Apr
Check google Penalty - reasons and advice
Google Penalty
In this article, we provide free SEO advice to assist in recovering from a Google penalty and explore the most common causes, providing a useful penalty checklist.What to do ? What is reason ?
First, you need to be sure you actually have a penalty. Using the site:www.domain.com search is one way to find out that your site is nowhere; another way is to search for some unique text from your home page. Neither search is useful for new sites, which may simply be waiting to be listed. In most cases, it’s the site statistics or a drop in trade that brings the bad news.
If your site has been penalised, you need to start by being very honest with your self, and undoing anything you did that may breech Search Engine Guidelines.
Check out the Guidelines carefully:
Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
For now, I’d clean the site up completely; remove the resources pages, check anything that could be against search engine guidelines. READ the search engine guidelines.
To check for Google penalties with any degree of certainty can be difficult. For example, if your website experiences a sudden reduction in ranking for its main keyword terms it can be caused solely by a Google algorithm change or search results (SERP) update.
With any algorithm change or Google SERP update, there are always winners and losers, and when a sudden drop in rankings is experienced Google penalties are often incorrectly blamed.
Google often applies backlink devaluation to links from various sources that it considers spammers are exploiting to artificially raise the ranking of their sites. In addition, minor Google algorithm changes are continually being made in an effort to combat link spam.
When link devaluation occurs, as it has with reciprocal links from low quality web directories and link farms, reductions in Google ranking may occur affecting the recipient site of the links. The severity of ranking reductions are usually synonymous with the website’s reliance on that particular type of linking.
There’s no doubt that blog links and low quality web directory links have also been devalued and that this has lead to reduced website rankings for sites which got a significant number of backlinks or site wide links from blogs or directories. In addition, backlinks from unrelated theme sites are also experiencing Google devaluation - so if your site heavily relies on these links, then it too may experience a sudden drop in Google rankings.
If you suspect a Google penalty, it first makes sense to check whether any Google algorithm changes have been made which could be the cause of the problem. SEO Forum posts reflecting algorithm changes usually appear on the SEO Chat Forum soon after the effects of any update are felt.
That said, if your web site suffers sudden and dramatic fall in ranking and no Google algorithm changes have been made, then a Google penalty may be the cause, especially if you have been embarking on activities which might have contravened Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. The most severe Google penalties lead to total website de-indexing and where the SEO misdemeanour is serious a site ban may be imposed by Google, accompanied by a Page Rank reduction to 0 and a greyed out Google Toolbar Page Rank indication.
Whatever the cause, recovering from a Google penalty is a challenge and our SEO checklist will help identify likely causes and reasons for a sudden reduction in Google ranking or an major drop in SERPS position for your main keywords.
What is reason to get panelty ?
* Linking to banned sites
Run a test on all outbound links from your site to see if you are linking to any sites which have themselves been Google banned. These will be sites which are Google de-listed and show Page Rank 0 with a greyed out Toolbar Page Rank indicator.
* Linking to bad neighbourhoods
Check you are not linking to any bad neighbourhoods (neighborhoods - US spelling), link farms or doorway pages. Bad neighbourhoods include spam sites and doorway pages, whilst link farms are just pages of links to other sites, with no original or useful content.
If in doubt, we recommend quality checking all of your outbound links to external sites using the Bad Neighborhood detection tool. Whilst this SEO tool isn’t perfect, it may spot “problem sites”. Another good tip is to do a Google search for the HTML homepage title of sites that you link to. If the sites don’t come up in the top 20 of the Google SERPS, then they are almost certainly low trust domains and linking to them should be avoided.
* Automated query penalty
Google penalties can sometimes be caused by using automated query tools which make use of Google’s API, particularly when such queries are made from the same IP address that hosts your website. These tools break Google’s terms of service (as laid out in their Webmaster Guidelines). Google allows certain automated queries into its database using its analytic tools and when accessing through a registered Google API account. Unauthorised types of automated query can cause problems, particularly when used excessively.
* Over optimization penalties
These can be triggered by poor SEO techniques such as aggressive link building using the same keywords in link anchor text. When managing link building campaigns, always vary the link text used and incorporate a variety of different keyword terms. Use a backlink anchor text analyser tool to check backlinks for sufficient keyword spread. Optimising for high paying keywords like “Viagra” can further elevate risk, so mix in some long tail keywords into the equation. For brand new domains, add no more than 5 new one way backlinks a week and use deep linking to website internal pages, rather than just homepage link building.
