So the much anticipated/dreaded Penguin update has been rolled out. A slew of SEOs are busy analysing the aftermath, some complaining about the sites being harmed for no reason, others complaining that the SERPs are still spammy… What will you do?
Google may be employing dozens of PHDs thinking hard day and night on how to tweak the algo, seemingly with the only purpose of making the SEOs’ lives impossible, but what if I told you you can outsmart them? Google has become so big that the right hand no longer knows what the left hand is doing. After each update they put out a feedback form because they cannot predict what results it will bring. Their Search Quality department seems to slowly deteriorate into a propaganda department whose main task is get people to believe every word out of Google’s mouth – but I hope you are better than that. I hope your inquisitive mind that brought you into this career keeps pushing you forward, making you research stuff rather than trust the official message.
Google is a business, a salesman. Their core interest is NOT telling you how things really work. Their core interest is to sell themselves, whatever it takes. They own the game, they set the rules, if you want to play you have to accept them. Right?
Wrong. We will never know for sure what the rules really are. Google is a sneaky player, they only tell you part of the story, they put on a face and you have to wonder what is behind it really. They play hide and seek with you. Their PR talk has it that they are becoming more open to communication with website owners but in reality they send you cryptic messages without ever telling you what it is that gets your site in trouble. You have to guess. If you guess wrong things can get worse for you.
Before you go and try ranking a site, do your homework. Everybody is talking about link audits – do you really know what link audits are all about? Do you honestly think you only need a link audit once you get penalised or get the dreaded email from Google? If you think so, you have no idea what due diligence is and should not be let anywhere near linkbuilding.
But how do you know these days what works and what doesn’t in your specific industry, with links getting disavowed left and right? And there is so much more to the picture than just links, how do you wrap your mind around it all?
Surely there are tools out there – but any tool is only as good as the mind operating it. Any data is only as good as your ability to read it correctly and make the right conclusions. So many things are not quite what they seem to be, it’s easy to get carried away in the wrong direction.
But fear not. On June 4th, I am running a workshop in London called “Link Audit as a Penguin Safety Measure“. The workshop is run in partnership with LinkRisk, a tool for evaluating link profiles by Paul Madden and his team. We also have a special guest, Dixon Jones from MajesticSEO. You will be trained by people who know pretty much everything there is to know about links, and the takeaways from this workshop are sure to change the way you approach your site’s links in many ways. Seats are limited so book yours now – and see you soon.