An Overview of Google’s Penguin 4.0 Update, its Effect on Websites and How to be in the Game Again

Google Penguin 4.0 Update

Online marketers must have been stunned by this latest Penguin 4.0 update as it arrived a bit late, after almost a gap of two years. Notably, Penguin 3.0 was released on 17th October 2014 while Penguin 4.0 algorithm update took place on 23rd September 2016. As Google has rolled out the earlier Penguin updates to make the internet more user-friendly, pertinent, and qualitative, Penguin 4 holds the same purpose.

What are the Highlights of Google’s Penguin 4.0 Update?

·         This latest Google algorithm update is based on ‘page level backlinks’ and not the entire website as compared to earlier updates. If there is a bad link in a certain page ranking that particular page will get affected, but the whole site won’t get affected. 

·         Google Penguin 4.0 Algorithm allows these changes to be in ‘real-time’ which means website owners will no longer have to wait for confirmation as the process gets faster and more automatic.

·         This update restricts internet doers who achieve good SERPs with spammy backlinks. It helps make the internet stricter and supports the websites which are working to remove bad links to maintain ranking.

How to Recover from Google’s Penguin 4.0 Update?

A considerable number of websites are affected by Penguin 4.0 and webmasters have started working on unnatural link warnings and Google Penguin 4.0 Penalty Recovery. Let’s know in brief about these unnatural or bad links.

These links are mainly used to manipulate PageRank or achieve high SERPs by infringing Google Webmaster Guidelines. So, if your business website is linking to plenty of blacklisted or spam sites, it will be considered as a low authority domain and surely will be backfired.

Moreover, the context is an important part of a website’s existence and all pages of the website must have specific and relevant content. Also, Google values the quantity and diversity of the content. However, if similar content is repeated many times on a website to get more backlinks, it will catch you.

If you are using anchor text for PageRank shortcuts, modern Google bots will easily make out this coding thing and you will be penalized. Excess reciprocal link exchange can also be harmful. If you are blog commenting on a similar website as that of yours, both will get counted under a low authority domain even if the website is verified.

Till now you must have come to know that Penguin 4.0 is going to grab hold of spam link profiles as fast as possible and keep low-quality sites away from ranking well in search results. Hence, it has become mandatory for websites to frequently audit links and also execute cleanups immediately as required.

A manual backlink audit is always better and more credible than using online tools. You will have to consider all types of bad links including low-quality, directories, PR sites, article directories, social bookmarking sites, paid links, site-wide links, link farms, and so on. So, by following particular steps in the Google manual action, you can get rid of the bad backlinks and clear your way to be in the game again!

Though webmasters have suffered a lot from this Penguin 4.0, the good thing is that Google always gives you a chance to recover and you will, right?


Gangadhar Kulkarni

Gangadhar Kulkarni is an internet marketing expert and consultant having extensive experience in digital marketing. He is also the founder of Seogdk and Director at DigiTechMantra Solutions, a one-stop shop for all that your website needs. It provides you cost-effective and efficient content writing and digital marketing services.

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