* Website cross linking & link schemes
If you run more than one website and the Google penalty hits all sites at the same time, check the interlinking (cross linking) between those sites. Extensive interlinking of websites, particularly if they are on the same C Class IP address (same ISP) can be viewed as “link schemes” by Google, breaking their terms of service. The risks are even higher where site A site wide links to site B and site B site wide links back to site A. If you must use site wide links, make sure they are not reciprocal links. Link schemes built around links in the footer of each webpage are particularly risky. The reality is that site wide links do little to increase site visibility in the Google SERPS, nor do they improve Page Rank more than a single link, as Google only counts one link from a site to another. KSL Consulting also believe that Yahoo! now applies a similar policy. There is some evidence that the extensive use of site wide links can lower website Google trust value, which can subsequently reduce ranking.
* Hidden text or links
Remove any hidden text in your content and remove any hidden keywords. Such content may be hidden from view using CSS or alternatively, text may have been coded to be the same colour as the page background, rendering it invisible. These risky SEO techniques often lead to a Google penalty or web site ban and should be removed immediately. The same applies to hidden links, which Matt Cutts has openly stated break their webmaster guidelines.
* Keyword stuffing (spamming)
Remove excessive keyword stuffing in your website content (unnatural repetitions of the same phrase in body text). Always use natural, well written web copywriting techniques.
* Automated page redirects
The use of automated browser re-directs in any of your pages. Meta Refresh and JavaScript automated re-directs often result in Google penalties as the pages using them are perceived to be doorway pages. This technique is especially dangerous if the refresh time is less than 5 seconds. To avoid Google penalties, use a 301 re-direct or Mod Rewrite technique instead of these methods. This involves setting up a .htaccess file on your web server.
* Link buying or selling
Check for any paid links (I.E. buying text links from known link suppliers / companies). There is some evidence that buying links can hurt rankings and this was implied by comments from Matt Cutts (a Google engineer) on his Google SEO blog. Matt states that Google will also devalue links from companies selling text links, such that they offer zero value to the recipient in terms for improving website rankings or Page Rank. More recently, Google applied a Page Rank penalty to known link sellers and many low quality directories.
* Reciprocal link building campaigns
Excessive reciprocal linking may trigger a Google penalty or cause a SERPS filter to be applied when the same or very similar link anchor text is used over and over again and large numbers of reciprocal links are added in a relatively short time.
The dangers are made worse by adding reciprocal links to low quality sites or websites which have an unrelated theme. This can lead to a backlink over optimisation penalty (known as a BLOOP to SEO experts!). a Google Backlink Over Optimisation Penalty causes a sudden drops in SERPS ranking (often severe). To avoid this problem, reciprocal link exchange should only be used as part of a more sustainable SEO strategy which also builds quality one way links to original website content.
Adding reciprocal links to unrelated sites is a risky SEO strategy, as is reciprocal link exchange with low quality websites. To help identify quality link exchange partners we use a simple but effective test - regardless of indicated Page Rank, if you can’t find a website’s homepage in the top 20 of the Google search results (SERPS) when you search for the first 4 words of a site’s full HTML title (shown at the top of the Internet Explorer window) then undertaking reciprocal link exchange with that site may offer few advantages. Don’t forget to check that prospective reciprocal link partners have a similar theme as your homepage too.
* Check Google Webmaster Guidelines
Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and check website compliance in all respects. Since early 2007, Google may alert webmasters via the Google Webmaster Console who they feel might have unknowingly broken their guidelines to advise them that their site has been removed from Google for a set period of time due to breaking one or more of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
However, blatant spam or significant breaches of Google’s rules will often result in a site being banned, with no Webmaster Console notification. Where notification of a violation of Google’s guidelines is received, it usually encourages the webmaster to correct the problem/s and then issue a re-inclusion request to re-include their site. From my experience, after this is done the website will usually regain its original ranking, having lost no trust.
* Google Webmaster Tools
According to Matt Cutts’s Blog, Google is improving webmaster communication with respect to banned sites and penalties. Google is now informing some (but not all) webmasters the cause of a website ban or penalty, via their excellent new Webmaster Console. In addition, a Google re-inclusion request can be made from the same interface. For this reason, if you’ve been hit by a web site ban or penalty, it is worthwhile signing up for Google Webmaster Tools and uploading an XML Sitemap onto your site and then to check site status in the Google Webmaster Console. This is an easy 15 minute job and may help to identify the cause and fix for the problem!
Getting ‘unpenalized’ is your best and only hope, but there’s no compromises - if it’s not squeeky clean, nothing will ever get better.
How do I request reinclusion of my site?
Google says: “If your site has violated our webmaster guidelines, and you’ve made changes to it so that it meets our guidelines, you can request reinclusion and we’ll evaluate your site.
In addition, if you recently purchased a domain that you think may have violated our guidelines before you owned it, you can use the reinclusion request form to let us know that you recently acquired the site and that it now adheres to the guidelines.
To request reinclusion, log in to Google webmaster tools, click Tools, then choose the Request reinclusion link and follow the steps outlined there.”
Useful pages include Pages Yahoo! Does Not Want Included in its search submit index and MSN’s What to do when your site movesSpecial ad
