While creating or working on your site, some bad practices can penalize your site by Google. See these things now to avoid it and grow your page rank.
Most every website owner would like to see their website rank among the top five on Google search results for relevant words and terms (or at least among the ten sites displayed on the first search results page). To achieve this, it is necessary to invest in SEO, conduct keyword research, investigate the competition, develop a strategy that will earn your website the desired rankings, and follow through with the required footwork most efficiently and professionally.
Things Which Make Your Site Penalized By Google
SEO is a highly dynamic field. Things that work well today may not do the trick tomorrow, but every SEO professional can list several essential things that must be tended to, which will help drive your website’s rankings up, and others that may harm them.
Google openly declares its policy to penalize websites that have taken unacceptable SEO measures or have been found lacking in some way or another. In this, ost we’ve gathered 12 things you should beware of, things to avoid to prevent your website from dropping in search result rankings or even disappearing from them altogether.
Duplicate Content and Unauthorized Use of Images Make Google Penalize a Site
High-quality, original content is one of SEO’s main pillars. Anyone who uses content published by others not only infringes on copyrights but also risks causing their website severe harm so far as Google rankings go.
The need to continuously add new high-quality content drives many website owners to turn to professional content writers. It is vital to ensure that the content you buy is original. You can Google extracts from the text to check if they already exist on another website. Using someone else’s content is called “plagiarism,” There are tools you can use to avoid falling victim to it, such as Small SEO Tools and Copyscape.
It is also essential to avoid reposting content that already appears on another of your website’s pages; here’s a link to tools that will help you do this Siteliner. The unauthorized use of images is also a big no-no so far as Google is concerned for a site penalized. You must avoid using images without consent from their copyright owners. Sometimes permission is granted to anyone who posts a credit directly below an image or infographic. Make sure to give such credit when due. In our previous posts, we supplied a list of high-quality commercial stocks of high-quality photos.
Hidden Content and Links
In the distant past, it was possible to post content that Google’s bots would take into account while keeping it hidden from the eyes of website visitors (such actions are known as “black hat SEO”). A straightforward way to do this is by painting the text fonts the same color as the background they appear on.
Links can also be cloaked, for instance, links from anchor words painted the same color as the text around them or links from a single pixel. A website with cloaked content and hidden links will ultimately be penalized. It is, therefore, essential to make sure that what visitors and search engines see are the same.
Spam Links Make Google Penalize a Site
Inbound links earn your website credit and contribute to it being awarded higher rankings. This is so because such links testify that your website is somewhat of an authority. SEO specialists work to build inbound link banks, but it is essential to remember that links may differ significantly in value and that there are links that may even be harmful. For example, Google identifies spam links and penalizes websites found contaminated by their likes. In addition, there is a “manual spam action” division at Google that works to detect and punish websites with “unnatural link patterns.
You can keep track of links to and from your website using Google’s webmaster tool. There are also tools designed especially for detecting spam links, use of the best ones requires payment, but there are free trial options. Here’s an excellent example of such a cognitive tool, SEO.
Affiliate Sites With No True Value
Affiliate marketing is effective and popular. There is nothing wrong with creating high-quality websites which refer visitors to other sites where they may make purchases. Google identifies such websites and will award them high rankings only if they offer content of real value.
Low-Quality Content Make Google Penalize a Site
In our previous posts, we discussed the importance of high-quality content. The need to add new content mustn’t drive you to make compromises so far as quality is concerned. Google hates content with no real value, poorly written text with grammar mistakes, long, incoherent sentences, etc.
Exaggerated, Unnatural Use of Keywords
It is only natural that anyone who Googles a particular word or term will find web pages containing them. SEO is based on promoting keywords and phrases identified as ones for which high rankings are sought after. Once we’ve established a list of keywords and terms we want to encourage, we must incorporate them most effectively into relevant pages on our website. It is vital to refrain from unnaturally using these keywords and phrases, adding them where they are not there for, or unnecessarily emphasizing them repeatedly.
Pages With Abundance of Outbound Links
SEO is a three-sided pyramid. One is the website’s overall quality (content, code, loading speed, etc.), another is visitor traffic patterns, and the third is the quality of inbound and outbound links. A link’s value exist by various parameters such as authority and trust rank of the webpage they are on, where on the page they appear (a title, via relevant anchor words, wherein the text, etc.), is it a case of link swapping, and so on. The number of outbound links from a specific page dramatically influences the value of said links. An inbound link from a page containing too many links may even harm your website.
Links to Malicious Websites
From very early on, Google became known as a search engine that follows a strict moral code. This does not mean that Google acts as some web “police force,” but there are websites that Google views as evil, porn, or gambling, for instance. Links from such websites may harm your website’s rankings.
Cloaking
Cloaking – Displaying One Version of Content to Search Engine Crawlers and Another to Visitors
We’ve already discussed the malpractice of displaying content on a website. So, in a way that causes search engine bots to be looking to one version while visitors see another. SEO professionals used cloaking (or hidden text) in the past. The hide of text was in use in the past to stack a webpage with keywords without burdening visitors.
Apart from using text the same color as its background. So, it is possible to cloak text using div hidden in CSS, elements hidden using javascript, and more. You must ensure your website does not contain hidden text. Because Google’s bots will ultimately unravel such attempts, your site will be penalized accordingly.
Overuse of Keywords and Phrases
One of the main issues regarding creating content best suited for SEO is how often. Moreover, where to incorporate keywords and phrases. In the past, SEO specialists would act to have keywords make up a specific volume of a webpage’s text (usually 3-4%). However, today we know that Google prefers the natural use of keywords. So it is advisable to refrain from forcibly incorporating them.
An important tip to not have penalized sites: it is essential to use proper semantics. So, provide a keywords cloud (containing keywords relevant to the topic at hand that will help Google. As well as visitors) get a feel for what things are all about.
Data Security Breaches, Phishing, and Computer Viruses
Google must ensure that web users have no cause to beware of clicking on any link in search results. This is why Google goes to great lengths to ensure that websites hack. Ones with problems by computer viruses or websites used for phishing attempts. Using the pretense of identity to encourage handing over sensitive data) do not appear on search results.
Redirects and the Canonical Tag
The canonical tag defines a preferred webpage version; it is thus possible to get Google’s bots to crawl one version and ignore it. Therefore, it is essential to make proper use of the canonical tag. Among other things, to avoid content being regarded as duplicated.
Redirects (such as 301, 302, and 304) refer visitors landing on a particular webpage directly to another. It is essential to make proper use of redirects so that visitors. Google’s bots are not up to pages that display an error message. Here’s a tool for checking a web page’s HTTP status code and avoid to have a site penalized.
In Conclusion: SEO demands effort, and plenty can be up to earn better rankings for your website on Google search results, but there are also traps, things that, if you don’t pay heed to, will cause your website’s orders to drop, sometimes severely.
As a thumb rule, it is best to follow the straight and narrow path and build a high-quality, user-friendly website with plenty of valuable content. However, using duplicated content and images without consent from copyright holders. Or without allocating the credit due. Unnatural link patterns, spam links or links from ethical websites, excessive use of keywords and phrases, and errors in code (such as redirects leading to error messages. All these and more may lead to Google considering a site penalized, awarding it lower rankings than those it may otherwise be entitled to.
