What To Do When Google Penalises Your Website
Can you keep your cool when you learn that your website is penalised by Google?
Australia has four major search engines that people choose when they browse online. The most popular and most used search engine is Google Australia. It has more than 80% search traffic in 2010 and grew up to 90% when search traffic that comes from Google.com was added. Google is far beyond a search engine where it has calculator, translation features, RSS aggregators, email and social media. It has attractive “one-stop-shopping” features for consumers and advertisers.
Second top search engine in Australia us Sensis or sensis.com.au. It includes white page search features and focuses more on advertising. It is designed for mobile access which is fast growing. Other leading search engines are Bing and Yahoo! These two search engines may not be as famous as Google but they have solid ground for advertising and search queries. Bing is considered as the smallest and the newest of the other three search engines. It is created directly into new Microsoft stuff.
Let us learn from Google since it has the biggest market share in the internet world.
Reasons for Penalising a Website
One, the website is found to use manipulative approaches to increase the rankings of the website. Two, the website is giving inferior experience to users.
Manipulative approach can be in the form of on-site or off-site categories. On-site is utilized within the technical framework of a website while off-site are ways that relate to backlinks. Backlinks are Google’s major factor in identifying the authority of a website.
When a website is penalized due to manipulative approach, it can either be a manual or algorthimic penalty. Google has the capability to check a website and know if it violated a policy (or more). Algorthimic way of penalizing a site is tripped a filter. The entire site can be penalized, or just one or few pages only. When there are many violations, each webpage may be penalized, including the pages without violations.
Worst, website can be removed from Google. Most often penalised websites experience falling-off the ranks from 10 to 100 places in search queries. When you find your website has dropped several places in search queries, most likely, your site has been penalised.
Check on the following issues to avoid being penalized by Google:
1. Over-used of Anchor Link Text. Anchor link text refers to the “clickable” part of some links. When your website has many of these kind of links which correspond or similarly correspond to the keywords, your site may be penalised. Take note that generally, if there are over 20% of the links are using anchor link text, you are head-on to a penalty.
2. There are many links from poor link sources. Many links from poor quality sources or spam websites that may cause your website to be penalised is when Google finds more than 75% poor links.
3. There are many links coming from insignificant sources. This occurs when your website is weight loss related site and there are links on your site which are not related to your site, then, there may be some problems ahead. If relevant links in your site is less than 25%, address the issue right away.
4. Your website is receiving paid links or links schemes, Google will see it as:
• You paid other individuals to bring links to your website;
• You are paid from other websites to receive to bring links to them;
• You paid a program that can build links for you – automatically; and
• You website is part of multiple network with an agreement of building links for each other.
5. Your website has deceptive method or manipulative On-Page approaches, such as:
• You force visitors to remain in your website by deactivating web browser’s back button;
• You force your visitors to click on an ad – and they do not have any choice but to do it; and
• You redirect visitors to another webpage instead of what they have “clicked” on the search results.
6. There is an over-optimised On-Site keyword. This occurs when you are repeating same words or keywords, unnecessarily, on a webpage or content. Or, you are using the same keywords or keyword phrase on the header tags, image tags, URL, titles, and even in internal links. Balance the use of your keywords on your site.
7. Content on your site is over-lapping, duplicated, and poor and irrelevant quality.
8. Your website is loaded with advertisements on its page lay-out. When visitors need to scroll down before seeing the content of the page is an example. Avoid having a site with too many spaces for ads.
9. Your website is receiving high bounce rate. Bounce rate refers to a process when visitors spend little time viewing your site or when visitors return to search results without viewing any page of your site. When your website has over 50%bounce rate or with an average of less than 30 seconds viewing time, you need to address to this issue before your site is penalised.
10. Your website is easily hacked or malware-infected site, Google will see your site as dangerous to visitors. When your site is hacked or infected with malware, there is high possibility that the computer units of visitors may also be infected. Some websites like gambling sites have hidden outbound links.
What To do When your Website is Penalised?
When your site gets a manual penalty, you will receive a notification from Google Webmaster Tools account. With algorithmic penalty, your site will not receive any notice from Google but you will observe an automatic dramatic drop in search engine rankings and traffic.
To recover from manual penalty from Google, you can conduct a link audit top determine if some links caused your site to be penalised.
To resolve an issue on algorithmic penalty, you need to determine whether the penalty is Panda or Penguin related ones. Check on your ads and content and once you know the real issue or problems, then you can develop a recovery program.
The need for SEO Agency
Outsourcing a trusted and experienced SEO agency can help you prevent from receiving penalties and other major headaches from managing websites. They have experienced and skilled SEO professionals who can help you create and build website, develop relevant content with unique keywords. Aside from these tasks, they can also help you develop an effective online marketing using white hat method. This will prevent your website from any penalty from Google.
Share your thoughts and experience regarding the topic. Or, you can ask questions. Share and be heard!