One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to receive a Google penalty. There are three main parameters for which the world’s biggest search engine would give you a penalty: speed/compatibility of your website, site content, and backlinks.
Whichever Google penalty you get slapped with, the consequence is always the same: a sharp and sudden drop in your search ranking. Once you drop in search ranking, it’s harder for people to find your website, and If people can’t find your site when they do a Google search, you won’t get much traffic. For many websites, this could be a revenue killer.
Although there are ways for you to generate traffic without surrendering to Google, it’s best to try and remain on its best side, and maintain (or even improve) your search ranking. Google has been spending a lot of effort to make the organic search results it provides its users as organic-looking as possible. For that purpose, the hi-tech giant has developed over the years smart algorithms that scan the internet looking for what it considers to be bad websites. If those algorithms, or bots, sniff any hint of search ranking manipulation, Google will punish those sites and punish them hard.
Sometimes Google will not even reveal the reason for the penalty, and webmasters can scratch their head for hours trying to find out what they did wrong. Some penalties are recoverable by fixing a specific problem, but there are penalties that can stay in effect even after the problem is solved. In short, it’s highly recommended not to get hit by a penalty. These six guidelines will help you stay clear of the search engine’s wrath:
The phrase “content is king” is not just a cliché. Content is VERY important to Google, and Google bots can easily detect duplicate content. If you duplicate your content or copy from other websites, your website will be hit hard with a Google penalty.
To avoid this, you need to create useful and unique content for your users. Create a blog and write about things that interest your audience and that you know about. If you own a sports content website write about sports. Running a music content site? write about music. If you’re not an expert on these topics, hire a writer to create content for you. Do not underestimate the power of content on your search ranking, many a website owner made that fatal mistake.
If you think that the more times you use a certain a phrase on your web page, the higher your ranking will be for that phrase, you live in the past. The Google Panda update from 2012 is a stickler for content and will penalize you if you use your keyword too many times. Some experts say you should focus on one keyword, but do it right. We know pandas are cute, but they can make your job harder. If you produce quality content, this shouldn’t happen.
Google’s Penguin update from 2014 is in charge of checking the health of your backlinks, meaning the quality of the websites that are linking to you. This requires you to monitor who links back to your website.
These are the things you will be penalized for:
In 2014, Matt Cutts, who was Google’s head of webspam team at the time, wrote a blog post decrying The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO, setting some guideline for the correct use of guest blogging. The key factor you should consider when you use a guest blogger on your site is relevancy. Choose bloggers who create content that is relevant to your audience, and use anchor texts that are relevant to the linked website.
While Google states that it cares more about the quality of your content and your backlinks than your website speed, if your site is slow to load, you could be slapped with a penalty. To determine the performance of your website and identify a possible problem, you can use Google’s own PageSpeed tool. Your website’s load speed is also determined by its mobile adaptability, which we will get into very shortly. If your site is slow to load, it will not only affect your ranking but also your bounce rate. People don’t have the patience to deal with a slow site, and with the abundance of choice available online, why should they? If they won’t get a timely response from your site, they will move on to your competitor, and you don’t want that to happen.
By the end of 2016, mobile and tablet internet usage has surpassed desktop, so you should make your site adaptable to mobile for your own sake, but a Google penalty could also be an extra incentive to do so. You can test your mobile compatibility with this tool, and making your website mobile-friendly is pretty easy these days. WordPress even has a responsive website theme available to download.
The first step to avoiding a Google penalty is understanding why you could get them. Quality Content, quality backlinks, good website speed, and mobile-compatibility are the areas that you need to check in order to stay on the boss of the internet’s good side.
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