Finally after punishing lots of web site owners, and confusing countless more, Googles famous/notorious Penguin update is about to become a real-time algorithm.
Penguin is a name given to a Google algorithm that specifically analyses links pointing to your website and gauges the quality. If you are deemed to have an "un-natural" or shady linking profile, then your website can get penalised in Googles search results.
Shady Practices
Examples of shady practices are over eager and low quality SEO practices such as lots of spammy unmoderated forum posts, blog comments and lots of questionable anchor text such as link text with dubious names.
Do really people link to your website with a link text of:
"The best widget/product/service in the world"
Unlikely, they are more likely to link as either your web link, www.widget.co.uk or your brand name: Bobs Widgets.
The good news
When this algorithm goes live reportedly in December 2015, you will know pretty quickly if your recent linking efforts have been worth it or not, or if it's time to sack your SEO expert. Unlike previous infrequent Penguin Algorithm rollouts, if Google deems you unworthy and punishes your website with a drop in rankings and traffic, as this update is supposedly real time, as soon as you have fixed the problem, in theory any algorithm penalty will be lifted straight away.
Previously, you could wait 12 months for another Penguin update to see if any linking clean up or repair work actually did the job, and regained any lost traffic or opportunities.
Be Prepared
According to Search Engine Land, Google has given a clear signal when this will go live, which looks to be December. So now is the time to have a look at your linking profile and make sure you haven't got any ropey skeletons in the cupboard!
How to check your back links would cover about 10 forum threads! My personal favourite at the moment is ahrefs.com which has a free trial period.
moz.com/researchtools/ose is another good tool and gives you lots of functionality for free.
Googles own Webmaster Tools is another good place to analyse your links, although it can be notoriously slow to update your linking profile. But it is 100% free, and you should already be using it to monitor your websites health.
If you aren't using any tools, then just Google free backlink checkers and have a play. Lots of tools let you try them out for free or give you 30 days access.
Information source: Search Engine Land
Do you worry about things like the Google updates, or do you have any particular favourite tools you use to check out your backlinks?
