Top 6 Easy Ways to Avoid a Google Penalty
In the months following Google’s infamous Penguin algorithm update, millions of sites have been penalized. Google penalties sometimes involve being completely removed from Google search engine rankings – deindexed. In other cases, penalties simply force a site to plummet several pages in the rankings.
In any case, a Google penalty is a very bad thing for your site. Today, we’re going to show you the top 6 easiest ways to avoid having your site get hit by a Google penalty.
6) Diversify your anchor text
Before the Penguin update occurred, most internet marketing Dallas companies knew the importance of diversified anchor text. However, the Penguin update reinforced just how important anchor text could be in determining search engine rankings. If the backlinks pointing towards your website are always the same – like “buy cheap gold online” – then Google will start to take notice and could penalize your site. To get around this problem, never use the same keyword in more than 20% of the backlinks you’re creating.
5) Avoid backlinks from too many low-quality websites
If most of your website’s backlinks come from suspicious sources, then Google will assume your website is also suspicious and could penalize it. To prevent this from happening to your site, try to remove any backlinks to your site that may have appeared on low-quality websites. Or, create enough high-quality backlinks to balance them out.
4) Avoid blog networks
Google smashed the ban hammer down on hundreds of blog networks following the release of the Penguin update. Blog networks are lists of blogs that have been chained together through a web of backlinks. The idea is that all of the blogs that joined the network will benefit and site rankings would increase. Instead, what actually happened was that blog networks left easy footprints for Google to target, after which the search engine banned or deindexed all of the sites trying to game the system.
3) Use social media
You might not like interacting with people through social media. You might find Twitter to be a waste of time, or that none of your friends actually use Google+. However, if you’re serious about improving your website’s online presence, then you need to start using social media. It’s difficult to rank a website without using social media, and simply signing up for an account or creating a page for your business is often enough to improve rankings in the eyes of Google.
2) Hunt for contextual links
Google looks at contextual backlinks in a different way than other types of backlinks. Contextual backlinks are the links that occur in text. For example, this is a contextual backlink. Google knows that contextual backlinks are much harder to earn than backlinks found at the bottom of an article or in a blogroll. As such, they’ll reward sites that frequently attract contextual backlinks while penalizing sites that don’t have any contextual backlinks.
1) Link to your entire website, not just the frontpage
If all of your backlinks are pointing towards the front page of your site, then Google will start to take notice and could penalize you. Try to point some backlinks towards inner pages of your site and spread out links throughout your entire site. If you don’t have too many high-quality inner pages on your site, then start creating them.
To learn more about avoiding a Google penalty while improving your company’s search engine rankings, contact internet marketing Dallas company Renew Marketing. Renew Marketing offers free consultations that help businesses learn areas where they can expand their online presence.
