With plenty of rumors and black hat methods of increasing Google rankings – SERPs  (not to be confused with Google PageRank), many companies are unaware of the harm done when participating in poor choices for SEO.  Search engine optimization is important in promoting a website, but making the wrong choices can land you in Google’s blacklisted category.  Black hat SEO is popular because it brings a large amount of results initially, but a few months later, website owners lose their index level.  Depending on the severity, Google may even delist a website, leaving an extreme loss in revenue for the company.

Unique Content

Unique content does not mean taking chunks of material from several websites and placing it on your web pages.  If the content is associated as plagiarized content, then Google will use its own algorithm to determine authenticity.  Plagiarized content pulls your website down the index, ruining SEO attempts.  Google’s search engine goal is to provide users with the newest information available, so providing the freshest content in your target niche will garner favor with Googlebot.

Domain Farms

There is an unfortunate SEO rumor that many domains with the same content and niche target brings more traffic.  This rumor is false, and it’s referred in the Google world as a domain farm.  Many website owners start several domains with the expectations that they can interlink the domains, bringing more traffic.  This black hat technique has been detected in Googlebot’s algorithm.  Many domains interlinked by the same website owner are sure to lose ranking in the Google index.

Link Exchanges

Having a page that is filled with advertising links in exchange for a link on another site is a huge red flag for Google and the Googlebot algorithm.  Google is notorious for devaluing sites that do link exchanges.  Many people add link exchange code to their sites, which is picked up by the Goolgebot as a spam directory webpage.  Do not participate in link exchanges.  They are one of the top reasons websites are removed from Google’s index.  If you choose to have a link exchange webpage, make sure to add “nofollow” for each link.  This allows you to have advertising links without being devalued by Googlebot.

Programming Errors

If your users can see errors when they access your webpage, Googlebot sees the same problems.  Google deranks sites with poor programming on web pages that returns errors in results.  Google’s goal is to bring quality sites in search engine results, so it’s important to make sure your website has no bugs.  Have quality control processes when implementing new code on a website.

Malware

Have you ever clicked on a search result and the page listed has a “beware” message?  Googlebot detects malware on a website and places a warning to search engine users in their search results.  Undoubtedly, this affects business SEO tremendously.  If you find your website hacked, clean the malware off your site, change passwords, and run antivirus software on computers that access the source code of the website.  Additionally, you need to notify Google and request a reevaluation of the site for it to be returned to the index.
Ensure that your SEO techniques follow webmaster guidelines.  Keep content fresh, new, and unique and your website will increase in Google’s search engine results.

We offer website and blog SEO evaluation and recommendation services.

Andrea Kalli
Certified Internet and Social Marketing VA

WishList – Wordpress Membership Sites and Retention Strategies

MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.

Tags and Categories: Business and Management, domain farms, google, google pagerank, google seo, Googlebot, link exchanges, malware, seo, seo, website seo

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