While Google’s Penguin search engine update may have led webmasters to improve and streamline both website content and linking practices, life after Penguin has greatly affected the landscape of the web as a whole. Fluff, non authoritative web pages and low quality content has pretty much been phased out as most search engine queries almost perfectly match with all result listings.
A lot of established websites not using best search engine optimization practices have difficulties maintaining their rank, and continue to be beat out by newer, more dominate web properties that utilize a good mix of the principles highlighted before Penguin’s update. If you use Google to enter specific queries that can be answered in direct terms, websites that have the most up to date, clear and relevant entries undoubtedly are listed at the top. All of these changes have just a few things in common.
Less Is More – Why Updated Search Listing Now Contain Clearer Results
Lengthy, repetitive, unclear search results and website listing are regularly pushed down the SERPS by Google after Penguin. Due to the increase of the mobile web, Google users want to spend even less time tracking down relevant links. After Penguin, Google started to review websites that have the most authority and began giving them more and more weight. This means that web pages with the most authority, regardless of origin, generally show up first. This search engine algorithm update works to cut out the fat, presenting only lean, rich content sources available most readily to web surfers.
Authority is Now King
If you can’t back up a major claim, it’s best not to make it post Penguin. There’s a lot of information on the web, and some of it can be confusing to have conflicting information indicated in search listings. Authority was a big factor for this update. Linking to resources and references is a positive trait, while more content authors are being identified. In essence, web users are more favorable to websites that have a strong and authoritative voice. Letting visitors know who is behind a website is the type of trait that Google now rewards after the Penguin update.
Social Media Popularity Impacts Rankings
It’s hard to say how social media interactions influence Google after Penguin, but there is clearly a definable change. Websites that curate content via social media are more readily promoted. Managing social media accounts is no longer seen as just a smart way to grow traffic, it is now an element that Google weighs when making SERP determinations. Social media now appears in real time on Google search engine results, which in and of themselves represent the structure of how things have convened.
Although webmasters now have to work harder to get better results, ranking higher for unique search terms is actually easier that it was under Penguin. Non authoritative websites can quickly gain clout via social media popularity, with regularly updated content and through association with authors with verifiable expertise. Websites are rewarded when they back up their content with factual sources and answer search queries with short, clear answers. Obvious keyword stuffing can actually lead to penalties, which webmasters are finding it to be more difficult to recover from.
In short, Google Penguin has helped the cream to rise to the top of search engine results, with websites that have failed to improve or be updated over time falling to the very bottom. There are now even more opportunities for emerging websites to become recognized on the web after Penguin.
