What is SEO after Google Penguin?

Webmaster and SEO forums are full of testimonials and complaints about the impact and implications for future SEO of the most recent Google algorithm update, the so-called Penguin update. Google's Matt Cutts did warn us in advance that he would be penalising websites with keyword stuffing and excessive internal links. There has also been much talk of the potential effectiveness of negative SEO.

It is certainly apparent that Penguin has some glitches which need to be fixed with many reported cases of websites that do not deserve a high-ranking achieving one despite spammy inbound links and unimpressive content.

Obviously tweaks to the algorithm will continue to be rolled out with many of the unfairly penalised websites recovering rankings. Of more concern is the apparent negative SEO finding with this writer having already noticed an increase in inbound links to non-existent pages which are clearly automatically created.

Matt Cutts has long argued that the best type of SEO is no specific SEO other than the writing of excellent original content to which others will link. Some SEO professionals feel that their greatest strength, backlink building, is too easily labelled as black hat by Google leaving them confused as to what value the can bring to their clients.

It has also been noted that EMDs may have been hit too although there is some disagreement about this. Those EMDs that have been hit on my main website are those of greatest commercial value to me, consistent with the theory often paraded that affiliate-type sites are vulnerable to Google algorithm updates.

Clearly the greatest pressing need is to eliminate the opportunities for negative SEO as this could quickly destroy the quality search results that Google is trying to achieve.

For anyone starting up a brand-new website that plans to trade in a competitive market and compete on competitive keywords, a lot can be learned from current developments of which the most important is that probably their most useful SEO tool, if they are experts in their field, and genuinely have some useful content to write, is to use voice recognition software to create good content with the greatest ease while, possibly, doing away with any SEOs that could potentially do you more harm than good as Google becomes more and more effective at reducing the gaming of its algorithm.

We could all be in big trouble, though, if disgruntled SEOs begin to practice negative SEO on their clients' rivals if this appears to be the most effective way for them to further their clients interests. On this we need some urgent help from Google.