First came the angry Panda, then we felt the wrath of the Penguin – what seemingly innocent and cute creature will Google make an enemy of next? It’s been two weeks since the Google Web Spam Team rolled out its latest animal-themed algorithm, and many web owners and SEOs are still scrambling to rectify the damage in their rankings.

Google calls their Penguin update a “success,” but those caught in those pesky penguin talons would beg to differ. In fact, many are still trying to figure out how to recover from Penguin’s fury.

Like the Panda update, Penguin is yet another effort made by Google to improve the quality of search results, and even though it happens at the expense of some largely compliant individuals, it does help weed out the bad eggs.

Penguin slapped fewer sites than Panda, but one of the largest offenses caught by Penguin were sites that had a few too many bad linking practices.

Recovery According to Cutts

So, once your site is Panda-lized or in this case Penguin-slapped, how do you begin the post-penguin road to ranking recovery? Google’s own Matt Cutts has some answers.

According to Cutts, once your site is penalized, you can – and should – correct the aspects that triggered the Penguin senses. He warns against things like keyword stuffing and bad linking. After you make those changes, and Google has the chance to re-crawl your site, it can re-process your site and the changes within the newest algorithm.

How will you know when Penguin re-processes your site? Well, you should see your site’s ranking improve and receive more traffic. Penguin does not run and filter sites continuously; the algorithm goes through a refresh similar to the series of Panda updates.

So there’s really no telling how long it will take, but one thing’s for sure, you’ll see it splattered all over industry news outlets and niche blogs.

Cutts clarifies that if your sites don’t improve after your changes and following an obvious Penguin refresh, you may need to bite the bullet and start over with a new site entirely.

Some Bad Linking Practices to Seek and Remove

If your site got caught by Penguin, and you’re still trying to figure out why or how to fix the matter in time for the next update, consider these bad linking no-no’s and do your best to revert them.

• Make natural connections – If your company has links from a completely unnatural site that in no way, shape or form relates to what your site or company offers, that’s just plain illogical.
• Fix anything that’s too matchy-matchy – If you have too many inner pages that have identical title tags, heading text and anchor text that all use the same keyword phrase you’re sending up a red flag.
• Diversify your link profile – When your site has a ton of links coming from a small number of sites, the Google Penguin will get angry.
• Choose pingbacks wisely – look at your backlinks and notice if they all come from blog networks, article databases, and link directories (many of which have nothing to do with your niche), you may as well smother your site in Penguin bait.

There are so many other types of unnatural and bad linking practices, but these are just a few to get your mind going. Not to mention there are plenty of resources and experts out there willing to share their knowledge and impart their wisdom onto you. Even Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz is dabbling into the web spam crusade.

How long does it take to recover? There’s no exact answer for this, it could take anywhere from one week to two months, or you may have to accept the unfortunate fact that the damage is irreversible. Whatever the case, if your site fell victim to the Penguin update, go back on a reconnaissance mission, re-work your links, and wait for a refresh.