Six ways to avoid Google's naughty step

There is no way round it.  If you upset Google in some way you will pay for it by having your blog or website downgraded potentially to the equivalent of outer Siberia.   Here are some of the things for  which Google could penalise your site.

Buying links to your website

This was once a sure fire way to increase traffic to your site.  Google looks for which sites link to your site and the more links the higher you are rated.  Well that was once but not any more.  Low rated sites linking to your site will have the opposite effect to the one desired.  Good links from high value sites are always good, anything else is bad.  Don't ever buy links!

Article Spinning

Writing good quality articles is what Google wants, isn't it?  Yes that is true, but unfortunately there was once a time when Google could not tell whether an article on one website was the same as an article on potentially numerous other article spinning sites.  The idea behind article spinning was to write a good article on your niche then change the title a bit, change the wording here and there and thus create a new article.  There is software available which will rewrite an article numerous times.  Basically the same article with the same basic content but only some words have changed to fool the search engines.  If you do this you will definitely be heading for the naughty step.  Don't article spin!

Anchor Text

Anchor text is text which contains a link and is used by Google in order to rank pages.  Because of this you should never use the same anchor text in all your site links.  Google will penalise you if you do this.

Be careful who you link to!

If you link to directories which have thousands of low ranking sites you will have your site downgraded.  Make sure that your links are genuine and have been preferably reviewed by a human.

Keyword stuffing

Google uses the  key words in your site to evaluate whether the person searching for information will be getting value.  However, if you try to game the system, by filling your web pages with the keyword you are trying be searched on, Google will notice and you will suffer! 

For instance, if you were trying to promote chocolate cupcakes it would be possible to mention the key words chocolate cupcakes in the heading and a couple of times in the body of the text.  Try to mention chocolate cupcakes in every other sentence and you will definitely be penalised!

Broken links

Over time some of the links in your web pages may become broken. By that I mean that the link no longer works by taking your visitor to the web page you have provided a link to.  From time to time it useful to check that all the links on your website are still working. 

Google may assume that web pages with numerous broken links are no longer relevant and this will mean they no longer show up in searches.  This would be particularly annoying if the content in those web pages took time to create and is otherwise still valid.

The above list of things Google does not like is by no means exhaustive.  This information was obtained from a number of sources including SmartBlogger and BourneCreative.  Both these sites have further advice on how to increase your site's presence on the web.















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