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Just a quick heads up that there is a new Google Penguin update on the way shortly….

A Google Penguin update is fairly imminent accordingly to all the ‘usual sources’, so now is the time to double check your website and make any appropriate on page and off page changes to your content, internal links and external links.

To recap, Penguin targets sites guilty of any or all of the following:

• Spun content
• Low quality content
• Cross-domain link schemes
• Keyword stuffing
• Too many internal links on pages
• Excessive links in web page footers
• Excessive on-page optimization
• Lack of onsite social signals
• Excessive use of anchor text rich navigation. For example, having a main keyword Eg. “Red  Widgets” as your site wide index page linking text instead of just “Home.”

Other things to remember for the Google Penguin Update

Get your home page bounce rate down as well and take a good look at your anchor text links on external sites linking back to your website.

Remember to mix up your link diversity so that as well as exact search term links with some variations. Eg. Include your business name, your website url and some generic words like ‘click here’ for example.

Wikipedia has a page dedicates to Google Penguin and it makes an interesting read.

Incoming search terms:

• www stevesims com google-penguin-update

The latest algorithm update by Google has caused plenty of worry and concern amongst numerous webmasters and site owners yet amidst all the worries, few have realized that it opens new opportunities like local results being included in Google results in a much more efficient and reliable manner. This will mean dramatically increased traffic for many small businesses looking for local customers.

It is interesting how so many online entrepreneurs keep on forgetting the fact that what quite often comes packaged as a setback or major problem in this life is quite often loaded with plenty of opportunities. These can only be see by those who care to quit complaining for a minute to take a closer look.

The truth is that the Google Panda update should be great news for every small business owner and webmaster. We already know that a growing number of consumers are these days using their mobile devices for searches on Google to find local service providers and products. What has been happening is that more often than not local businesses hardly show up in these search results. Instead what you might get are service providers situated in another town who have optimized their site to cover a wider area of reach. This happens mostly with large organizations out to dominate national markets. Their big names are difficult to compete with, especially for the small local operators.

Through improvements within the Panda Update that have been dubbed “Venice” Google has addressed this. The adjustments mean that Google can identify locations much more easily. Consequently the results are more relevant and greatly favor a locally based business. The system and algorithm are much more sensitive to a user’s location and thus serves results that are as relevant as possible.

However this does not mean that if you have a local site that would greatly benefit from local results being included in Google results you should sit back and wait for the traffic. There are a number of other changes that the Panda update brought into effect which if you ignore you will mean that you will never benefit from the local search advantages and opportunities that have come into effect.

For example the new update has been designed to reward websites and blogs that are frequently updated with fresh new content. What this means is that it is absolutely important that you ensure that there fresh new content on your site all the time with regular updates.

Also the way incoming and outgoing links are evaluated has changed. A higher premium has been placed on links that are relevant rather than general or irrelevant ones. And so you will have to be very careful to link only to quality sites that are relevant if you want your site to rank highly and thus deliver the local search traffic you need.

Above all else remember that the big emphasis at Google is to always improve on the user experience. The secret is that as long as you are careful to always think of improving the user experience for those visitors who end up on your site then you can be sure that whatever changes Google will make in future are bound to affect you positively and enable you to maintain the valuable local results being included in Google results.

February 2012 saw the rollout of Panda 3.3 consisting of 40 algorithm changes that include the so-called Venice update. It is quite surprising though that this particular update (codenamed: Venice) has been largely ignored by a lot of SEO professionals and webmasters.

Quick Overview of Panda 3.3

Since last year, Google has been calibrating its Panda update series with the end view of improving the quality of search results. It aims to eliminate search spam and garbage website. So when update 1.0 was implemented, a lot of scraper sites and the so-called content farms were hit terribly.

One year after, the Panda is now on its 13th incarnation with the rollout of update 3.3. One of the most significant changes introduced by Google is the reevaluation of link signals by turning off certain metrics. The update penalized web pages that use paid links and pulled down the ranking of many websites.

The enormity of the changes that affected link valuation overshadowed the significance of the Venice update. This is sad because Venice can change the landscape of global and local search results.

Venice Update Up-close and Personal

Google launched this update to improve local search rankings. It relies heavily on current search signals to trigger Local Universal results. It means that a user can now find local related information and sites from broad search queries.

In a nutshell, Google search can now detect a user’s location even if that user is not logged-in to his or her account. So if you type any particular search query, the results will deliver sites that are either near your place or those sites that have location-specific tags and signals.

The Impact of Venice to Website Owners

Universal and broad search results have become too crowded and Google wants to rationalize its search engine to deliver targeted local-specific websites. So if your website does not have local signals, then it could be edged out by other competing pages that adhere to the latest Panda updates.

It is high time for you to create a local strategy to obtain higher rankings on Google’s search results. The recent update seems to put more weight for location-driven web pages. This opens new ranking opportunities for your website.

How to Maximize the Significance of Venice Update

There are several crucial things that you need to do to take full advantage of the recent Panda rollout. Implementing a new SEO strategy is a bit cumbersome but if you take positive action now, then your site could dominate the localized search wars. Keep in mind the following:

1. Create targeted local landing pages. Make sure the URL of your landing pages contain Keywords + Location. It is also advisable to publish your company’s local address on the home page to take advantage of Google Places and maximize the impact of Venice.

2. Put Keywords + Location in your site description and title tags. This tactic will always work like a charm.

3. Publish content that contains your targeted Keywords + Location. Fresh and high quality content is always preferred by Google. However, you can repurpose existing articles in your web pages by making them more location-specific.

The Venice update increased the importance of local search. If you want to get the benefits of the recent Panda implementation, then you should start creating a local search strategy now.