Everyone who writes about SEO has recognized Google's Penguin update as the hot button issue at the moment. After a staggering 350,000 sites were affected by the company's recent algorithm revisions, the SEO community fell into a bit of disarray over the topic. Across the board, reaction to the update has been mostly negative as only a few actually notable spam and aggregator websites were impacted by Penguin while thousands of respectable businesses were hit as well. It's a subject that is generating a lot of buzz and has led to sites devoted to the subject and commentary from our own Jill Johnson.
 

Due to all the talk about the damage dealt by Google's Penguin update, many small business owners have plenty of questions over whether their own websites could be affected. Since SEO development can be a complicated and often overwhelming subject, there's a lot of uncertainty felt by site managers regarding what they should be on the lookout for. Although the mechanics behind Penguin are still very much unknown to the SEO community, Google has made it clear that there certain page elements that webmasters will want to avoid.

Keyword Stuffing
A SEO tactic almost as old as the internet itself, many disreputable online marketing agencies try to game Google's site crawlers by placing as many possible keywords onto a page as possible. Better known as "keyword stuffing," this technique is one that has been falling gradually into disuse as algorithms continue to be improved. Still, there are those web designers and black hat SEOs that insist on piling as many search terms onto a page as possible in hopes of more varied SERP showings.

According to Google, sites with excessive search terms are among those directly targeted by its Penguin update. As such, it's important that one keeps his or her website clear of unnecessary keyword implementation. If a term is haphazardly thrown into a page's content with little to no purpose, then they should be removed ASAP. The longer those keywords stay on a website, the higher the chance that Google will punish the site by either dropping its SERP placement or de-listing it entirely.

Irrelevant Text
Despite how smartly designed most modern search algorithms are, some webmasters still try to exploit nonsensical text to add more weight to a page. The principle design mentality behind this black hat SEO tactic is that it's the links that matter most and the other content is pointless. This sort of unethical optimization method is more common on article publishing directories and various spam sites rather than official websites.

Yet, regardless of how absurd these pages often look to readers, some web designers still try to add extra pages onto their sites devoted exclusively to pointless writing with preferred links. As the secondary focus of the Penguin update, irrelevant text is going to earn these types of sites a huge penalization from Google. As such, it's important that webmasters take the time to reduce their sites' content to relevant and purposeful content.

As new information about Penguin becomes available, we at WebiMax will relate these details to our blog readers. Should anyone happen to have any question at the present, I can be contacted at jwersits@webimax.com.