How to steer clear of google penalties
If you are trying to optimise your website, you should be aware that over-optimising using SEO can actually result in Google penalising your site. Once your site is penalised it will automatically drop out of the search results page. The homepage and all relevant pages/posts will disappear from Google’s index. Google can penalise the whole site or just specific pages.
Google penalises sites for using manipulative methods to increase their ranking and/or providing a poor experience to people who visit their site. A high bounce rate and low engagement are indicators of this, as is poor quality content which really is not saying much or is not interesting or substantial.
Here are three key don’ts:
- Do not over optimise anchor link text, don’t over-use keywords that you are trying to rank for. Mix up your anchor text, use a mixture of your business/brand name, click here, bare URL etc. Never use automated software to build backlinks, you need your external backlinking to be natural, and you don’t want to link to poor quality/unrelated sources, or in fact have too many links from any one source. Slowly adding high quality, relevant links is the key.
- Avoid duplicate content. Although Google doesn’t de-index sites that publish duplicate content, these sites will rank lower than the sites which contain the original content. Google loves fresh, natural and unique content.
- Don’t write your site content for SEO purposes, do not fill your site with keywords as this may result in your site being penalised. Although Google cannot as yet understand all grammatical errors, the quality of your articles may be a factor which affects the ranking of your site/blogs in the future. Low value/thin content will not rank highly and will not keep visitors engaged, which is the name of the game after all.
Social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, are important signals that help to determine how highly your site will rank, so make sure that social sharing buttons are clearly visible throughout your site. Of course your business should have Facebook and Twitter accounts that are regularly updated to make it easy for others to tweet and share on Facebook in relation to your business.
The key to avoiding your website being penalised by Google is to generate unique, interesting and relevant content, and to have a natural looking link profile.
