Which websites got affected by Penguin 2.0 and why?

Reason 1: Websites with spammy link profile and low quality links.

Solution: Remove these links manually as far as possible. Remove footer links and site wide links. Then, you can remove all the low quality back links with SEOmoz and aherfs, site explorer and back link checker. You may have got these links from low quality directories or spammy domains or from some other resources. Make a file of disavow with disavow tool and remove it with Google webmasters tool. Activate your social media; use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, to build genuine natural links.

Reason 2: Websites with duplicate content having irrelevant text which focuses on only keywords to fool the search engine spiders. Websites with unauthorized content. According to Google guidelines for webmasters “Create pages, content for users not for search engines”.

Solution: If your websites have unique, quality and original content, then there is no need to worry. But if you have applied copy and paste tactics, then remove this content immediately. Use Google webmaster tool to remove it from Google search results. Now, focus on generating new content for your website. It will take time, but you don’t have any other option.

Reason 3: Anchor texts with exact matches (money keywords) and too many back-links from irrelevant websites. Links from malware-infected sites and pages which are not indexed.

Solution: If you have more than 10 back links from irrelevant websites, then you will get punished. If you get too many back links within a short span of time, then you will definitely get punished. Remove these back-links. Make your anchor text natural. Remove keyword-rich anchors. Use more natural anchor texts, lsi (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, associated keywords, brand name, site URL and generic anchors for instance click here, click etc. Build new high quality inbound link with white hat SEO tactics and abide by anchor text rules.

Penguin updates so far

April 24, 2012: Penguin 1

May 26, 2012: Penguin 2

October 5, 2012: Penguin 3

May 22, 2013: Penguin 4 (This fourth implementation is most important, Google refers it as Penguin 2.0 internally)

Penguin 2.0 goes more deep in your website

When the webmasters were still recovering from the impact of earlier versions of Penguin and its tremors, Google and Matt Cutts introduced more impactful Penguin 2.0. This new version is the next-generation Penguin webspam algorithm which affected more than 2.3% of English-US queries. Penguin 2.0 goes deeper inside your website; previous Penguins had hold of your home pages.

This new Penguin has changed the whole scenario of SEO. Now, old spammy tactics won’t work here. This new Penguin will punish paid links, advertorial spam, link spamming, directory listing, spam indexing and enhance the ranking of authorized websites.

Penguin 2.0 focuses on three ‘real’; REAL AUTHORITY, REAL CONTENT and REAL LINKS.

Since the inception of Penguin 2.0, webmasters are going through lots of fluctuations in the SERP. Generally, webmasters who deploy Black Hat SEO tactics are affected by Google updates such as Penguin and can be harmful to the site.