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What We Need to Know about Penguin 4.0

In the past, Penguin updates have served as unique indicators to changes in Google’s web crawler algorithm. Often, update to the algorithm have resulted in sites being penalized for purposely trying to deceive the search engine in an attempt to land at the top of the search results. Penguin 4.0 is the latest update to Google’s search engine algorithm and the most recent update and when implemented is expected to have a global impact due to the multilingual design.

Fact #1: Link building changes you make affect you in real-time.

Historically, one factor that webmasters and SEO experts have become highly sensitive to is having an entire site permanently sandboxed because they were suspected of trying to out-smart Google. Website owners should be happy to hear about the modification that will be rolled out with Penguin 4.0 that will start to penalize sites on a page by page basis.

Fact #2: Google now ranks on the page level VS domain level.

Website owners used to fear Penguin because they thought they wouldn’t be able to recover from it.  The new Penguin 4.0 changes things in a way. Penguin will devalue spam and adjust ranking of individual areas of a website based on spam signals and not impact the ranking of the entire site.  Sections of the website, or pages that have spam or other issues will be impacted, but the entire domain will not be penalized.  This will allow webmasters to make changes to the problem areas of the website.

Fact #3: You just can’t cheat Google.. you just can’t.

According to Google, “Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting the ranking of the whole site.” For website owners and webmasters, this is great news because it means that instances of site-wide sandboxing will occur less often. Coupled with real-time updates to the algorithm this means SEO experts will be able to deduct more quickly how to implement fundamental SEO techniques for positive results. Articles and pages leveraging unnatural link building efforts will be penalized.

Penguin 4.0 shows the industry that Google is keeping up with the times and working hard to respond to reward SEO professions using white-hat SEO techniques. The newly introduced algorithm clearly demonstrates the ability to comprehend how site owners are approaching SEO.

For anyone serious about SEO, Penguin 4.0 is a change to step up your game. Below are four best practices that every SEO expert should continue keep in mind:
1. Don’t try to out-smart the algorithm – Focus your attention on building natural, high-quality links pointing to your site.
2. Balance your digital footprint. Keep your efforts attract the search engines looking natural.
3. Don’t Buy Links – Dedicate time to organically building links to your site. Work with high-ranking legitimate sites.
4. Use only reputable SEO service providers. – Spend the extra dollars to work with professional SEO experts with a good reputation.

Conclusion

The rules of online marketing are in constant flux. To stay ahead, you need to stay focused on continuously improving your SEO skills so you can stay on Google’s good side and push your website to the top position in search results.