SEO For Beginners: Major Google SEO Updates

Lesson 4

Proceed to Lesson 5

In order to understand how Google works and so you can avoid getting penalized, you need to understand the major updates Google has made in the past. This will also allow you to predict future Google’s movements.

 

Major Google Updates

 

Panda

Panda first ran in 2011 and now runs a few times a year.
It’s purpose is to stop low quality content from appearing in search results.

Low quality content includes:
• Content that is poorly written (usually generated using a software).
• Content that is very short and too brief to be valuable.
• Content that is copied from another page making it duplicate content
• Content that adds no real value.

 

Penguin

Penguin first ran in 2012 with the purpose of detecting unnatural backlinks.
This is also known as BlackHat SEO.

Penguin finds unnatural backlinks by analyzing:
Link Quality
Sites that have obtained their backlinks naturally will have both low and high quality links.
Sites that have not obtained their backlinks naturally will often have a lot of low quality links or only high quality links.

Link Velocity
Natural backlinks are created over time and the number of backlinks that are created slowly increase as the site grows.
When sites have unnatural backlinks they often get a lot of links in a short period of time which is then followed by a quick decrease.

Link Diversity
Natural sites obtain their links from various places.
Example: Articles, Blog commenting, Forums, etc,.

Unnatural sites often obtain a large number of links from a single place.
Example: Blog commenting.

The anchor text of the links should also vary.
Too many links with the same anchor text can trigger a Penguin Penalty.

 

Mobilegeddon

Mobilegeddon first ran in 2015 with the purpose of ensuring that websites are mobile friendly.
This is to accommodate for the massive growth of mobile users.