It's almost a month since, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, Gary Illyes confirmed that we should expect a Penguin update before the end of 2015. Just to refresh your memory, Google's Penguin updates deal with links, so if your website was penalised last year December and you've done a good job at cleaning up spammy links then you might be in for a pleasant surprise in the next month or so. If over the past year you've bought links, traded links or done anything unethical to acquire links to your website you might want to think about doing a quick clean up before you stand the chance of getting penalised and experiencing a year of problems! Here are the things you should look out for when analysing your links:
- Vary the anchor text you're receiving from external websites.
- Ensure that there aren't any sudden spikes in your referral links from strange sources.
- Do not just disavow links, a manual removal is the best policy.
- Create a strong internal link flow on your website with preference to important pages.