think that you are manipulating Google’s ranking algorithm, Penguin may hit your website.

Possible Factors that can Trigger Penguin

Though there are many hidden factors that Google use to determine if you are indulging in unfair link practices. However, here we are boiling down to some important and well-known factors that webmasters should avoid doing:

Dis-proportionate amount of Anchor texts: First and foremost thing that webmasters need to do is analyzing the Anchor text portfolio of the website.  If more than 60% of your anchor texts are from money keyword there is something to bother about.  It has been  seen that websites that had more that 60% of their links acquired through money making keywords they were hit hard by Google.

The best way to eliminate any possibility of being hit by penguin webmasters need to maintain a fair balance between branded keywords, money keywords and other general keywords. For example if you are in the arena of content writing then “content writing service” or content writing firm could be the most possible keyword that webmasters want to target however they want to take into consideration that if your anchor text distribution is in extremely inclined towards an end Google may deem it un-natural and you may be punished for this. Hence, other anchor texts like www.yourbrand.com, click here, bet content writing firm, affordable content writing service, buy contents are some of the keywords that we can target.

Percentage of links coming from the Related Niche: Gone are those days when link matter now after penguin it will be the site that will matter. If you have managed to get links from websites and blogs that were not at all related to your website there is a need to reconsider your strategy. As per Penguin update Google will look at the nature of the sites from where you’re getting links.  A fair mix of unrelated and related niche would be a better option to go for however,  webmasters need to consider that the percentage of links from authority and niche sites would be appreciated and applauded by Google.

Content Relevancy the main ranking factor:

Viewing all those updates and filters it has now become evident that content has emerged as one of the primary and important ranking signal. The statement holds true not only for your website only but it is also important for sites that you are getting link from.

Hence as a conclusion we can say that search engine optimization has become more challenging and demanding than ever. All those previous techniques of link building like bulk bookmarking, forum posting, link exchanging are not going to work anymore and content-oriented Seo is something that search engines are looking for. So, the best way to pass Google Penguin update is to create unique, informative and appealing content that could value to your users and not the search engines.