How Google Penalties Can Affect Your Business

What Are Algorithms and Google Penalties

Search Engine Algorithms. Google Penalties. You’ve heard the terms in more than just SEO and Online Marketing circles. Today, you hear about them from even the most unlikely sources – because more people and businesses are talking about them. Right up there with health insurance, online marketing seems to be the scourge of the small business owner. “Why is it so difficult to rank on the first page of Google, anymore?” “Why do I have to spend so much to be seen online?” “Why does Google seem to be working against us?”

As much of a gangster Google seems to be these days, the new algorithms and penalties for offenders, are actually meant to help. Google wants to make sure that anyone that uses their tool to find a service or product, is able to find quality results in their search. The idea is that all results are in order of the appropriate solution, to the least. This saves Google’s searchers time, energy, and the risk of being scammed.

What Should You Do To Avoid Getting Penalized?

So what does this mean for you as a business owner? It means only that you are making sure that Google can tell what a stand up business you are. It means that you have a clear and reputable online presence that reflects your brick and mortar business, that people are talking about your services, and more. Oh yeah, and it means not hiring a crappy search engine optimization (SEO) guy thats going to do “magic” behind the scenes to rank your business online and get you penalized or worse, black listed from the search results.

List Of Top 10 Google Penalties To Avoid For Your Small Business Website

Here’s our list of top Google penalties to avoid to keep your business in the search results:

Poor Link Management: Buying links, excessive exchange of links, rented links, etc. are considered abuse and manipulation. This a tricky one because it used to be a consistent “trick-of-the-trade” for online marketers. The Google gods have said “no more.” Also, no links from sites of a different language. Google has decided that it makes the most sense if links coming into your site are in the same language as your site. If you’re on-board of the consistent copy bandwagon, this should be a no-brainer.
Low Quality Content: Speaking of copy, this is a big one. Google wants to make sure that if they let you on the first page, you better be offering a quality experience for your visitors. This means that abusing content shortcuts are not going to get you there. Each page should have quality (well-written and informative) content. No duplicates, and use a professional if you need to.
Keyword Stuffing: Five years ago, you could put your main industry key words (your search term) in the headers of your page and rank for it. The days of simple are gone, and Google’s gotten smart. Putting headers all over your page and throwing keywords anywhere and everywhere won’t cut it anymore. In fact, it can get you penalized.
Forgetting Your Sitemap: This one is tricky for most small business owners so we recommend getting professional help. The XML sitemap is how Google knows what pages and posts are on your website – its the map of your site. Not keeping this accurate and up to date can extensively harm your page ranking. If you are using a WordPress template then there are plugins that can help. Also, submit it to your Google Webmaster Tools.
Slow Loading Time: Even a few second delay can deter potential leads from your site, and if that’s not enough, it can hurt your rankings, also. Large files and large pages are a couple of the easiest-to-fix factors of a slow loading site. Google expects faster load times for their search if they rank you.
Comment Spam: You’ve seen the profiles leaving comments of webpages and blogs that advertise a product in a sad attempt to retrieve traffic to their site. Not only is their poor marketing tactic a nuisance, it can also be harmful to your site. Google actually penalizes pages that have spam abuse on the site— even other peoples’ activity! Make sure to implement a plug-in, closely monitor yourself, or turn off commenting altogether if you cannot monitor real vs fake comments on your website.
Poor Robots.txt Management: Like the Sitemap, this one can be intimidating. Basically, Robots.txt is a file created to instruct the Google robots. To help them understand what the site is about, what to rank for, and more. Sometimes it makes sense to exclude pages from the “robot manual” because they aren’t relevant to what should be featured in the Google results. It would then make sense that Google looks down on seeing too many pages excluded from this file- as it sends a message that you’re trying to rank for something that you’re actually not an authority on.
Arrogance: You heard it! Google doesn’t want to hear you talk about how amazing you are in your website or too salesy. Too much content not geared towards information about your products or services can imply that you are a little too active in your SEO efforts. It looks suspicious. Focus on good organic content about what your business does and who you serve. Inform your visitors.
Ugly Mobile Sites: Mobile optimization! As mentioned before, Google wants to make sure that any visitor heading to your page is going to get what they need and quick. Having a quality, well-designed mobile version of your site is not only good customer service, it’s now required by Google.
Hiring an Inexperienced SEO “Expert”: Hiring a good search engine optimization consultant can do wonders. Many of these requirements are not easy for a typical business owner to implement themselves. Not only is it valuable to let experts do what they do best while you do what you do best, a good SEO provider can achieve much higher results that the layman since should be keeping up with industry trends. The tricky part is getting a good one. This is a scary industry with a lot of people blowing smoke and showing cheap magic tricks and some of the tactics will get you penalized or blacklisted. Hiring a quality SEO service provider is one way to ensure quality Google rankings without penalties.

If some of these look familiar in terms of what you’ve been doing incorrectly, the good news is that most sites can benefit from updates and complying with guidelines moving forward. Sometimes SEO companies have implemented such bad practices that the site is penalized or blacklisted.

If that’s the case, it’s time to fire your SEO guy and hire a reputable company or better yet, give RocketBox SEO a call for a no-cost SEO audit.