subject: How To Diagnose Ranking Problems Post-penguin [print this page] When Google introduced its new algorithm in April of 2012, all hell broke loose in the search engine marketing circles as many companies began to see a precipitous slip in their rankings. When it started, many search marketers and/or website owners had no idea what had hit them. It was as if the SEO industry was coming to an end. They lost key clients and money as they frantically tried to make sense of their predicament and save the day. For those who had engaged in best practices in influencing rankings, the effect of Penguin coming on the scene was very minimal, even though they still had a lot of work to do in meeting the new standards.
This article has become necessary because some companies are still grappling with their ranking problems post-Penguin. It is either because they have not followed Googles recommended guide or they have become used to their old ways so much that they are unable to adapt to these new changes. Others have reacted angrily at Google and are making plans to give it all up. If you find yourself in any of these situations, the first thing to do is to come to terms with the new order of things in the industry and admit that you have made mistakes in the past that has cost you. Once you have done that, it is now time to get down to finding the right answers.
In order to find out what exactly the problem is, it is important to get some concrete data. This is not the time to do guess work and speculate. Your efforts must be guided by empirical data that points to facts and suggests ways of solving the problem. To do this, you will need analytical tools to sieve through the enormous traffic data. Open Site Explorer, Ahref and Majestic SEO come in highly recommended for this all important task.
The part of the data that must be analyzed is your inbound links. This is because Penguin devalues any inbound links/anchor texts that signals manipulation and are considered unnatural. Penguin is able to detect unnatural links or anchor texts in your inbound link profile if the anchor texts appear too often in terms of percentage (primary keywords should not be more that 2% and exact-match keyword anchors should not be more 20%). Such anchor text or links will be penalized and hence will attract low link juice. To carry out this activity, export your data to an excel spreadsheet and perform the calculations on your entire inbound link profile.
The results will show that some of your keywords have been over-optimized and could well be the reason your website is nowhere to be found in the search rankings nowadays. If you do not know how to carry out this audit, there are search engine marketing companies that are willing to help out.
