How to Avoid Getting Google Penalties On My Website?

Worried what would happen if Google suddenly decided to penalise your website? Want to make sure your website does not get a Google Penalty? Well, you’re not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of small business owners who want to keep away from the wrath of Google’s penalty. How to avoid getting a Google penalty? This is a common question clients ask our web design Widnes team.

 

Google penalties are a common occurrence. They don’t just happen during algorithm updates. Even this very moment, there are several websites that could be receiving Google penalty. This primarily happens to websites practicing spammy and black hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing, poor content, content scraping or buying backlinks.

However, not every Google penalty is because of spammy SEO techniques. You could be penalised due to negligence. Perhaps you did not monitor the links pointing to your website. Or you could be a victim of negative SEO where competitor businesses target you.

Let’s look at the things you could do to avoid getting Google penalties on your website.

Tackle Negative SEO Head On

Your competition can really damage your SEO efforts, and could even cause a Google penalty for your website by indulging in negative SEO for your website. This is usually done by generating tons of backlinks to your site from spammy websites.

When Google discovers that several spammy websites are linking to you, it will consider your site to be of low quality. This will also affect your SERPs and ultimately increase your chances for a Google penalty.

If you realise that spammy websites are linking to you, act immediately and get those links disavowed. Simply take note of all the spammy links in a text file and upload the list with the help of the Google disavow links tool page.

Avoid Targeting Specific Anchor Texts

An anchor text is any word or phrase that points to a website. Because the anchor text of a link is an essential SEO metric, people began abusing it by targeting specific keywords.

Google tackles anchor text spamming by detecting and penalising occurrences of anchor text hyper-targeting.

Be sure to use a diverse range of anchor texts. For instance, we are a web design Widnes agency. However, when creating anchor texts on our own website and blog as well as content marketing efforts, we use a good mix of anchor texts. Here are some suggestions:

Brand Name – Blue Whale Media

Domain Name – www.bluewhalemedia.co.uk

Blog Author’s Name – Gary Sweeney

Primary keyword – web design

Exact match keyword – web design Widnes

By having a variety of anchor texts, you can ensure that you are not targeting the same keyword/phrase for every link. Moreover, it helps to use brand name anchor texts. It is not just good for brand keywords; it ensures your brand gains immense exposure.

However, the key is to not overdo it.

When building backlinks, ensure you are not ignoring LDR. LDR is short for Linking Domain Relevancy. What does that mean? Well, it simply means that the backlinks pointing to your site must come from websites from relevant domains/niches.

Google lays emphasis on relevancy rather than just Page Rank.

If too many of your backlinks are from irrelevant websites, your site could come on Google’s radar for a penalty.

Create High Quality Content

Content is an integral part of SEO. It can catapult you to the top of the SERPs and even help generate natural backlinks to your site.

However, ordinary content won’t do. We are a web design Widnes agency that completely believes that high quality content is king. Why is that?

There are hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs on every topic and niche on the web. But Google can list only the top 10 pages for any topic/niche on the first page of its SERPs. All the other pages get lost in the crowd.

But how does Google decide which are the 10 best pages to show in its SERPs for any given keyword? Google looks for rich, highly comprehensive content to display in the results.

Be sure to invest in high quality content that is rich, highly valuable, detailed and lengthy. If you do not have the time or the skill to write high quality content, talk to your web design Widnes agency.

Google thinks the following kinds of content are thin or poor content:

Thin affiliate pages

Automatically generated content

Doorway pages

Content copied or scraped from other websites

Low quality content

If the content of your website resembles anything from the above list, then you could receive a Google penalty.

Stay Away from Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing worked in an era when blackhat SEO strategies were commonplace. Not anymore though. Keyword stuffing is the technique of incorporating keywords all over the place without any context or logic. If you keyword stuff your content, you expose your website to a Google penalty.

Of course, this does not mean that you stay away from optimising your content for your target keywords. There’s a difference between optimising and overstuffing.

The keywords should appear natural in your text rather than forced or out of place. Make sure you don’t repeat the keyword in every other sentence. Space out your keywords and use them judiciously.

And you don’t have to be so particular about keyword density. It does not matter at all anymore. Keep the tone of your content natural and use your keywords perhaps 3 to 4 times, and you are good to go.

In Conclusion

The very thought of a Google penalty can snatch away your sleep, especially if your website is on the top of the SERPs. However, if you are proactive and not indulging in blackhat SEO strategies, you are safe. You don’t have to live in perpetual fear of getting a Google penalty. The search engine comes after websites that seem to manipulate their rankings. So follow the tips suggested above religiously and avoid getting a Google penalty.

Have further questions about Google penalties? Looking for reliable and white hat SEO specialist for your website? We’d be happy to discuss your requirements. Click here to get started.

Written and Published by Blue Whale Media.

Please select a valid form.