How To Avoid Google Penalties?
Worried about receiving a penalty from Google's algorithm? You are not the only one. Google has clearly explained its main objective: to provide users with the best possible search experience.
In order to achieve its goal, Google continually updates its algorithm to improve its classification of web pages and show users results sorted by order of quality and content.
In recent years, Google has implemented the following filters, among others:
· Google Panda
· Google Penguin
· Google Hummingbird
· Mobilegeddon, or mobile compatibility
As a result of these updates , many websites were penalized - some lost traffic, others have simply disappeared. So you have every reason in the world to fear that Google updates will penalize your site.
We therefore offer some tips that may be useful to you. While there are no foolproof techniques for sure avoiding a penalty, these tips have been selected from Google's recommendations.
Link-Farming In A Few Words
Link farming was a technique widely used by black hat marketers until recently. In order to increase the value of a target site (measured approximately by the DA of Moz or the PR of Ahrefs, for example) and therefore its positioning, we would generate a large quantity of low quality inbound links and spam, often of automated way. Not only are these backlinks now worthless in the eyes of Google and other search engines, but you will even be penalized if you get them.
The technique is still sometimes used in PBN. This time, black hat web marketers build a network of sites and blogs, which they boost with link farming, and from which links to the site they wish to position in search engines are inserted. By using the link farming technique on network sites, and not directly on the main site, they hope to escape the penalties. However, if the PBN allow to transmit authority, they also transmit the penalties. The technique is therefore not recommended.
In order to avoid a Google penalty, you should focus your campaigns on acquiring high quality backlinks and get them naturally. What is a quality link? Well it's an inbound link from a site that is not penalized by Google, that has strong authority and that is conceptually relevant to your industry.
Focus On The LDR
What is LDR? The LDR, or "Linking Domain Relevancy", means that the links that your site receives must come from relevant domains. If before Google used the Page Rank (PR) of a website to calculate the importance to give to an incoming link, now the LDR is a more important factor. Thus, in order to avoid that your site is penalized, it is important that the majority of your backlinks come from relevant domains. Be careful this does not mean that you can afford to ignore your other links. In addition to domain -> domain relevance, Google analyzes domain -> page, page -> page and finally link -> page relevance.
Whenever you are about to create a link, ask yourself this question: "Is the domain, the page or, at the very least, the link, relevant to my industry, my service, my product? Thus, a hotel in Saint Malo will have little interest in obtaining an inbound link from an area associated with cat food. If in addition it is a link from a page dealing with Whiskas and includes on an anchor of type 'your name' or 'see the site', the interest will be even lower and the risk greater. And if your site has a large number of backlinks of this type, you are highly likely to be penalized. The Google Penguin update now specifically targets all of these sites with irrelevant links.
Diversify The Anchor Of Your External Links
Diversifying the anchors of your inbound links is another very important aspect that you need to take into account if you want to avoid Google sanctions. Unfortunately, most bloggers and site owners do not pay enough attention to the anchors of their links.
The rule to follow is relatively simple: your anchors must be diversified, it is important not to have only general anchors nor, conversely to over-optimize them. If you are embarking on the generation of inbound links, it is essential to know that the majority of websites have a very similar proportion of optimized and non-optimized links. If the profile of your site differs significantly from this average, you will attract the attention of Google, and potentially you will attract its wrath. Let's see a concrete example with https://www.digitalagencylahore.com/ , a site on digital marketing. Ideally, your anchors should be distributed in the following proportions:
- About 30% of the anchors should be based on your brand, namely like Digital Age.
- About 10% should consist of the full URL, i.e. with https in mind.
- About 10% should consist of the domain name, namely Sagessesante.fr
- 3-5% of the anchors should use generic keywords, such as "website", "this article", "here", "click here", etc.
- The remaining 50% can be composed of exact keywords such as "dietitian", "nutritionist", "slimming diet", and partial keywords such as "how to lose weight without diet", "or find a plan of food rebalancing ", etc.
It is true that there is no magic formula to diversify your anchors but by trying, as much as possible, to follow the diagram above you should avoid being penalized. You can also study the profile of your competitors, using tools such as Ahrefs, to ensure the average in your sector.
Produce Quality Content
Inbound links and the generation of high quality content are two essential elements to reach the top positions in SERPs. And just as backlinks can earn you a penalty, so can your content. The Internet is now full of countless sites and pages, covering every conceivable subject. However, only the top 10 websites are positioned on the first page of search results, the rest are buried where no one will search them, and the more time goes by, the more Google’s algorithm becomes powerful and intelligent, no need to publish content that Google already has. You have to offer the most rich and complete content possible. Google is increasingly positioning pages containing at least 1,500 words in the top positions, so you can no longer afford to publish to publish, write content of less than 400 words, and offer information that is already available on others site.
If you do, at best Google will ignore you, at worst you will be penalized. The content must be original, complete and of interest to your readers. If you post low quality content you may be penalized, but even if your content is of good quality you are not immune. Some malicious sites are on the lookout for your content and will immediately scrape it. Although Google is usually able to find out who published the information first, this is not always the case. You may then be penalized for duplicate content. To protect yourself, consider visiting Copyscape.com or Positeo.com and, in case of problems, immediately notify Google via the Search Console.
Avoid False Indicators On Social Networks
Here's another suggestion: avoid fake members on social media. It is possible to buy Facebook fans and Twitter followers for very little money. However it is not a good idea. Again, just like Google penalizes unnatural sites, it also penalizes websites with fake members on social media. For example, if your profile has 60,000 Twitter followers but only 3 tweets and 0 retweet, it It is clear that you have a fake Twitter profile. For Google, social networks do not have a direct impact on the positioning of your site unless the search engine has great confidence in the meaning of the signals. So if you have real active members, it could be that Google decides to better position your site. Conversely, a final word for the road.
Many sites and blogs are penalized because of their inbound link profiles, from link farms, irrelevant domains or because of their poor content. So watch out for these aspects.
Avoiding being penalized by Google may seem a relatively complicated task but if you play by the rules - not always clear, we agree - and that you do not engage in proscribed techniques, you are going in the right direction and it is unlikely that Google will penalize your site ... unless it is attacked by a competitor, what is called "negative SEO"!
Kamran
