Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist Introduces and describes Noble Samurai's "Beat the Penguin" checklist In this video we describe Google's Penguin update and what it means for your business. Inside The Mind Of A Penguin It s absolutely CRITICAL that you have a deep understanding of WHAT the Penguin update Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 1
actually is, what it s trying to achieve and WHY it may be affecting you. In the past, Google used the text of the links that pointed to a page to gain a better idea of what the page was about. For example if three different sites linked to a page and used the word digital photography in their links, then there was a good chance that the page they linked to was about digital photography. What this meant was that if you wanted your page to rank well for the phrase digital photography you could build links to your page that used the term digital photography in your anchor text. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 2
There were a number of legitimate ways to build these links including, guest blogging, commenting on other people s blogs, syndicating good quality articles, submitting press releases and building Web2.0 sites such as Squidoo lenses, and hub pages. Over time the number of links pointing to your page using the anchor text digital photography increased and often your page was ranked higher in the search engine rankings as a result. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 3
BUT with the introduction of the Penguin update Google has decreed that ANY form of link building is now a major offense and they are banishing your site into oblivion for creating backlinks REGARDLESS of the quality of your content. For the first time ever, the nature of your link network can actually DAMAGE your rankings. Now just to be clear, a single link can t affect your rankings, however, a particular pattern of links definitely can. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 4
To understand what kind of link patterns can cause you to lose your rankings and traffic, we need to look at the three different categories of links that point to your site. The first category of incoming links are brand links. These are links that contain your website URL, your product name or your company name in the link anchor text. For example let s say you ve started a company called Chess Lovers Pty Ltd. and your first product is an ebook called Chess For Beginners and the website for this product is www.chessforbeginners.com. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 5
Here are some examples of brand links that other people might use to link to your site: Visit http://www.chessforbeginners.com for some excellent advice Chess For Beginners is a great ebook for anyone wanting to learn to play chess The folks at Chess Lovers, sure know what they re talking about As you can see, all of these links include either the site URL, product or company name as anchor text. They therefore fall into the category of Brand links The second category of links are target links. These are links that contain specific keyword phrases that you are trying to target in the search engines. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 6
For example, let s say that as the owner of chessforbeginners.com you ve discovered that the search term that delivers you the most traffic is learn to play chess. When you launch your company, you create a Press Release that describes your product and the success you ve had teaching others how to play. At the end of the press release you include a brief bio that reads: "Bob Smith has been playing chess for 32 years and is passionate about helping beginners learn to play chess." Your article then gets syndicated to numerous news sites and as a result you end up getting a number of backlinks to your site that include the anchor text learn to play chess. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 7
Before the penguin update, these target links could help you to improve your rankings in the search engines. However after the penguin update, too many target links can cause your site to be kicked out of Google s ranking index completely. The third category of links are Generic Links. These are links that contain random words and phrases as anchor text. Some examples include: Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 8
Click here to read some excellent advice on how to play chess If you want to learn to play chess make sure you check this out Now while every site will have a mixture of brand links, target links and generic links, one of the most important factors that appears to trigger the Penguin penalty is the ratio of these three link types. For example if over 50% of your link network is made up of target links then there s a good chance that you have been or will be hit by the Penguin penalty. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 9
On the other hand, if target links make up less than 30% of your link network then you are probably going to be safe for now. When we first started looking into the Penguin update and the impact it was having on our users, we read through countless articles and spoke to several SEO professionals to try and figure out how to deal with Google s latest changes. Everyone seemed to have different ideas, and initially there was a lot of uncertainty about what had happened and what could be done about it. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 10
At the time, what we really wanted was a checklist that contained all the best strategies and practical techniques from around the web that could help us positively influence the rankings of our websites. We quickly realised that this checklist didn t exist and made the decision to create it for ourselves and for you. The result is the Beat The Penguin checklist, which you can download for free from the following address: http://www.marketsamurai.com/c/beatthepenguinchecklist So instead of spending HOURS ploughing through the thousands of misleading and confusing articles online, you can now work through a step-by-step checklist of the Top 25 strategies that will help you to get your website back on track. Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 11
If you work your way through this checklist you ll be able to safely optimize your website, reshape your link network, and improve your rankings over time. This in turn will help you to generate more traffic to your site, which will ultimately lead to more customers, more sales and more money in your bank account. To download your Beat The Penguin checklist, make sure to visit: http://www.marketsamurai.com/c/beatthepenguinchecklist Noble Samurai's 'Beat the Penguin' Checklist - 12