Google unleashed a ton of “hurt” for many webmasters and site
owners in 2012. It seemed like every other day there was a major change
to their all-important algorithm or the formula Google uses to rank
content on the web. The previous year’s Panda Update and its countless
follow-ups, which went after low-quality sites, wasn’t enough for
Google’s engineers and execs. They next attacked “webspam” with a
vengeance using the Penguin Filter and its subsequent updates.
Needless to say, the fallout and casualties were enormous. The
Penguin Update proved quite severe and all encompassing for many sites.
If Google found your site’s link profile to be “unnatural,” then you
were left scrambling to fix the issues. To be fair, Google did send out
over 700,000 emails to webmasters who use Google Webmaster Tools,
warning them that their sites had too many bad, low quality links.
Google didn’t say exactly specify the problem, just noted that there
were unnatural” links coming into a site which put that site in a bad
light. Webmasters were left wondering just what links were in play and
how to fix them. This was extremely torturous for site owners who wanted
to do the right thing and in many cases, simply couldn’t figure out
what they were doing wrong or what exactly Google wanted?
The simple truth is that Google won’t provide webmasters specifics,
because then those webmasters and other ruthless individuals could use
the information to “manipulate” Google’s rankings. Transparency has its
limits, especially when obtaining top keyword rankings can mean
thousands, if not millions of dollars in the bank.
Many SEO experts believe Google created a simple link profile using
the “anchor text” in backlinks coming in for each site. If this profile
didn’t conform to the standard norm, your site drew a Penguin Penalty.
Most sites not trying to manipulate Google’s Search Index with
keyword targeted backlinks or link schemes, have a certain ratio of
“keyword backlinks” with most of these via the URL or brand name of the
site in the anchor text.
In addition, a natural link profile has a certain ratio of backlinks
with neutral anchor text, such as “click here,” “try this site,” “click
this link” and so on. Of course, there will be a certain ratio of
backlinks which target your “keyword,” but if you have 60% or 70% of
your total backlinks containing the same keyword you’re ranking for,
then something is certainly not natural about those links. Also, in a
natural link profile, most sites will only have one or two links coming
from another site. If you have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks
coming from certain sites, this may draw the Penguin’s attention.
The Penguin Update, which Google launched on April 24th of 2012,
created complete chaos for many webmasters who have been
“over-optimizing” their sites and actively building links to boost their
Google rankings. Other sites and webmasters simply got caught by pure
accident – their backlinks may have been placed in a blog footer,
resulting in the same keyword backlink turning up in hundreds or
thousands of links – drawing a red flag from Penguin and causing a major
disappearing act within Google.
For a while it seemed like Penguin would destroy the web as we know
it since many webmasters and site owners stopped linking out to sites,
even ones they thought valuable for their visitors, simply because they
feared retaliation from Google or from the site owner. Millions upon
millions of links, disappeared from the web overnight. Some site owners
even took Matt Cutts’ advice and simply abandoned their domain and
started over with a new site or a new domain. Ideamarketers.com is one
site which comes readily to mind.
Penguin had a snowball effect. Many good sites lost valuable links
because other webmasters feared Google’s wrath, and either removed the
links or “no-followed” them en masse. Even if a site didn’t draw a
penalty from Penguin, many still suffered a major downgrade, especially
if one had a small “mom and pop” operation and not a big brand name
site. The true devastation caused by Penguin and Google in 2012 may
never be known but the damage is huge and long-lasting.
As a result of webmaster complaints about the difficulty of
contacting thousands of sites to get links removed, Google introduced a
Link Disavow Tool in GWT. Now webmasters can easily disavow any bad
links by creating a simple text file with one URL per line and submit it
to Google via Google Webmaster Tools. This has calmed the masses
somewhat and help dispel the whole notion of negative SEO.
Another major area of damage was to SEO and SEO firms. Many
webmasters wrongly believed Penguin killed SEO in 2012. SEO firms no
doubt lost some customers who believed SEO no longer worked and link
building, even strictly white-hat linkbait, is now dead and a waste of
time.
However, many SEO experts now believe (and granted they’re a little
biased), webmasters and site owners shouldn’t stop building high quality
links to their content. Actually, the opposite is true, they just have
to keep the right “anchor text ratio” so these links appear “natural” to
Penguin and Google. Depending on your competition, some suggest using
the following ratios: 35% for your URL as the anchor text and other
brand keywords, 20% for your main keyword, 25% for related LSI keywords
(just use Google search and take note of the keywords which pop-up when
you’re typing in your main keyword) and 20% for generic/neutral
keywords.
Of course, you have to gradually create these quality links over a
period of time and it would probably be best to keep that exact keyword
ratio of 20% much lower, so as not to draw attention to one’s site.
There are those pundits, however, that argue webmasters and site
builders, shouldn’t be building links or optimizing their sites in the
first place. Everything should happen naturally and your site, if the
content is superior, will rise to the top on its own accord. Good luck
with that strategy.
Keep in mind, Panda and Penguin weren’t the only Google Updates,
causing headaches for webmasters and site owners this year. For some
webmasters, the EMD (Exact Match Domain) Update was just as devastating.
If your exact keyword domain had poor or little content – it would no
longer rank high in Google for your chosen phrase.
Then there was the Top Heavy or Page Layout Update. If Google found
your pages had too many links (especially ads) and too little content
above the fold, these pages were dropped in the rankings. Finally, there
was the Pirate or DMCA Penalty. If your site had repeated copyright
violations such as DMCA takedown requests, it may have suffered in the
rankings.
Forget SEO and rankings for a moment – what was even more painful for
many webmasters in 2012, was the move to make Google Shopping a paid
service. This caused a major upheaval. One webmaster even went so far as
comparing Google to a drug dealer. First supply it free, then start
charging for it. This view may be a little extreme, but the switch took
away another revenue stream from many small sites and businesses who
couldn’t afford the extra costs.
However, a more far-reaching change may involve Knowledge Graphs and
Google’s bold move to becoming the destination, rather than a means to
your destination on the web. If Google is serious in becoming a
publisher, rather than just a search engine, it could spell disaster
for all webmasters. This change could mean every webmaster and every
site could potentially have Google as their main competition. At the
very least, this new direction could present another major hurdle before
a web searcher clicks through to your site.
Overall, for the embattled webmaster and online marketer, it seemed
like Google really took the gloves off in 2012 and came out swinging.
The fallout and devastation are real and have proved fatal for many
small businesses and site owners who depended too heavily upon search
traffic from Google. Most learned a very brutal lesson – never put all
your eggs in the same basket – always diversify your traffic sources.
Just makes one wonder what Google has in store for 2013? Will we all
be feeling more lucky next year? Don’t count on it. Even webmasters and
site owners who have been left unscathed by the countless recent updates
and changes, shouldn’t become too complacent and smug. While this may
be just short of fear mongering, everyone has to remember that until
Google is no longer the dominant search engine with control of the
majority of the web’s search traffic, it can inflict as much “hurt” as
it wants to deliver and your site may just be in the crosshairs next
time.
All opinions and views expressed in the article above are solely those
of the author – Titus Hoskins.
Post from: SiteProNews
Google Caused a Ton of “Hurt” for Webmasters in 2012
