Google's latest "Penguin" update in www.seomarketing101.net
Google's latest "Penguin" update in www.seomarketing101.net
http://seomarketing101.net/?post_type=post&p=144
by: Jonathan Leger
Google's latest "Penguin" update has really done a number on the search results. There are tons of theories floating around, lots of conflicting ideas about what was targeted and what works / doesn't work in Google now.
But how about some cold, hard facts backed up with evidence and examples? That's a lot better than gossip and chatter, and certainly more actionable.
My family and I recently visited the Dallas World Aquarium. They have a lot of great exhibits with some cool exotic animals, including penguins. One thing that really surprised me about the penguins is how bad they smelled. I mean, it was awful.
That's why I think Google's naming of their latest update is so fitting. Like real life penguins, Google's Penguin update just stinks.
The goal of this latest update was respectable enough: prevent spammy backlinking techniques from being counted toward a site's ranking in the search results. The problem was that Google seriously overreached in defining what exactly constituted "spam links". The result is that a lot of high quality sites disappeared from the rankings. What's left is, to put it mildly, often less than ideal.
Without getting too much into what I perceive as Google's philosophy (this is supposed to be a practical post, after all), let me just say this: in my personal analysis of the search results post-Penguin, it appears that Google either didn't realize that a large portion of high quality sites use the backlinking techniques they now consider "spam", or they are so full of their own idealism about what should and shouldn't be rewarded in their algorithm that they simply didn't care how much damage they were going to cause to the quality and relevance of their results with this update.
Okay, enough of that. Let's move on to the practical stuff. Now that the Penguin is here (to stay, apparently), what's different about how you rank in Google?
Authority Domains Highly Favored
Let's start with what's pretty certain. My own analysis, and the analysis of other SEMs that I trust and respect, shows that big authority sites are more heavily favored than ever -- even if that favoritism means far less relevant results. Amazon's stock value should be rising rapidly based on how many search results they're showing up for in comparison to just a few weeks ago.
Here's an example that shows Google wrongly favoring authority over relevance. Do a search for window blinds, and look at who's sitting in the number one position:
A site selling window blinds? Um, no. It's software. While I'm sure a small number of people searching for window blinds are, in fact, looking for that software (since that's its name), it's safe to say that the vast majority are looking for blinds to hang on their windows. You can look at the AdWords ads to figure that out -- notice that they are all advertising window treatments, not software.
The reason Google is showing the software result first is that the domain it sits on (stardock.com) has far more authority than almost every other site in the top ten results (with the exception of overstock.com, who sits at number ten). Stardock.com has some five thousand unique domains linking to it, compared to two thousand or less for the next eight results (and most only have a few hundred domains linking to them). So even though the other results are far more relevant to the primary use of the keywords, they lose.
So why isn't overstock.com winning if it's got more authority than stardock.com? After all, Overstock has almost three times as many domains linking to it as Stardock.
That brings me to my next point.
Anchor Text Still Matters (Just Not Quite The Same Way)
The reason Overstock isn't winning in the window blinds results is because the anchor text of the links aimed at its ranking page don't reflect the query very well. They have some links targeting "window shades", but not "window blinds". On the other hand, the Stardock page has hundreds of links from different domains with the keywords "window blinds" in the anchor text.
As illustrated by this example, Google is still relying heavily on anchor text to help it determine relevance. However, one of Google's stated goals in this and other recent updates was to lessen the value of what they consider "anchor text over-optimization". That is, if the page has a large number of links to it, and too many of those links contain the exact keywords, the value of those links is lessened.
I'm seeing that in a lot of the search results now. More pages are ranking that have the terms in the anchor text of the links without having too many of their links loaded up with the exact search terms. Whereas before lots of pages with tons of exact-match anchor text were ranking.
What's the percentage you should shoot for? That's hard to say, because there's a lot of variation. It seems to be on a query-by-query basis. For some search terms the percentage of exact match anchor text is very high, but it's high for almost all of the top ranking pages. For other queries where exact-match links used to be very prevalent, the current results have far less exact keyword anchor text. So it's a mixed bag, but despite what you may have heard, anchor text is still very much a factor in ranking post-Penguin.
Were Exact Match Domains Targeted?
I've read a lot of claims on popular SEO forums that Google was targeting exact match domains (EMDs) in the Penguin update, but that's simply not the case. For every person who made that claim another member posted that their EMDs are doing better than ever.
