Google Penguin: Have You Been Hit?
As an affiliate, there’s a good chance that you rely heavily on Google organic traffic. In short, the more traffic you receive the more money you earn.
But what would happen if your website(s) suddenly lost their rankings and your traffic tanked? Well, this is what many affiliates are currently dealing with thanks to the recent Penguin update.
How To Tell If You’ve Been Affected
Wouldn’t it be great if you could log into your Webmaster tools account for more information on how you have been affected? Unfortunately, Google never makes things this easy. Instead, you are on your own when it comes to finding answers.
According to a recent article from Hubspot, you may not learn anything from your Webmaster tools account but you can head over to Google Analytics for a better idea of where you stand.
There are three key details to look for:
- Have you seen a dip in traffic sometime after April 24, 2012? If so, there is a good chance that your site was affected by the Penguin update.
- Has your traffic remained relatively close to what it was in the past? It is time to rejoice – this means that your site probably was not impacted in any way.
- Are you receiving more traffic? Contrary to popular belief, there are always winners (among many losers) after any Google update. If you are seeing more traffic, it means that you benefited from the update.
You won’t even have to look at your traffic stats to determine if the Penguin update has affected you. Instead, you can simply check your revenue numbers. If they are down, there is a good chance that your traffic stats have fallen off as well.
Do you know where you were ranked before Penguin for particular keywords? If so, compare these rankings against where your site appears right now. This alone will answer many questions.
Did you make it through the Penguin update unscathed? Or did your sites take a hit?
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I think they should have termed this update ‘Lynx’ instead. It appears to have negatively affect sites with primarily outdated and contrived SEO links. The link value has been removed/ignored causing sites to fall in the search results for those keywords and now even some less important PR adjustments. But I think it also goes further into rating and categorizing sites by niche using keywords, keyword phrases and content quality.
Lynx! Ha. I think they’ll stick with animal names that begin with P. Panther, maybe? I think if Penguin penalizes sites with outdated and contrived SEO links, that’s fine. Better for the guys who have worked tirelessly to ensure our sites never had that in the first place.
I had a big increase in search queries and click on my website between 26 till 29th of April. Now it’s back to normal, like nothing happend. What can I expect?
We’re not sure what to expect just yet, but check out some updates here: http://www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com/blog/google-updates-panda-pagerank/ and http://www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com/blog/danny-sullivan-google-pengui/.
ah! My site traffic was stable till the 4th of may and now has dipped to less than half
What is the solution?