Much is written about the Google Search Engine updates and changes over the years. 
Most recent and well-known, are the Panda and Penguin modifications. The impact of these can be seen, felt and heard from irate webmaster emails, forum and blog posts, to specific news coverage and SEO alerts from the official Google Webmaster Blog.
This post is not a discussion of the why, what could have been or how insanely uncomfortable you might become when these (very expected) changes are pushed out from from Google and the Search Quality Team.
Rather, we will discuss a simple process or outline that marketers and SEOs can use to analyze and begin to recover from a Penguin “hit”. (Note: even if you haven’t been caught yet, it’s important to stay on top of this. Plus, it will give you a good picture of where you stand.)
Both large, medium and even smaller websites (5-10 pages) can and will be impacted over time.
Clearly, some will have a more drastic and horrific impact than others.
If you are in a high-trafficked, very competitive market and you find your website traffic and rankings dropping…it will be tougher to explain to your executive team than a ‘mom-and-pop’ store down the block, where traffic and revenue may come from existing customers, referrals and other means of marketing (Trade shows, coupons, signage, posters, direct mail, etc.)
Here’s the hard truth:
Google will not be stopping these (regular) updates. In the future, and to be certain — different search signals and new names will appear (more animals?). Recommendation: Stay alert, follow the trends, watch your web analytics and connect with a quality search partner or agency.
And remember – changes (to your sites, pages) are both algorithmically and manually triggered – for various reasons. We will not get into that detail in this post.
But, let’s dig in to the Penguin Analysis & Recovery Process.