Sometimes the simple tools are the most valuable. Time after time, our clients wonder whether or not they've been impacted by the algorithm changes that Google continues to roll out. We don't tend to worry about them as much as we had in the past – in all honesty the algorithms have improved so well that we focus more on writing better content and ensuring that it's easy to share.
If you'd like to really keep closer tabs on the algorithm, wouldn't it be nice to overlay the actual algorithm updates with your organic search traffic to see if there's been any impact? That's exactly what Barracuda is providing with its tool called Panguin. Login to the tool, select the analytics account that you'd like to analyze, and the tool overlays your organic search traffic with the dates of Google Panda, Penguin and any other significant algorithm change.
As you can see, we took a dip on a Penguin Exact Match release. We've been fighting other domains that have been stealing our content as well as ensuring that our domains are properly redirecting. We want to make sure we don't have any domains out there with a significant amount of duplicate content coming from us.
Erin and his team of SEO professionals at Site Strategics turned me onto this tool during our weekly show, Edge of the Web Radio – we're a sponsor of the show.
