How do you tell whether or not your site is being penalized by Google? Are you worried about being penalized or banned as well? If you’re curious about it, then it’s imperative to understand how Google thinks before it can happen to your website.
Google owns over 70% of search traffic – that means your site has an opportunity to rank high on Google, but only if it meets their standards. And that means you need to be aware of penalties and other things that can negatively impact your SEO (search engine optimization).
Why does your site gets penalized?
There are multiple reasons why your site gets penalized, but here are six common ones that you should look at.
1. Spamming
If you have a lot of links pointing back to your site from low-quality sites, this will hurt your rankings. You’ll want to make sure that all the content on your site is original and unique. It also helps to make sure that the websites linking to you aren’t spammy in any way.
2. Keyword Stuffing
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO because they help people find what they’re looking for when they type something into the search bar. But stuffing keywords onto pages isn’t going to get you anywhere good. Make sure that every page on your site contains relevant and useful information.
3. Poor On-Page Optimization
It sounds simple enough: use the right words on each page. But there’s more to it than that. You need to optimize the text on your pages so that it’s readable and interesting. This includes using appropriate headings and subheadings, making sure that the font size is large enough, and making sure that images are optimized.
4. Broken Links
This is another easy one. If you link out to other websites, make sure that those sites are still active. If you link to a dead website, that could cause a penalty.
5. Low-Quality Backlinks
This is similar to keyword stuffing. The difference is that these are links that point to your site from other websites. These types of links are often used by spammers to try and trick Google into thinking that their site is legitimate. So make sure that you don’t have too many of them!
6. Duplicate Content
Content duplication occurs when you have multiple pages on your site with similar information. Your page might be penalized if it contains too much content that duplicates other existing pages on your site. This can happen if your content is very long or if there are links pointing to a particular section of your page, which means your page has been copied.
If your website has been penalized, this means that Google has determined your website doesn’t follow its rules. A penalty might be temporary or permanent, depending on the severity of the rule violation.
Types of penalties
There are 3 types of penalties at present in Google’s algorithm; Manual Penalties, Algorithmic Penalties, and Publisher-based Penalties. If you have been charged with manual penalties then this is because they think they detected something wrong with your website or web pages. Usually, these penalties are issued if your site is found to be spamming other websites.
If you have been penalized due to algorithmic penalties, there could be any number of reasons why this has happened but one very common cause is when someone has taken advantage of the free Adwords program offered by Google. This is where they can offer keywords to people without having them pay for their advertising. If you are receiving algorithmic penalties it’s suggested that you contact Google customer service to see how best you can resolve the issue. On the other hand, the Publisher-based penalties are taken if there have been any violations carried out by the publishers themselves after getting them listed on Google’s search directory.
How to avoid getting penalized?
So now that we’ve covered some of the basics, let’s talk about how to avoid getting penalized.
The first thing you should do is check your analytics. If you see that your bounce rate is very high, this may indicate that people are leaving your site without finding what they were looking for. If you notice that people are clicking away from your site quickly, this might mean that they found what they wanted elsewhere.
Another thing you can do is check your web server logs. They will show you which pages are loading slowly and which ones are taking longer than normal. This will give you a better idea of where the problem lies.
The last thing you can do is contact your web host. Some hosts offer tools that will allow you to monitor your own site. This can help you identify problems before they become big issues.
And remember that there are always ways to improve your SEO. Companies like Feature Digital Ltd can help you improve your site’s performance. Just keep working hard and stay focused.
How to reduce the possibility of being penalized
Google ranks websites based on their popularity, relevance, and authority. If you want to promote your site, you should focus on increasing its visibility in the SERPs. For this purpose, you need to take certain actions to reduce the possibility of being penalized.
(1)Optimize your title tags. The title tag is a crucial part of your meta description. Using proper keywords and phrases helps to boost your SEO ranking. Include the target keyword within the first 100 characters of your title.
(2)Use structured data. Structured data allows search engines to identify specific details about your content without using HTML markup. This makes your content more visible to mobile users who rely on text searches.
(3)Optimize your images. Images can add visual interest to your content and improve your SEO ranking. Keep them below 150 KB and include alt attributes.
(4)Remove clutter. Clean up your navigation bar to ensure it contains only essential links. Remove unnecessary links and pages from your home page.
(5)Use canonical URLs. A canonical URL tells search engine bots which version of your page is most authoritative. Use this method if there’s any doubt about which version of a page is best.
If you’re looking to optimize your website, you need to be aware of what Google does and doesn’t like. You may even find yourself getting penalized. To avoid this, make sure you follow the ideas mentioned.
