FLINT – It’s been two years since the last major update and Google has announced the release of the 4th major Penguin Update. These update announcements can get pretty techie and filled with so much industry jargon that most people just quit trying to understand what the announcements are trying to say.

We’re going to try really hard to not do that. We want to give you the information on this latest release simply and in a context of what it will mean to your company.

WHY DO WE HAVE PENGUINS?

Before we dive right into this latest update, it’s important to understand how we got here and to remember what Penguin was designed to do.

Penguin rolled out in April of 2012. The focus of Penguin was and still is, to reduce the search engine spamming that some webmasters and SEO’s do by, predominantly, developing “unnatural” backlinks.

And, though unnatural backlinks were and are the primary focus of Penguin, it also is on the look-out for other quality scores like:

  • Too many links on a page
  • Keyword stuffing
  • Any tricks that are developed to improve search rankings

Essentially, if you’re doing anything to game Google’s algorithm, Penguin was built to find you and decrease your site’s rankings. Pure and simple.

HAVE YOU BEEN HIT?

To read the rest of this column, click on http://3sixtyinteractive.com/what-is-new-penguin-update/