For years SEO profesionals and marketing agencies have done what ever it takes to get their or a clients content to the top of the search engines however in some cases this has resulted in the same pages to be penalised or even taken off of the search results completely.
As time has gone on many practices have been identified by Google and as a result Google has gone out of its way to figure out ways of detecting this behaviour on websites and penalise the page accordingly.
Content is the number 1 factor used to determine your website rank, good quality well worded content is essential not just for you to be ranked highly but also for your visitors to understand, Google, Bing and Yahoo all want the first link you click on to answer the question you are searching for an answer to as the search engine that achieves this best for you will most likely be your search engine of choice and you being a loyal user of that search engine will probably click on some links that makes them money. right?,
In the past various practices that would be seen as bad practice today emerged
Keyword and Phrase over optimisation & Meta tag spamming
When you have too many references to a specific keyword for example if your website is all about orange farming the words orange and farm will appear a lot and “orange farm” will probably be your NO.1 key word phrase that you want to rank well on, however not every sentence should contain the word orange or phrase “orange farm” the page would not make a lot of sense,
Google takes a look at keyword and phrase density and if it appears too much or have a too higher density google may decide you have been over-zealous and penalise the content on each page where this is an issue.
This is not just true in your content but also in your pages meta data where you can put keywords, title and description of your page.
Gibberish content
Quite often this is as a result of having too many keywords, but can also be just down to rushing content through and not taking time to proof read it. In other scenarios this can be as a result of having generated content.
Using auto-generated content
Google HATES (yes I shouted HATES) computer generated content this includes
- Text that has been translated via automated tools that is not reviewed by a human to ensure it makes sense
- Text that has been ran through processes to swap words out with synonyms that as a result doesn’t make sense
- Plagiarised content taken from other sources that has no individual value
This isn’t to say you cannot do any of the above however if your content is going to rank well you need to ensure you add value to it by making it interesting and unique. In short your content needs to make sense and exhibit your style and individuality.
Being a website owner there is nothing better then seeing other websites linking to your content, this is a big factor in determining the authority and expertise of your content (click here to find out more about authority). On the surface it would seem that having more links to your websites pages is a good thing however Google takes in to account the trustworthiness and authority of other websites linking to yours.
In the past to get more links to your website it was not unheard of to get agencies or individuals to go out and post links to your website where ever they could, whole systems where developed to do the same task.
Google saw this as a threat to the quality of its search results as it gave people who where willing to break the rules an unfair advantage over the sites who where managed in the correct way.
An influx of links
Google sees this as an unnatural progression of popularity and most likely a result of unfair practice
A large number of bad quality links
At the end of the day anyone can make their website link to yours, however having too many websites with a bad reputation linking to your site can be a negative factor in your search position.
Links from unrelated websites
Ideally links to your website should be from other websites with similar interests or cover similar topics, whilst links from social channels are great having a link from a website that is involved in the same industry as your self can boost not just that page it links to’s page authority but also your domain authority.
Large number of links from websites on the same server
It is common practice to host dozens or even hundreds of websites on the same server, in many cases all these websites will be managed by a single web development company and too many links between the sites can be seen as an attempt to boost your websites popularity.
Whilst link building is an essential part of promoting your website at AME WebTech we give all our customers the following advice.
- Never pay for someone to add 100’s or 1000’s or more links to your website, this practice is ultimately detrimental to your page rank and could ultimately result in your website not being displayed on google at all..
- Keep posting new content as frequently as you can, share it on any social media pages that are relevant to it.
- The natural SEO game is a long one, it never really ends always be aware that you may need to change tactics should google change the playing field.
- All content should be read through by at least 2 people before it is posted to ensure accuracy of information, good spelling and grammar.
- Once content is published asses its worth frequently, has anything changed, have things moved on and if so start updating your content (Google likes to see changes)
Getting your SEO strategy right is essential for good natural search position and this all starts with playing by he rules and not trying to achieve the quick fix.
Writing good original content that people want to read is key for any SEO strategy, once you are happy with it publish it and let everyone know on your twitter feed, Facebook page/group and blog.
Don’t be tempted to cut corners for things like translation or rewording your wording using automated tools whilst using them as first step is fine you need to know what is published makes sense and your content hasn’t lost its original meaning.
The days of paying for 100s of new twitter followers or paying for your website to be linked to 100s of sites is a thing of the past and will result in penalties that will ultimately reduce your google rank.
