4 recent Google^® updates every marketer needs to know about. And what to do about them.

Capitalizing on your organic search means keeping up with changes to Google’s algorithms. Here are four recent updates worth noting.

#1: Say hello to Penguin

If you over-optimize your off-page SEO, “Penguin” could penalize you. It makes Google even more stringent at filtering out off-site links that it thinks you’ve manipulated for the sole purpose of boosting SEO – to the detriment of solid, relevant content. Insert too many self-serving incoming links, and your rankings will take a hit.

What to do: Make sure your links support content that your intended audience will find compelling. With the sheriff monitoring the chatter in social media more than ever, make sure the off-page community you cultivate is truly additive and supportive of your brand.

#2. Check out Secure Search

As of October, Google stopped passing referring keyword data to websites when a user is signed on to a Google property. If a user is logged into Gmail, for example, and performs a Google search, that keyword is no longer passed to the referred page and will be listed as “not provided.”

What to do: Look at the big picture. Don’t worry as much about specific keyword conversions as about making sure your messaging is resonating with your audience. While not as definitive as they were before Secure Search, rankings along with impressions and click-throughs can be used as proxies for how individual keywords are performing.

#3: (Re)acquaint yourself with Panda

With refreshes as recent as April 19 and April 26, Panda, another of Google’s algorithmic SEO releases, discounts sites that have been built purely for organic search or sites that users otherwise wouldn’t be interested in.

What to do: Feature content that fulfills a searcher’s need, not yours. Then promote that content in social media, since Google is now cross-referencing social signals with link signals.

#4. Personalize the search

Launched in January, Google+ allows users to see organic search results that are personalized based on usage, share history, their network of friends and the share history of that network. So if you search for a friend who has a generic name, you’re likely to see that friend rather than other people with the same name.

Because Google+ is active by default, content of brands that focus on Facebook and Twitter will not be shown to users who are logged into Google+.

What to do: It’s pretty simple: if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. Start by creating a Google+ Business Page, grow your network on Google+, and then share your content. With Google still accounting for more than two-thirds of all search activity, marketers will ignore Google+ at their peril.

For better or worse, Google is going to continue to up the ante in the name of search quality. You’ll need to stay abreast. We can help.