Google are constantly making minor changes to their search algorithm, often up to 600 times within a year, but every now and then they make a more major change.

No doubt many of you will have already heard about one of their latest algorithm updates known as Penguin, designed to target webspam and over optimised websites.

I am often asked about Google updates and what impact they have had on our clients, and I always have the same answer. 99% of the time google updates are not a surprise to me or any other 'white hat' SEO experts, they are simply trying to enforce the same policies they've always tried to encourage. Therefore if people have followed the existing quality guidelines generally webmasters should have very little to worry about.

It is helpful to understand that google does consider search engine optimisation (SEO) to be positive when done properly and when it helps to improve the user experience and ensure that the site is relevant with quality content.

Again something we often highlight to our clients is that websites are designed to be viewed by human visitors, so whilst optimisation is important it should never be at the expense of the user experience and should actually improve the accessibility and ensure that users can find the content most relevant to them as easily as possible.

So what does Google consider to be webspam?

Two key areas google have targeted with this update are keyword stuffing, and linking schemes from low quality sites or content and sites that have no relevance.

Keyword stuffing is the practice of including lots of keywords within a website in order to try and manipulate rankings. A common way of achieving this is to have keywords listed in the same colour as the background of the site, therefore not visible to visitors, but search engines can see them. Alternatively people also include an excessive number of keywords within title tags or alt attributes.

Linking schemes that breach search engine guidelines are quite common on article based sites, where you can see hyperlinked keywords that have no relevance to the content on the page.

So in summary as long as you follow the search engine guidelines, then algorithm updates should not have a negative affect on your rankings, in fact they are designed to improve them and reward people that focus on building quality sites and content.

David Vallance is Managing Director at Kit Happens, an internet marketing business providing, web design, graphic design, email marketing and SEO Milton Keynes, Northampton, Luton and Bedfordshire.