Did you know that Google can completely remove your site from their search results?
Your site can go from getting a decent amount of traffic, increasing over time after every post, until one day, it just turns to nothing.
Without warning, your site can just disappear from Google completely.
The worst part is that you might not even know why. But Google can and will remove your whole website from the search results if you don’t consistently follow their up-to-date rules and regulations.
What Works on Google
Google has algorithms in place made to filter out any site that they deem to be spammy.
These algorithms are constantly tweaked, as well as majorly updated every year or two. What works for your site now might not work in the future. In fact, it may even do the opposite.
When they first started listing websites on their search engine, Google didn’t penalise anyone no matter how spammy their sites were. But now, they can remove sites altogether. And even if they don’t completely remove your site, they may push you further down the rankings massively.
So what exactly will make Google decide to penalise your site?
Mistake 1 – Purchasing Links
There are ads from SEO companies everywhere promising number 1 rankings and thousands of backlinks for a very cheap-seeming price.
As the saying goes, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
The links from these companies will very often be from spammy sites that have already been picked up on by Google. And even if they haven’t been noticed yet, they are guaranteed to at some point in the future. If you don’t get caught now, it is only a matter of time.
The only way to avoid this is to completely avoid buying or selling links.
Mistake 2 – Adding Your Site to the Wrong Link Directories
Link directories can actually help you, but only if your site is submitted to the right ones.
When looking at link directories, it often depends on how strict they are with the sites they accept in their listings. If the link directory is full of low-quality sites, then Google will see your site as low quality too by association. If anyone can submit their site to a directory, then it will often become full of spam-filled websites as there are no criteria for entry.
If however, you submit your site to a link directory which has high standards and only accepts relevant sites, then you are likely to actually receive some benefit from it.
The main thing you need to think about is how high-quality the other sites on the directory are. Do you want to be associated with them?
Mistake 3 – Low-Quality Article Links
Before Google made large updates to their algorithms, it was possible to “spin” an article many times and then submit those articles to sites like Article Base or E-Zine. If you linked back to your site in this article, it would help out your SEO rankings.
This used to work great, not so much anymore.
Now though, Google can tell if an article has been plagiarised and will penalise your site if it has been linked to from one of these low-quality articles.
Things like guest blogging can work out very well, but if you are just spinning content rather than writing unique content, it can have the opposite effect.
Mistake 4 – Overusing Keywords in Your Content
Most people know that SEO involves Google looking for keywords in your content. But what a lot of people don’t know is that Google will punish sites that use keywords too much.
The thing is, Google doesn’t even focus on keyword density as much as most people think. You could be stuffing your content full of keywords and it may just be alienating your readers and turning them away from your site as well as Google.
It could also stop people from linking to your site, which is a much more important factor than keywords are.
Mistake 5 – Artificial Anchor Text
The anchor text of a link is simply the text used to link to another site. So “example” would be the anchor text in this sentence.
When Google tries to work out what your site is about, one of the things they look at is the anchor text people use when they link to your site. So if most sites use the anchor text of “marketing” when linking to your website, Google will likely recognise that your site is about marketing.
Some people have realised this and tried to game the system by getting lots of links pointed to their site with the exact same relevant anchor text. But over time, Google has picked up on this and updated their algorithm.
If you try to do this now, your site is just going to get penalised and possibly even removed from Google altogether.
Mistake 6 – Links to Non-Existant Web Pages
As time goes on, the links on your site may stop working as other web pages move or disappear.
This is perfectly normal, but Google will penalise your site if they start to mount up. This shows them that the links on your site haven’t been updated lately, so your site isn’t completely up to date.
It won’t have a massive impact on your rankings, but if everything else is the same, it can have a negative effect.
The way to check this is to go into your Google Webmaster Tools and correct all of the 404s it tells you about. You might notice a small increase in some of your rankings from this.
Worried Yet?
After looking through these 6 factors, you may be thinking SEO can be dangerous.
It doesn’t have to be, though. Most people getting penalised by Google are those pushing their luck and trying to exploit the system.
If you focus on publishing great content and building connections with your readers, your site will be fine.
Instead of trying to manipulate your rankings on Google, just stick to creating content that belongs on the front page, then promote it as much as possible.
There are no shortcuts to just shooting to the top of page one, but there are 3 simple steps you can follow:
- Create awesome content that people want to read
- Get popular people discussing and linking to it
- Wait for Google to rank your site
That might seem a bit too simple, but that’s how Google determines which sites they rank high.
Why try anything else?