It goes without saying that building backlinks to your website is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Backlinks are like a vote of confidence – the more you have pointing to your website, the more trustworthy Google finds you. But while this is true, Google noticed that many businesses were creating fake backlinks or getting backlinks from spammy sites in a way to game the algorithm and get more traffic.
To combat this, Google introduced the Penguin penalty. Embedded into Google’s algorithm, this formula searches for websites that have been created for the sole purpose of placing illegitimate links. When a site like this is identified, Google then penalizes the websites that it is linking to. Identifying whether or not your site has gotten the penguin penalty requires you to do an extensive audit of your backlink profile.