Penguin 2.0 is live – Don’t Panic Yet – Here’s Why.

A couple weeks ago I did a post on Penguin 2.0.  Last night, Matt Cutts officially announced that it is now live; but that doesn’t mean you should freak out if you see a drop in traffic or sales today or this weekend.  Remember, holidays can cause drops in traffic, maintain regular traffic patterns but drops in sales and normally have weird traffic patterns because of people traveling.  Because people are getting ready to leave for Memorial Day weekend in the US, this could be the cause of abnormal traffic and shopping patterns.  Here are some things to think about and why you should not react just yet.

Holidays.

Memorial Day travel is here.  If your traffic looks fairly normal, it could just be that people are leaving for their vacations.  Sometimes they look and see they cannot get overnight shipping so they don’t shop and will buy products when they are on vacation.  Other times they wait until they get back to purchase the product.  If you noticed normal traffic or somewhat normal traffic today, but a drop in sales, wait until after Tuesday and look at your stats from last year to see if the patterns are similar.

Wait until next week.

Sometimes the roll outs can take a couple days to really show an effect, especially if it’s a holiday weekend.  By waiting until next week you can see if everything returns to normal, if traffic grows or if you actually did get hit because your traffic has dropped.  Don’t worry about today and this weekend.  Try to keep a clear mind and remember that this is normal for holidays.

Wait and read the forums and Matt’s blog next week.

Before you start to panic and make changes, wait until we have more information on what it is really going after and who was affected by the new update.  I have a video below that explains what part of this is and a few things to think about that Matt says in it.  Once we have more information on what was affected and why, then you should start to think of a plan to help pull your site out of the penalization.  If you got more traffic from the update, then wait to see what caused the traffic increase and you can continue to work on what you did to gain the increase.  You’ll also see posts from people who got hit and who grew and you can then analyze their sites and methods and work on adding those to your strategies so that you can potentially grow with the new update as well.

Reacting over a holiday or right after an update can sometimes do more damage than it can do good.  By waiting to see the other types of sites that were hit, what disappeared from the rankings and what replaced them, you can better create a strategy moving forward to help your SEO and increase your rankings.  Here is the video from Matt and a few things to look at.

1:56 Matt talks about advertorials or buying an ad in the middle of content with a link. This is something I have been saying for a long time. Review sites, blogs, Mommy Bloggers, etc… are openly saying that they will sell these to you. If you think you got hit and these are some of the links you’ve been focusing on, it may be time to go and ask them to remove the links to your sites, disavow some of them (this can be tricky) and to add that you should not work with sites that have a PR friendly section and say you will get links for the reviews and advertorials from your strategies.

3:09 – Matt talks about p*rnographic queries and other things that may include payday loans where they may be finding a lot of spammy link building methods. If you are in these niches, you may want to start looking at what dropped and who ranked higher. By looking at who lost their rankings and who gained their rankings you can now start to see why the sites that lost traffic did and what you can do to help your site rank better by looking at the sites that gained traffic.

3:20 – Matt talks about link spammers. This is nothing new but you should pay attention to what he is saying they were looking at specifically.

3:43 – Matt talks about hacked sites and malware distribution. Although I don’t think this includes Affiliate Adware distribution and adware in general, it may take a hit on some of the sites that could collect other information or have an effect on the person’s browser. I personally do not think Matt or Google knows enough about these sites to properly know which to rank, but they could be a target in the future.

4:40 – This is the first time we get some actual insight into Author rank in Google. He hints around saying that if you have built up credibility by being an authority in a certain niche, your site or pages could get a boost in the rankings. If you aren’t using author rank or linking your Google+ profile, you should definitely start now that Matt is talking about it helping to boost you in the rankings.

This last update was one that had a huge effect on the web, but it is too early for you to react. Wait until next week when there is more data on the sites that got hit, the sites that gained rankings and then see why they either lost or gained their positions in Google. You may want to wait until next week and then read the different forums and Matt’s blog.  Once you see what everyone is saying, you can then figure out what you should do to either get your rankings back or to figure out how you can get even more rankings by looking at the sites that grew because of the latest update.  Feel free to share your own thoughts on the latest update below.