I can attest to that. Many of Josh Spaulding's case study sites that he did for our Keyword Canine launch are ranking very well for their keywords -- and Josh likes to use exact match domains. Take a look:
more in http://www.jonathanleger.com/ranking-in-google-after-penguin/
http://seomarketing101.net/?post_type=post&p=144
by: Jonathan Leger
Google's latest "Penguin" update has really done a number on the search results. There are tons of theories floating around, lots of conflicting ideas about what was targeted and what works / doesn't work in Google now.
But how about some cold, hard facts backed up with evidence and examples? That's a lot better than gossip and chatter, and certainly more actionable.
My family and I recently visited the Dallas World Aquarium. They have a lot of great exhibits with some cool exotic animals, including penguins. One thing that really surprised me about the penguins is how bad they smelled. I mean, it was awful.
That's why I think Google's naming of their latest update is so fitting. Like real life penguins, Google's Penguin update just stinks.
The goal of this latest update was respectable enough: prevent spammy backlinking techniques from being counted toward a site's ranking in the search results. The problem was that Google seriously overreached in defining what exactly constituted "spam links". The result is that a lot of high quality sites disappeared from the rankings. What's left is, to put it mildly, often less than ideal.
Without getting too much into what I perceive as Google's philosophy (this is supposed to be a practical post, after all), let me just say this: in my personal analysis of the search results post-Penguin, it appears that Google either didn't realize that a large portion of high quality sites use the backlinking techniques they now consider "spam", or they are so full of their own idealism about what should and shouldn't be rewarded in their algorithm that they simply didn't care how much damage they were going to cause to the quality and relevance of their results with this update.
Okay, enough of that. Let's move on to the practical stuff. Now that the Penguin is here (to stay, apparently), what's different about how you rank in Google?
Authority Domains Highly Favored
Let's start with what's pretty certain. My own analysis, and the analysis of other SEMs that I trust and respect, shows that big authority sites are more heavily favored than ever -- even if that favoritism means far less relevant results. Amazon's stock value should be rising rapidly based on how many search results they're showing up for in comparison to just a few weeks ago.
Here's an example that shows Google wrongly favoring authority over relevance. Do a search for window blinds, and look at who's sitting in the number one position:
A site selling window blinds? Um, no. It's software. While I'm sure a small number of people searching for window blinds are, in fact, looking for that software (since that's its name), it's safe to say that the vast majority are looking for blinds to hang on their windows. You can look at the AdWords ads to figure that out -- notice that they are all advertising window treatments, not software.
The reason Google is showing the software result first is that the domain it sits on (stardock.com) has far more authority than almost every other site in the top ten results (with the exception of overstock.com, who sits at number ten). Stardock.com has some five thousand unique domains linking to it, compared to two thousand or less for the next eight results (and most only have a few hundred domains linking to them). So even though the other results are far more relevant to the primary use of the keywords, they lose.
So why isn't overstock.com winning if it's got more authority than stardock.com? After all, Overstock has almost three times as many domains linking to it as Stardock.
That brings me to my next point.
Anchor Text Still Matters (Just Not Quite The Same Way)
The reason Overstock isn't winning in the window blinds results is because the anchor text of the links aimed at its ranking page don't reflect the query very well. They have some links targeting "window shades", but not "window blinds". On the other hand, the Stardock page has hundreds of links from different domains with the keywords "window blinds" in the anchor text.
As illustrated by this example, Google is still relying heavily on anchor text to help it determine relevance. However, one of Google's stated goals in this and other recent updates was to lessen the value of what they consider "anchor text over-optimization". That is, if the page has a large number of links to it, and too many of those links contain the exact keywords, the value of those links is lessened.
I'm seeing that in a lot of the search results now. More pages are ranking that have the terms in the anchor text of the links without having too many of their links loaded up with the exact search terms. Whereas before lots of pages with tons of exact-match anchor text were ranking.
What's the percentage you should shoot for? That's hard to say, because there's a lot of variation. It seems to be on a query-by-query basis. For some search terms the percentage of exact match anchor text is very high, but it's high for almost all of the top ranking pages. For other queries where exact-match links used to be very prevalent, the current results have far less exact keyword anchor text. So it's a mixed bag, but despite what you may have heard, anchor text is still very much a factor in ranking post-Penguin.
Were Exact Match Domains Targeted?
I've read a lot of claims on popular SEO forums that Google was targeting exact match domains (EMDs) in the Penguin update, but that's simply not the case. For every person who made that claim another member posted that their EMDs are doing better than ever.
I can attest to that. Many of Josh Spaulding's case study sites that he did for our Keyword Canine launch are ranking very well for their keywords -- and Josh likes to use exact match domains. Take a look:
more in http://www.jonathanleger.com/ranking-in-google-after-penguin/