There seems to be a misconception with a lot of website owners, that if you build it they will come…
Many times, a lack of website traffic is due to a lack of online marketing compounded by common seo mistakes that cause the search engines to penalize you. These mistakes can be attributed to a number of different causes.
The simple truths is Google’s on an uncompromising mission. It wants to give its searchers access to accurate information and unique content, and if you don’t play by the rules you will get slapped with a penalty!
Your website may be penalised for one of two reasons – using manipulative methods (Black Hat SEO) to increase your site’s rankings or providing a poor experience to people who visit your site.
Manipulative SEO methods fall into one of two categories – on-site or off-site.
• On-site refers to methods used within your site.
• Off-site refers to methods relating to manipulating backlinks.
How do you re recognizing a Penalty? Penalties can be automatic or manual. With manual penalties, you’ll probably be told, if you are lucky enough, but with automatic you may not always know you’ve been targeted if the cause is algorithmic.
What can you do to avoid a SEO penalty?
These violations will provide you with guidance on how Google penalises certain websites for performing “Black Hat SEO”.
Too little content that is irrelevant to the website – Google is all about relevance and how search engines can use your content to provide consumers with valuable information. If your website has too little content or it is outdated there’s a chance of it not ranking at all with Google.
Too many words can be a violation in itself – Waffling or repetition of words, strap lines, descriptions and information on your website does not impress search engines or your consumers. Make sure each and every page on your website is unique.
Websites that have too much advertising and too little content – These websites are highly penalised by Google as search engines are not just about advertising, if anything, they’re about providing new, quality information customers and users alike.
Keyword stuffing – Keyword stuffing worked a while back but was stopped by Google due to spam. Websites which continuously use the same phrases throughout their webpages and use unrelated wording get into big trouble by carrying on with this practice.
Suspicious website with ‘sudden’ million and one links – This applies to new websites which suddenly gain many links overnight. Usually these are links bought at a price. They gain high ranking from search engines for a short period of time before being caught out.
Hidden text & cloaking – Hidden text is usually coloured in white and blends well with the background to make sure that no one can view it while cloaking makes sure that users see one thing and search engines another. This ends with a high penalty from Google.
Paid Links – This is a quick method of websites getting many links in a short period of time. These links are usually bad or from bad sources (neighbourhoods), search engines can easily detect them. Especially when a new website suddenly has many links.
Link Spam – Link Spam is when a website joins itself with another site and share links amongst each other, multiply this by a thousand and you have a link scheme. Some links are even dropped in certain forums and blogs.
Links from ‘bad neighbourhoods – Links from bad neighbourhoods or suspicious looking websites can end you in quite some trouble with search engines. Search engines look at the quality of links you have rather than quantity.
Rewriting of articles – Good content is a winner when it comes to websites being ranked well by search engines. What happens though is some websites re-write articles. Google has Google Author to protect someone’s content from being stolen by another source.
In Summary
To avoid these sorts of penalties, review your website and SEO strategy periodically to ensure that it complies with the quality guidelines of the search engines, failure to do so might just cost you your next sale!
