Written in 2013 but still relevant today
Many experts deny that search engine optimization plays a big role in managing web content. No matter what they do, web content will always go through search engine results pages before making it available to the public.
In the latter part of 2012, a lot of blogs and websites were penalized because of the Google Panda algorithm; hence, traditional black hat search engine optimization will have to be reconsidered by webmasters in order to sidestep the algorithm’s sensitivity.
What can get your websites flagged and banned?
Google Panda flags and bans webpage that are deemed not user-friendly i.e. pages with spammy, low quality and/or duplicate content. Here are some pointers that webmasters should keep in mind to avoid getting penalized.
Excessive grammatical mistakes
Keep grammatical mistakes at a minimum. Pages with low-quality content will always make it to the top list of not-user friendly sites.
Lengthy webpage’s and single page websites
Nobody wants to read paragraphs and paragraphs of information, or land on a page with insufficient information.
Always do extensive research and provide ample information to keep your visitors happy.
Also, take note of the appropriate keyword density to avoid stuffing.
Keep unique content to a minimum 70%
It’s your webpage, so make it your own. Plagiarised content will always be a no-no.
Avoid overly rich anchor text
Rich anchor text will essentially boost your rankings, but too much of it will cause your rankings to drop.
Google Panda will flag, or worse, ban your webpage’s if you build too many links to them. Remember those cheap-pharmaceuticals-today webpage netizens hate? No decent webmaster would like his webpage’s to be recognised as spam.
Keep an eye on bounce rate
According to traditional search engine optimization standards, high bounce rates equate to unsatisfied page visitors. Always check your links for errors. You don’t want your visitors leaving your page because you provided a link for “cuddly pets” but they were transferred to a “surplus items” page. Boring content will also cause your visitors to bounce and look for engaging websites instead.
Back links are good if you get them from the right sources
Backlinks will generate more traffic to your webpages, but you have to be extra careful in buying them. Backlinks from bad websites will hurt your rankings and get you flagged for unfriendly content.
In a recent update by Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, link spammers and black hat SEO users will be the prime targets of their team. Google will launch the next generation Penguin algorithm to keep track of suspicious backlinks.
On a lighter side, Google Panda will be tweaked so that good websites affected by the system will be spared from getting flagged and banned. Thus, webmasters might want to consider white hat SEO instead of black hat SEO.
Black hat can yield faster results at the expense of getting penalized. White hat poses a bigger challenge for webmasters, but it will save them time and money from recovering banned pages.
Google is also planning to give ranking boosts to authority websites. A website in authority will be posted above other websites. In the end, quality will always be prioritized over quantity.
If you have seen a negative effect from this, please feel free to contact us.
