If you’ve been doing SEO for a while, you’ve probably heard of Google’s Penguin algorithm that combats spammy and low-quality backlinks. 17tth October, 2014 was a highly significant date in SEO world as Google officially has released Penguin 3.0 update with the core aim to show more quality results.  Sites that somehow managed to bypass from the Penguin 2.0, an algorithm that combats spammy and low-quality backlinks as well, should now be detected by the latest update. The Penguin 3.0 is just an updated version of the Penguin algorithm that specially designed to target web pages that used to amplify their rankings by tricking Google through unethical SEO practices.

Actually, Google was never 100% satisfied with the outcome of the Penguin 2.0 update before and that’s why started manual penalty as well to support the automated penalty. So Penguin 3.0 is a much expected update by Google’s spam control team.  It has been reported that approx 1% English results have been affected for that automated penalty.

While working to recover sites from Google’s penguin 3.0 penalty we have primarily found the below 3 issues –

1. Unnatural link structure
2. Too many outbound links that passes link juice
3. Poor quality content

Generating a mass of inbound links was always a significant part of any SEO strategy since the stone age of SEO as number of inbound links determined website’s importance and ranking. The most widely discussed feature of all Penguin updates is the way it treats backlinks. All Penguin algorithm updates are designed to penalize sites having artificial link structure irrespective of the fact that those links were acceptable before and helped to improve ranking.

You can be buried deep within the search results if you have been using wrong SEO techniques now to create backlinks to achieve page one ranking desperately. However SEO is not dead – ethical SEO practices will definitely reward your site to hit the bull’s-eye gradually – slowly but steadily, thanks to the rapidly advancing science behind search engines and the new Penguin!

Outbound Links

If your site contains too many “dofollow” external links that would be suspicious to Google and your site might be affected by the latest Penguin update.  One simple explanation is Google will think that you are selling links. We have seen the sites having a link directory or link page which was made before for link exchange etc., external links from several blog posts to other commercial sites are penalized with the Penguin 3.0 update.

Poor Quality Content

If even a single page of your site contains any duplicate or spun content that can affect the entire performance of your site. Be it just an innocent blog post or other page, such pages may be the culprit.

Hope now you have a clear insight to protect your site from Penguin 3.0 and all such future updates. Google algorithm are being updated on much shorter cycle than in the past, making Google more coherent at identifying unethical ways used to boost ranking and traffic. Always sustain a quality website that follows Google Webmaster guidelines and you will probably never get affected by any algorithm changes.