Never before has quality content been more important on the Web than now. With Google’s advancements in algorithms and the latest Penguin Update, many site owners and bloggers have the unfortunate question of asking: “What does this mean for my website’s ranking?”

Well, the good news is that it helps greatly, especially for those sites with quality content already established.

In fact, the Penguin Update rewards high-quality websites by improving search page results and rankings.

How To Understand Google's Penguin Update http://t.co/sdauunbV — Karen Maskall (@kar3n2) August 2, 2012

So, what does the Penguin Update do exactly?

To put it simply, it demotes websites that use over-optimization techniques and spam to increase traffic.

These sites normally promote low-quality content and overly abuse linking strategies to attract more visitors. Keep in mind that the update does not affect websites that practice professional SEO techniques.

Some of the Penguin Update targets include:

Duplicate Content

Keyword Stuffing

Comment Spamming

Spun Content

Black Hat Webspam

Known as “black hat webspam,” it refers to any technique used to find loopholes or shortcuts in order to propel a website higher in the rankings. For this reason, the Penguin Update seeks out and penalizes keyword-stuffing sites, paid backlinks and techniques such as comment spam. Therefore, anyone building backlinks on highly ranked websites and posting keyword-stuffed comments faces a harsh penalty from the Penguin Update.

Did Penguin Affect Me?

Finding out whether Penguin affected your website or blog is as easy as searching keywords in Google.

If your website ranks lower after searching popular keywords in the search engine, then Penguin did its job. Likewise, the update affected you if you see a drop or rise in web traffic. If you saw no change whatsoever, then your site most likely features quality content, and Penguin passed it by.

While the Penguin Update only reaches three percent of search queries, it is those queries that feature the most highly spammed “black hat” sites. Although the update is new, it already has had a substantial impact on top-ranked sites that implement “black hat” techniques.

Do White Hat Techniques Still Work?

The Penguin Update prefers “white hat” SEO techniques, which is why Google created the new algorithm in the first place.

“White hat” experts know how to implement the right keyword density into articles and rely on the content to establish the site’s presence on the Web. Therefore, the Penguin Update rewards these sites by promoting higher rankings in the search results.

Google still has work to do, after all, some sites use keyword-rich domain names in order to beat the system.

However, as many website owners have seen with the Panda and Penguin updates, these advancements in algorithms work to return better search results and higher quality content for readers.

If you have been affected by the google penguin updates you might enjoy our recent webinar.

Google Penguin Update and The Future of Internet Marketing

Matt Haran is a professional inbound marketer who guest blogs for a variety of online publications. He is a part of an elite team of writers who have contributed to hundreds of blogs and news sites, including Reuters, SEOmoz.org and The Washington Post. Follow him @thatdoodmatt.