Have you ever heard such a mass outpouring of grief and outrage than that which came spilling out of the SEO community after Google’s Penguin and Panda updates?
Even the usually more sedate SEO pundits were using words like “apocalypse” and “Google declares war on SEO”, and even “SEO is dead”.
Incredible.
And a complete overreaction.
To be fair, the Google Penguin and Google Panda updates were, arguably, the most significant changes to their algorithm in the company’s history.
But the idea that these changes mean that SEO is now impossible, or even that Google doesn’t want people to optimise their website, are a long, long way off the mark.
The unfortunate reality is that many of the people who were hardest hit by these changes had been making the mistake of either trying to “game” the system or focusing all their efforts into one avenue of SEO.
Of course Google wants to try and restrict this kind of activity. That’s what they’re supposed to be doing. If they didn’t tweak their algorithm to weed out the websites that are taking advantage of loopholes and producing low-quality content that is drowning out the good stuff, then how long do you think it would be before people started migrating to Bing?
In actuality, the SEO firms who have been focusing on a broad range of ethical optimisation saw little or no damage to their client’s rankings.
And in some cases, even saw improvements.
The ones I feel most sorry for are the people who trusted the SEO firm they hired to do a great job without realising the optimisation being carried out on their site was, shall we say, less than optimal.
The good news is that if you’ve been spanked by a Penguin or a Panda (maybe even both), that doesn’t mean your website is dead in the water.
SEO is still alive and well, and it’s entirely possible to recover your lost rankings.
If you’d like a Penguin/Panda audit, please click here and contact our team today.