Over the last few months every one has been scrambling to recover their online businesses from the penalties being dished out by The Big “G”, and many have failed to see any improvement in their listings and some have even given up and closed their internet businesses down.
Over the last two months we have been extensively testing five different sites, three of which were penalized and two that have seen no change what so ever in the Google Index.
Regardless of whether you are marketing products online or own your own business online you need to know what is happening to avoid any silly mistakes that could effect your online income significantly.
Is It Really All About Backlinks?
With these five sites all have used the same link building strategy and only three saw any form of penalty while the others continued to grow.
There is so much information about link building and avoiding a Panda or Penguin slap from Google that it would make anyone’s head spin, from varying your link text to not linking to heavily to your home page, not to mention forums blog comments and anywhere else you can add links to your site.
Well what you may not know is that these updates started back in January 28th, 2011 with the Attribution Update with the last major algorithm update being on the 25th of May 2012 Penguin 1.1.
Many experts are saying that if you were effected by Penguin, and many were, then you need to remove links especially from low quality sites and most importantly footer links.
I am going to throw something out there and say right now, “Don’t Remove Any Links” leave them and concentrate your efforts to build more in content links to your pages rather than wasting your valuable time trying to have webmasters remove links from sites all over the internet.
Even though backlinks are part of the problem it is not the complete picture of why many of these sites are being penalized.
Why Bounce Rate And User Experience Will Play A Major Role
If you are doing any form of marketing online you need to know your sites statistics and exactly what it is that Google sees. Many people right now are telling you to stop using Google Analytics to monitor your website online, this is another huge mistake as Google has many other ways to track the metrics of your site, from visitor time to bounce rate.
As an example of how you can be tracked without Analytics consider this, most people involved in online marketing will have the Google Toolbar installed in their browsers or will be using Chrome as their web browser both these services send information directly to Big “G”, these are just two of the many ways you can be tracked online right now.
There is an old saying that you need to remember here, “Keep Your Friends Close, But Keep Your Enemies Even Closer” this is so true today with what is happening online with the constant updates. You need to be embracing Google Analytics as your friend so you can see what Google is seeing with your site, such as the bounce rate and time on site, these are two main elements of presenting a good user experience especially when you speak about the Panda update.
This is the first in series of posts we will be releasing with all the information we have uncovered about recovering any site. What you will learn is how to beat the current penalties, as well how to completely structure your site for a better user experience.
- Setting Up Your Analytics Account
- Understanding The Penguin Penalty
- What Is The Panda Penalty All About
- Do You Know That Duplicate Images Can Hurt your Rankings
- How To Lower Your Bounce Rate And Increase Your User Experience
- Site Navigation How It Can Effect Your Bounce Rate Significantly
- Get Better Results With Your On-Page Optimization
- Building Links And Growing Your Site Traffic
These are just the first posts we will be releasing on our site to help you not only get a better understanding of what is happening with your online business but how to avoid or recover and prosper in the years to come.
AffiliateX, thanks for breaking this down. It’s nice to see a straight forward blog post about what you can do for you blog, after the penguin and panda updates.
Needless to say, I got slapped pretty good by Penguin. But I have seen a rise in traffic, bounce rate and time on site since then. Only because I did what you are discussing here in your article. Awesome!!
Thanks for sharing!
Galen Morgigno
The Handyman Of Network Marketing!
Hi Galen
The biggest problem for everyone trying to recover is that there is only information addressing parts of the problem no one is actually telling you to look at the big picture and that Penguin is actually part of Panda not a stand alone update that needs to be addressed.
This is actually my first time here on your site, Thanks for sharing this awesome post!
I agree with looking at the big picture, you never really truly know how Google works even when they roll out a new algorithm update. Saying that, it’s also difficult trying to stay up to scratch with all the competition on your tail!
This looks to be a great series! One thing I was really worried about was the chance of backlinks being the reason I get penalized, but then when I saw that only 3 blogs got punished, I cheered up a little. What do you think is the best way to go from here?