Take a peak at your Google Analytics. If you are seeing your website traffic is at an ALL time low in the past month you may have been struck by the Penguin, or Googles’ third update to its algorithm. Colloquially known as Penguin 3.0, this update launched on October 17th (according to Google Webmaster Hangouts) and has caused many websites to lose a majority of its traffic! But why did this happen?
The purpose of this update is to penalize websites using black hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, such as poor link sources and automated link building to scam networks. The penalizing causes lower rankings, while websites with a healthy link portfolio and other good SEO practices are brought higher on search engine ranks. A healthy link portfolio can consist of links from major editorial websites (e.g. CNN, local blogs posts, directories) that provide a hyperlink pointing to your website. This tells Google search bots, that you’re a reputable source, allowing your website to rank higher on search engines.
This update may affect your website even if you’re simply running paid ads through Google, such as product listed ads. Any hindrance on a websites reputation and relevancy on key search terms could increase costs for keywords that were otherwise cheap for your website. Take a look at the websites’ organic traffic and conversion traffic to see if it’s affected. Then, triple check your website with this free penguin penalty tool http://reconsideration.org/.
