Google’s Penguin Update 4.0: What It Means to Your Website

I hope that most of you heard of the Latest Google’s Penguin Algorithm Update 4.0 on September 23rd, 2016.
And I'm here to help you figure out what exactly that means for your website and its effect on your Websites.

Let’s start from the basics - Google had made Penguin a part of its core search algorithm, which means it is now updated in real-time! (Real-Time: September 23rd, 2016). Because of this, sites that have been penalized won’t have to wait as long to recover (the last update was about two years ago).

So what kinds of factors does Google Penguin 4.0 target?

Things that could trigger a penalty through Google Penguin 4.0:

• Links on your website that lead to spammy or irrelevant content.

• Links to your website from another source that was either paid for or requested by you.

• Links to your website from sites that are considered “low quality” or spam.

• Excessive links to your website from sites with unrelated or irrelevant subject matter.

In the midst of this change, it’s a perfect time to take a good, hard look at your site links. Any cleanups made at this point will be immediately read by Google, and that could make big things for your rankings!

It also may seem counter-intuitive, but notice that most of the factors Google Penguin 4.0 looks for are actually not even on your website. That’s why it’s important to have a thorough analysis of which pages are linking to you, in addition to pages you link to.

Google algorithm updates are always alarming, but make this is a great opportunity to boost/repair your back-link health and thereby possibly improve your website/webpage rankings all in one go!