Google’s Penguin update grabbed the majority of online marketing headlines over the past two weeks with Matt Cutts, hyperbole, and fear motivating many SEO practitioners to expect the worst before the worst even materialized.
Now, post Penguin 2.0 launch, even though there’s sufficient evidence to support limited panic, we actually find the majority of folks managed to survive the challenges of Penguin and in fact see little or no impact.
So what’s an SEO practitioner to fear given the current overkill on Penguin-focused headlines?
To provide a little fodder, and cause for discussion, here’s my slightly warped predictions (and solutions) on possible SEO challenges to plan for or against!
1. The 1-2 Content Punch
Solution: Site owners should conduct a comprehensive site content audit, consolidating anything that looks, feels or ‘tastes’ similar, and ensure proper optimization of consolidated page and 301 redirects from old to updated.
Short term: Review and catalog site content around themes.
2. The SEO Bandaid
Solution: Site owners will no longer be able to ‘kick the can down the road’ forcing user-centric research, production and implementation of best practice SEO (which becomes better practice usability and engagement.) Onsite content, platform and delivery mechanisms will align with consumer intent and context to satisfy user needs, opportunity and personalized experience.
Short term: Investigate responsive design.
3. The Broken Flipper Focus
Solution: Site owners will need to assess site topics and build silos of expertise driven by expert personalities. As search engines seek to associate known identities to known entities (such as articles, content, sites, topic authorities, learning institutes etc.), an identity’s digital footprint will support topic expertise and allow site owners to gain ‘flipper focus’ to propel a site’s visibility in search results.
Short term: Identify topic authorities, implement authorship, and plan content around their expertise.
4. The Penguin in the Headlights Paralysis
Solution: Site owners should ensure that the greater availability and real-time immediacy of data is an “end to a means”, not a better decision enabler. Smart webmasters will leverage real-time data to support or inform historical or trend datasets allowing them to consider all likely scenarios for a “least imperfect” SEO strategy.
Short term: Catalog data sources, identify overlap, assign value, and then define short, medium and longer term KPIs.
5. The Pain in the Backend
Solution: Site owners should use Google’s current toolset to help identify and resolve site speed and performance issues. Site owners should be monitoring Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics performance data frequently and leverage site pinging tools to ensure site availability and content delivery speeds are optimal for a great user experience. For large sites, load balancing, cloud-services, geo-based or CDN delivery should be a consideration and constantly tested to confirm users’ experience remain within acceptable (better) parameters.
The Penguin is Not Dead Yet!
Penguin 2.0 frenzy may have (just) passed, but many more updates are pending or lurking behind the nearest ice flow.
“Recovery” is not an inevitable goal, rather it is both an avoidable scenario and a mitigable situation through planning and consideration of the possible SEO challenges born from future ‘Penguin’ style updates.