Gary Illyes, Google’s Search Quality Engineer, has announced at Search Marketing Expo East that there is an excellent chance that Google will be launching their much-awaited Penguin 3.0 algorithm update next week.
Hundreds of thousands of web owners devastated by the Penguin 2.1 update that hit on October 4, 2013, have eagerly been awaiting this release in the hopes that Google’s new Penguin 3.0 update will help them recover the rankings they lost after being severely penalized back in 2013.
How Should you Prepare for Penguin 3.0?
The Penguin updates focus of backlink quality and anchor text. Links are essential to your rankings because they act as signals to the search engines of your authority and your relevance around the web. The general premise behind recovering from Penguin 2.1 and thriving under Penguin 3.0 is to have had your toxic, mass-produced or poor quality links of the past removed, and to work to earn natural, high-quality links to put in their place.
The specific remedies to Penguin 2.1 have been clearly understood for some time: clean up your link profile, disavow links that you cannot get removed, create a natural more quality link profile through quality content generation, real networking and social and content sharing.
It appears that Penguin 3.0 will not just be a refresh but a far larger algorithm update–which explains why it took Google almost a year to complete. Here’s what you can do, as well as what you can expect, for Google’s Penguin 3.0 update:
Submit Disavow Files
From the announcement, it looks like Google will finally be considering the disavow files that thousands of site owners have submitted through webmaster tools. This is welcome news for those sites that have been submitting disavow files to Google and working hard to remove toxic links.
Any entries made prior to 2 weeks ago will be considered, however, those made in the last few days or weeks may not be taken into consideration by the time Penguin 3.0’s rolled out. Unfortunately, as Gary Illyes mentions in his announcement, making last minute disavow file updates will probably not help.
Clean Up Your Link Profile
It is anticipated that the link removal requests and cleanup that performed over the last year will have a large impact on rankings. This means that if you’ve been working to clean up your link profile, you should be reaping the rewards of your labor soon.
Take a Good Look at Your Anchor Text
Unnatural anchor text has been a big factor in the Penguin 2.0 and 2.1 updates. It is anticipated that non-exact match and natural looking anchor text will help greatly with Penguin 3.0.
Earn New, Quality Links
Finally, new link creation through natural methods such as earned media, social sharing, content creation and marketing, networking with others in your industry, getting your content shared around the web and more should also improve your overall link profile and impact your rankings. If you’re looking to generate a wider online presence and earn those kinds of quality links, our eBook on Content-Centric SEO takes an in-depth look at the kind of SEO and content sharing strategies you need to be successful after Penguin.
All in all, for those of you that have weathered the storm over the last year, this update should be most welcome news.