Google keeps updating its algorithm to facilitate users with the best relevant search results. By doing this Google not just improves its search results and rankings but also changes website ranking policies after which websites often get penalised. ‘How can I avoid Google penalties?’ is one important question in the contemporary era that needs to be answered. Webmasters are always trying to improve their website rankings by improving their websites and using SEOpractices. Just as too much of anything can be harmful, overstuffing website with such practices can also lead to Google penalties. But what are Google penalties?
What Are Google Penalties?
If anyone tends to violate Google’s webmaster guidelines, Google penalises the website. By penalising we mean that a website’s organic traffic brought down. These penalties are categorised as manual and algorithm penalties which are automatic. Manual penalties are a result of spamming and you may get an alert in your website’s Manual Actions section. But algorithm penalties are automatic, and you only realise that you have been penalised once that website traffic goes down. Google Penalties have names and are imposed on websites due to various reasons:
Google Panda Penalty is for websites with thin content, mostly plagiarised or copied content found on websites. The goal is to improve content for better search results.
Google Penguin Penalty is for link spamming. Low-quality backlinks are fetched out by Google and so are websites carrying them penalised.
Intrusive Interstitial Penalty is for making mobile search results better. Mobile sites with pop-ups and push ads are penalised under this.
Payday Loan Penalty is for penalising websites that facilitate illegal activities with hidden links. these activities involve web spams and promotion of pornographic content. By understanding the type of Google penalties, you must have got an idea about what to avoid on a website as a webmaster but here is more to it,
How Can I Avoid Google Penalties?
To avoid Google penalties, make sure you follow all the webmaster guidelinesprovided by Google. But let us revise all the practices that you need to avoid preventing Google penalties.
1.Don’t Buy or Sell Links
Buying or selling backlinks is termed as black hat SEO. This means that this is an absolute no from Google’s side. You as a webmaster need to earn relevant links to rank yourself on Google, by buying links from link directories you can land yourself in great trouble.
2.Avoid Exchanging Links
We have always heard that this world works on the phenomena of give and take but with links, this isn’t the rule. You do not need to provide links to someone who provides you with links and vice versa. If you do so, Google is clever enough to analyse what just went wrong and you shall be penalised.
3.Monitor Backlinks
Always keep a check on your website’s backlinks as you cannot afford to get penalised because of some irrelevant link that you once ignored. Google crawls into each link unless disabled. Thus, you cannot let spammy links put your website in trouble. To check these, you need to use Google Search Console and disavow such links to avoid penalty.
4.Avoid Hidden Text
CSS experts often use this practice of hiding text by colouring them of the background colour. This is usually done to mislead Google by sending it signals that specific text exists but, websites users cannotsee it. This practice is easily caught by Google and you will be penalised, hence, avoid it.
5.Avoid Cloaking
Cloaking is a search engine optimisation technique used to show content to search engine spider that is different from the one that users get to see. If you think that Google is operated by bots and cannot investigate what is happening, you are wrong! It will be able to investigate your website and penalise it for cloaking.
6.Don’t Stuff Keywords
Keywords are certainly important in content to make a website rank organically. But as mentioned before, too much of anything can be
harmful. Overstuffing keywords can lead you in trouble and you maybe penalised. Google does not appreciate using too many keywords in the content as it sees it as search engine manipulation.
7.Avoid Deceptive Mobile Redirects
Mobile responsive websites when accessed, often redirect users to irrelevant links. Whereas, the desktop versions do not. Google highly discourages this as it affects the user’s mobile web experience, as a result, websites are penalised.
8.Do Not Over Promote App Installs
Just as irrelevant links annoy Google, over promotion of mobile appson websites also displease it. Google believes that users must get the best web experiences either while using a desktop or mobile versions of websites. By mobile application endorsement websites often increase bounce rate, by this, you may get app downloads butwill soon be penalised.
9.Do Not Use Plagiarised Content
Avoid using plagiarised content on your website. Not just this, you even need to avoid using the same content on every page of your website. Google does surely know and can evaluate the source of the content. If plagiarised, your site may never gain traffic and be penalised by Google.
10.Do Not Use Spin Bots
To avoid plagiarism, webmasters often try to use spin bots to spin content from various sources and use it, this can lead to trouble! Google can analyse what just happened by looking sat your content.Moreover, the content may be too difficult to understand and overstuffing of synonyms may increase the bounce rate.
11.Don’t Create Lengthy Pages
Google encourages great user experience and easy navigation of content to answer user queries. With lengthy irrelevant content and design, you will not just frustrate the user but also increase your chances of getting penalised.
Google had made our lives easy by linking us to answers about almost everything. With this, it values our time and tries to provide us with best userexperiences. Google’s consistent efforts make our search engine experience even better. Google penalties are imposed on websites to make websites improve. This guide has provided you with many possible ways of avoiding
Google penalties. Want us to share more about Google penalties? Comment below!
