You want to be there in those moments when poten­tial cus­tomers are look­ing for you in Google’s search results. But when­ev­er Google launch­es or updates an algo­rithm, it’s quite pos­si­ble your brand could sud­den­ly become invis­i­ble to con­sumers, espe­cial­ly if you’ve achieved high search posi­tions with a risky search engine opti­miza­tion strat­e­gy. Google Pen­guin 3.0 is the lat­est attempt by Google to clean up its search results. Could it threat­en your brand’s search vis­i­bil­i­ty?

After what seemed like a long peri­od of rest, the past six weeks have been very active for Google and the web­spam team. The end of Sep­tem­ber brought us:

• A Pan­da 4.1 update, which focused on con­tent.
• The begin­ning of the long await­ed Pen­guin 3.0 update, which focused main­ly on links.
• The anti-pira­cy update, which focused on demot­ing rank­ings for the “most noto­ri­ous” web­sites.

Now that Pan­da and the anti-pira­cy update have fin­ished rolling out, what about Google Pen­guin 3.0? Here are five things you need to know about this update.

1. What is Google Penguin?

Google Pen­guin hatched in April 2012 as an algo­rith­mic update designed to reduce the vis­i­bil­i­ty of web­spam in search results. It was­n’t just about links, but also about items on-site or off-site that vio­lat­ed Google’s Web­mas­ter Guide­lines.

Since then, the Pen­guin algo­rithm has been refined to focus main­ly on the links of sites that vio­late Google’s Web­mas­ter Guide­lines. It’s been more than a year since Google unleashed an update.

Before Pen­guin, when a site had bad links link­ing to it, Google would just deval­ue the links. This meant your site might have lost its ground, but you could eas­i­ly repair the dam­age with new links. Pen­guin does­n’t oper­ate this way.

If the Pen­guin algo­rithm hits your site, your site can’t recov­er until the issues that got you in trou­ble with Google are fixed and Google updates the Pen­guin algo­rithm. A web­site can’t recov­er from Pen­guin until Google has reval­u­at­ed it.

Algo­rith­mic shifts aren’t tech­ni­cal­ly penal­ties, because they can reward or pun­ish a site. When a site is “pun­ished” it has vio­lat­ed the focus of that algo­rithm and some­thing in the guide­lines. When this hap­pens the site receives a deval­u­a­tion. This deval­u­a­tion is often referred to as a ”penal­ty”, but tech­ni­cal­ly only man­u­al actions that appear in the Google Web­mas­ter Tools View­er are true penal­ties.

If Google Pen­guin, a dif­fer­ent algo­rith­mic update, or a man­u­al penal­ty has impact­ed the organ­ic traf­fic to your brand’s web­site, what­ev­er you do, don’t ignore it!

If con­sumers can’t find your site in Google’s organ­ic search results when they’re look­ing for your site or a prod­uct you sell, then you’re miss­ing out on traf­fic, sales, and con­ver­sions. And the longer a site waits to recov­er, the hard­er it will be to recov­er.

Your site won’t fix itself and Google won’t tell you where you’ve gone wrong, so you have to fig­ure it out and fix issues to recov­er the next time Google updates or refresh­es Pen­guin and regain your domain vis­i­bil­i­ty.

2. When Did Google Penguin 3.0 Rollout?

Pen­guin 3.0 start­ed rolling out Octo­ber 17. Most sites did­n’t notice its effects until Octo­ber 22 or 23.

When Google Pen­guin impacts your site for the first time, organ­ic traf­fic in your ana­lyt­ics will appear to have fall­en off a cliff. Slow traf­fic declines due to Pen­guin are very rare, and like­ly due to a dif­fer­ent issue.

At first glance, it appeared Pen­guin was done rolling out by the time the week­end was over. John Mueller, Google web­mas­ter trends ana­lyst, (@JohnMu on Twit­ter) even stat­ed it was com­plete, only to reverse his claim about an hour lat­er.

Pierre Far, anoth­er Google web­mas­ter trends ana­lyst, then announced via Google+ that it would be a “few weeks” before the slow roll­out was com­plete. As of the time of this writ­ing, it has not fin­ished its roll­out.

You can fol­low the Google Web­mas­ter Cen­tral Blog for the major announce­ments of algo­rithm roll­outs.

3. My Site Didn’t Recover From A Previous Penguin Update … Now What?

If your site was impact­ed by Pen­guin last year, and you’ve been wait­ing for Pen­guin 3.0 to recov­er, but you haven’t seen any pos­i­tive results in the past two weeks, there isn’t a lot of hope you will. We can’t be 100 per­cent cer­tain until the roll­out is com­plete, so don’t pan­ic and rush into mak­ing any changes just yet.

