Live spam, a panda & an oversized penguin! – SEO Video
Recently Matt Cutts (The Web Spam Prince) from Google announced from SMX West that we are expecting a giant penguin to declare war on all web masters who still do not adhere to the Google guidelines. Along with that he mentioned we are expecting Panda updates today & on Monday (18.03.13).
If your worried that your site might be affected, then you should have followed the guidelines….. 
Failing that, take a look at the neat page on the insidesearch pages on Google which gives examples of the types of sites they have removed from their results. The ‘Live spam‘ feed helps you understand trends from Google when penalising websites.
We have talked a little more about it in the video below… check it out.
Script:
Hello
and welcome to this week’s SEO Video blog, now as you know Google are constantly releasing updates and tweaks to their algorithm. These updates are designed to keep out poor quality websites from their search results and can affect the SEO industry when they are released.
In a recent conference Matt Cutts touched on a page on their inside search website that gave some insight into the work they are doing to keep out spam from their search results.
http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/fighting-spam.html
This page covers the different types of spam that they remove and the number of pages, with them removing over 600,000 websites from their search in June 2011 alone.
Some of the types of spam
included Unnatural Links from a site, Unnatural links to a site, Hidden text and keyword stuffing along with a lot more.
Have a look through the website and see some of the live examples of the websites they have removed, take note of why they have been removed and what to avoid. In some cases it is very easy to spot.
So what is going to happen going forward?
Google is not going to stop updating their algorithm with an announcement by Matt on a Panda update being released late this week, and a modified Penguin update on the horizon.
How do you keep yourself safe?
Being natural is key, make sure that all of the links that you build are natural and try to build good quality content that entices people to link to it rather than linking directly. Make sure that the content on your website gives something to the user and helps them find what they need.
Thank you for watching this week’s video blog, if you have any questions or tips yourself please leave them in the comments box in the supporting blog post.
March 19th, 2013
The big issue with these updates is that in most cases they affect both the end-users and the website owners.
I agree that building natural links and good quality content are key, but the percentage of websites that are actively maintained by SEO companies is too low and changes in algorithms such as these cannot be compensated by people who are not aware of them. Furthermore, even if they become aware of them, the damage has been done if they have not built their links the proper way right from the start.