SEO Tips: Best Ways to Avoid Google Penalties

Posted by Turnoverweb on March 25th, 2015

You have probably heard of websites being penalized by Google and are wondering how you can protect yours from suffering the same fate. A Google slap can result in lower search engine rankings; some sites even get removed (de-indexed) from the listings. For some business owners, a penalty from Google can dramatically decrease revenue. So what can you do to ensure that your site avoids such punishments? Here are some important things to keep in mind. 

Build Natural Links

Google is known to go after websites that implement spammy ‘black-hat’ link building methods and join link schemes in order to manipulate search results. This search engine giant even manually penalizes sites with unnatural links.

Does this mean that link building is dead? No. Link building is still important, but it’s essential that you only use safe SEO practices. Focus on building natural high quality links instead of mass-spamming thousands of links.

One of the best ways to earn a high quality link is to implement a content marketing strategy. Create truly useful articles, videos, info-graphics, and other content, then share those across industry related websites and social media. You are likely to receive highly relevant links that are 100% natural.

You may also need to perform a link audit sooner or later. Make sure that there are no links into your site from spammy forums, ‘exact match’ anchor text links, or low-quality directories, and paid link networks that Google may soon penalize. If you see any potentially dangerous links, reach out to webmasters and immediately request to remove those links from your site. You may also use the Google disavow tool for such toxic links.

You may also need to audit your outbound links, removing any affiliation with untrustworthy websites. The very least you can do is to add a “no-follow” tag to all your links. You might also need to disable auto comments on your blog to prevent spammers from trying to link to their site from your comments section.

Work with a Reliable SEO Company

One of the best investments for your business is to hire a trustworthy search engine optimization company to take care of your website. You want to work with experts who are always updated on the latest Google policies and can position your SEO campaign so that it is always compliant. The best SEO companies use proven, time-tested methods to ensure that your site never violates Google’s rules.

About the author:

The article writer Elizabeth Cachay is associated with Turnover. Turnover is a digital marketing firm specializing in Search Engine Optimization, Local Search, Social Media Marketing, Conversion Optimization, Analytics & Tracking, Reputation Management, Mobile SEO, and Spanish SEO.