Once Pen­guin 3.0 has com­plete­ly rolled out, and you don’t see a recov­ery, what do you do then?

Disavowing Links

Did you cre­ate a dis­avow list? Were you updat­ing that dis­avow list as new “bad” links were found? And did you make sure all your dis­avow lists con­tained the pre­vi­ous lists link list as well as your new ones?

If you answered no to any of these ques­tions, you like­ly have a dis­avow issue. (Learn what Google says about dis­avow­ing links here.)

Google stopped eval­u­at­ing dis­avow lists after Sept. 18 for Pen­guin-relat­ed issues. Note: this date is approx­i­mate. Mueller stat­ed it was about a two week time frame pri­or to the first announce­ment about the refresh, which would put it at Sep­tem­ber 18th (give or take a day or two).

Link Removals

Did you go through the link removal process? Did you include those on the dis­avow list? Link removals, while imme­di­ate, can take a bit of time for Google to notice. If you did not include your link removals in your dis­avow Google may not have noticed.

In addi­tion, even though some sites have recov­ered with­out link removal (and even Mueller has stat­ed that the dis­avow can be enough). Our expe­ri­ence shows that link removals are often nec­es­sary. Google is like your par­ent and you got caught stay­ing out after cur­few. After they are done ground­ing you, they want to know you will do what you said you were going to do.

Replace Bad Links With Good Links

Did you rebuild links to your site? If you have a Pen­guin issue, you like­ly dis­avowed and removed 40 to 60 per­cent or more of your links. So you might have fixed your Pen­guin issue, but the rea­son you aren’t com­ing back up is your link pro­file is very weak.

Make sure to use a rep­utable SEO link builder or acqui­si­tion spe­cial­ist. Nev­er buy links – best case, you won’t get much val­ue from them; worst case, your site will once again lose search vis­i­bil­i­ty after the algo­rithm detects them or your site will be the unlucky recip­i­ent of a man­u­al penal­ty for unnat­ur­al links.

Tip: Recov­ery is an ongo­ing process. Bad links can show up in your GWMT for months, even years after you stopped pur­chas­ing them. Make sure even if you recov­er to do a month­ly link analy­sis and imme­di­ate­ly remove/disavow the ones you pur­chased.

4. I Think My Site Got Hit, What Now?

Google has said that Pen­guin updates will now come more fre­quent­ly. If your site gets hit, you will need an audit, a plan, and help imple­ment­ing it.

This means that you should find a rep­utable SEO agency or con­sul­tant that spe­cial­izes in forensic/penalty audits. Hire them and let them help you start on the path toward recov­ery. If you have an in-house team, you’ll still want to hire a per­son or agency that spe­cial­izes in audit foren­sics because often what seems like one issue, is real­ly anoth­er.

Just know­ing the release dates does­n’t mean that down­turn in your organ­ic search traf­fic is relat­ed. Recov­ery spe­cial­ists see these issues most every day and are more qual­i­fied to iden­ti­ty your issues and to help you cre­ate the plan to regain your site’s lost rank­ings and traf­fic.

Tip: Dur­ing any recov­ery process, be care­ful not use the same peo­ple that got you into the mess, because it’s unlike­ly they’ll be able to get you out. You will need out­side help, a new set of eyes, and peo­ple who spe­cial­ize in penal­ty and algo­rithm site recov­ery.

A site audit by a prop­er specialist/consultant won’t be cheap, but if you want a full site recov­ery the mon­ey you spend now will be worth its weight in gold once you recov­er.

Do have hope. We have yet to find a site that can’t recov­er. Giv­en the prop­er direc­tion and assis­tance, your site’s health can be restored.

5. Why Do Panda And Penguin Seem To Follow Each Other?

There actu­al­ly might be a rea­son for this pro­gres­sion.

Fili Weise (@filiwiese) a for­mer Google web­spam team engi­neer, explained it this way: “If a site gets a lot of back­links from sites that are Pan­da can­di­dates then that site may become a Pen­guin can­di­date.” So it seems if your site is linked to by a bunch of sites that have Pan­da issues, it may trig­ger a red flag on your site when Pen­guin runs.

This makes sense because many spam sites are cre­at­ed with poor con­tent qual­i­ty. Fol­low­ing that log­ic, a Pan­da update should pre­cede a Pen­guin; how­ev­er Pan­da is also writ­ten into the main algo­rithm, so you may not be aware it was run.

If you see a Pan­da update is com­ing and you have dis­avow­ing to do, get it in imme­di­ate­ly before the updates start to hap­pen.