Google Penguin Saved The Internet

How would you feel if you lived in a cesspool that is constantly being packed with more and more garbage and filth? How would you feel if wherever you go, there is a high chance that you will run into even more garbage? This is not an imaginary scenario for many users of the Internet. This is a hard reality for many Internet users while very common searches tend to return decent results. If you are looking for less popular searches or you use less popular search strings, you have a higher chance of retrieving garbage and unwanted results. That is the reality Google is dealing with. While it has revolutionized the quality of search results, it is continuously seeking to improve its user’s experience and the quality of its search results. That is why in a very real sense, the recent Google update Penguin may save the Internet just yet.
The Internet had a Cleanup Coming

How come? For many years, Google has become quite predictable. It was fairly easy to rank number one on search term. How? The classic model is fairly cut and dry. Step 1 is to find a keyword niche. Step 2 is look for their search volume and looking for search word terms, exact matched search terms that get medium to low traffic, but have almost no competition. These are called long-tail keywords. The next step is to build pages targeting those huge collections of those long-tail keywords and then have those pages link to pages devoted to more competitive keywords. The secret sauce to this interconnected web of long-tail keyword pages are backlinks put on web 2.0 or user profile sites or forum sites that target the long-tail keywords exactly. The end result is it was relatively easy to rank for a large variety of keywords. All it took was a little advanced planning and either outsourcing software or labor from India or the Philippines. It seemed for a while before Panda and Penguin rolled out that everybody and his dog was doing this form of SEO. There were just so many websites that did not have that much content or the content was very shallow. It was fairly obvious that these pages were created just to get eyeballs on ads or to collect E-mails. The SEO house of cards finally crumbled when Panda was rolled out and many web masters have found themselves even deeper in the hole when Penguin got rolled out.
Final Call to Get your Web Publishing Act Together?

What these two updates did was they raised an alarm to online publishers and web masters the world over that publishing crap websites will no longer work. You have to actually earn your dinner by at least providing better quality web pages and also the way you link to your web pages and the way you get back links, you would have to work harder at it. The old “said it and forget it” turnkey method that use a lot of software or outsource labor is in need of revision because the rules have dramatically changed. A backlink quality is all of a sudden very important and one key component of backlink quality that Google is paying more and more attention to is the “naturalness’ of your backlink footprint. Going on fiverr.com and ordering 10,000 software generated backlinks is no longer going to cut it (as if it cut it before). That is the bad news. In reality, it may also be the good news because by giving online publishers a key warning and also implicitly a key incentive to build quality websites with natural backlinks, Google is setting the tone for the overall quality of the Internet. While it is not straight out banning people from creating websites that make money, it is through its action which is handing out incentives and disincentives, that would influence people’s editorial decisions and business models. The old business model of creating 1,000 blogs, filling them up with garbage and siphoning traffic from the Internet and then collecting a big fat payday every week is fast becoming a distant memory. While that is still true with certain niches, it is fast becoming harder and harder to make money with the old methods. Google, in no uncertain terms, is telling web masters and online publishers that you will have to earn your money the old fashion way. You will have to make your money the old fashion way. You have to earn it. It would not be a very bad thing.
Google + Panda = Cleaner Internet?

Truth be told, the Internet is filled with garbage pages and if Google’s algorithm changes and numerous Panda updates push people to produce higher quality pages that actually take care of and respond to the needs of their visitors, it would not be such a bad thing. There is still money to be made online, but web masters have to make it by providing quality experience and deep high-quality content to their readers. Look at it from this angle instead of Google Penguin ending online publishing as we know it, it might have in fact saved the internet.
Photo Credit

This guest post was written by professional website and advertising copywriter Chris Walker for the Internet’s leading content marketing agency, MarketingCopyExpert.Com