How to Avoid a Google Penalty
Digital Marketing • 31st Mar, 16
Google algorithm update.
Three simple words that mean so little to the average user – for most folks, the most they’d conjour up is some vague conception of Google making their fonts prettier.
But for any business or website owner who understands the importance of maintaining a strong online presence, well, it’s a prospect that many dread; because it’s a time when they face the possibility of their search engine ranking – one of the most critical elements of online visibility – being downgraded.
It’s the sort of stress that you, as a business owner, don’t deserve – and what’s more, odds are pretty good it’s an entirely unnecessary fear. All our preconceptions about major multinational brands aside, Google isn’t unreasonable, and obeying a couple of simple rules should allow your site to continue to climb that crowded ranking ladder unhindered.
Just to help you on the peace-of-mind front, though, here’s a couple of the ways you can ensure that your site keeps its spot.
- Avoid link farms
A little touch that builds PageRank by spamming hidden links everywhere. It’s annoying, it’s cheap, and it’ll get your site tugged down to one of those search-result pages nobody EVER gets to.
- Avoid hidden text
Spamming a site with invisible keywords. It’s easy, it’s effective, it’s so very tempting – but it’ll also get you thoroughly penalised. Besides, any amateur blogger could do it; your site shouldn’t need to resort to something so crude.
- Don’t overuse keywords
Your site, and your business, are diverse and multifaceted – we’re sure that’s true. But don’t just stuff everything with barely-relevant keywords. It’s distracting, it’s misleading, and it puts you barely any higher than those kids who stick “HALO MONTY PYTHON KIM KARDASHIAN” in the tag section of all their vlog posts to get a few extra views.
- No duplicate content
Pretty simple, this one. Indexing duplicate or identical pages gets you pulled down. Nobody likes duplicate pages. They make for disappointing clicks.
- Diversify anchor text
Anchor text, you know. The text that folks click to get to your site. Try not to use the same phrase over and over for your anchor text; diversify it. We’re pretty sure that any respectable site can be described in more than one brief phrase.
- Build brand signals
Google tends to take more kindly to sites representing brands than sites representing some bored kid’s chronicles of his overweight cat’s sleeping patterns. Take the time to make sure your site really comes across as representing a business and a brand – make it look professional, stick in contact details, set up some social media and get the fans (and that’s a loose term online) to follow it. Google will give you a bit more time of day then.
- Build real social signals
So, with the importance of social media followers having been said, don’t do that thing of making half a million fake Facebook profiles just to bolster your brand’s likes. They’ll pick up on it, and they won’t like it. That, and you’ll run out of stock photos at some point.