If you haven’t heard that Google Penguin 2.0 launched in May 2013 then you might want to read on. There are some great new additions that will help honest sites using white hat tactics rise ever further to the top and help keep black hat techniques banished completely.
Penguin 2.0 Hates Web Spam Even More
Web spamming has always been the bane of any website’s existence as far as Google Penguin is concerned. That means using any black hat tactics for SEO has been getting you lower and lower down the ranking with a higher and higher possibility of rank suppression. 2.0 is going to go after web spamming with a vengeance, no longer just searching the home page, but going deeper and deeper into sites to find the culprits.
Advertorial Rankings
Google realizes that there are actually a lot of valuable content available through advertorials. However, they do not want to see advertorials getting top rankings. They are exploring ways to keep advertorials down lower on the rankings and focus on helping legitimate “authorities” find more prominent positions higher up.
Cluster Rankings
If you have ever done a search and were frustrated by a “cluster” of rankings appearing one after the other on the first page of your search results, fear not. Google is also trying to stop this from occurring as well. Cluster rankings will be more likely to appear on following pages, and this is not to say that had a site been achieving cluster rankings they will be banished from the first page. As long as they are using white hat tactics it just means they won’t be hogging all the glory.
Little Gray Areas
Google is also making an attempt to help out the little guy who is doing everything by the books but has been questioned by Google due to too strict algorithms. It’s not clear how they will do this, but it is hopeful for you if you have been using all the above board tactics but are still struggling to be found.
