Google is the best search engine in the world and it has been the best for some time. One of the main reasons that it can stay on the top is that it continues to improve itself. Google is good at finding websites that are cheating the system and it brings new updates at some intervals to penalize these black hat tactics. Penguin 2.0 is one such update.

Penguin 2.0 is an update in the Penguin series of updates and was officially rolled out this year on May 22nd, 2013. There was a lot of hype surrounding this update and people were eagerly anticipating its release. Let us have a look at the effect that this update has had on Google search results

 

1. Penalized Link Building Farms

Google has been placing high emphasis on inbound links to websites for a long term now. This basically means that if other websites are linking to you, Google thinks that you have link worthy content. However, many websites starting swapping links with each other in an “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” manor.

Many brokering websites started this practice which brought together websites offering linking space and websites that wanted to be linked. This was known as Link farms. As even worthless content was now generating inbound links through these farms, Google started penalizing them in each update.

Penguin 2.0 continues the tradition by penalizing this practice even more efficiently.

 

2. Branding efforts will pay dividends

Penguin 2.0 update will reward your online branding efforts by placing websites or authorities with better brands higher than others in the same industry. How will Google identify a website as better brand?

Google bots would look at the varied type of content being provided by the website and the quality of the content. The higher the variety and the better the quality, the stronger your brand and authority would be.

 

3. Quality Content is still the king

As mentioned above, Penguin 2.0 still places emphasis on providing quality content to the readers. Links are still important for ranking purposes but the links have to be link worthy.

Create quality content that is link worthy. What this means is that you can have an e-book, informative article, or a video that people would want to share. The more people want to share the link, the more links you are going to get for the content.

 

4. Social Media Campaigns gain greater importance

As branding and link building are given importance, social media campaigns gain even further weight. Focus more on running proper social media campaigns since social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are becoming an important source of generating off-page signals (links) to your website.

They will also help make your website a stronger brand and extend your market reach. Hence, if you do not already have a good social media campaign, get one, and do it now!

 

The Importance of Penguin 2.0 Update

Penguin 2.0 is an important update. It is not just refreshing of results. It is an upgrade. More importance has been given to good quality content and natural links. Approximately 2.3% of Us-English websites have been visibly affected by this update. If you are one of those hit, make sure that you are following white hat practices. Get more natural links and improve the quality of your on page content.

Penguin 2.0 is not something that should be feared but it is something that should generate more content creators since in the end, content is what matters.