Some online businesses and marketing agencies are using black hat SEO techniques to gain instant search results, so Google regularly updates their search algorithms to produce authentic results for more users’ convenience. Google Penguin and Panda updates have made the worst impact many websites across the world. People have scared so much that many folks have left search engine optimization activity due to this havoc. However, as we know that there is a problem, there is the solution for it. In this article, I would like to suggest a few steps for saving your website from being penalized by Google updates. I hope that this checklist will steadily regain your traffic, sales, and revenue.
Evaluate Your Link Network
It is vital to know the source from where your link is coming and the use of keyword plays an important role in evaluating links. Many tools are available on the web that analyses your link network and provides guidance. Below are some examples of warnings for low-quality links.
- Links from unrelated sources
- Links with extremely optimized anchor text
- Links from bad neighborhood websites
- Links from lower valued web pages
On finding, such links contact your webmaster and tell him to remove such links that can damage your ranking. After that, you can contact Google for not taking into account such low-quality links for website ranking.
Check Rankings
Daily checking your Google page ranking for a particular keyword is a bad habit but yes, you can check your keyword ranking once or twice in a week. It will give you an idea about changes that your site needs to get high ranking in search engine. The ranking is a mirror of efforts that you applied for your website in the past, and it also suggests that where you are lacking and what steps now you have to take to rectify your mistakes. There are many tools available on the internet to check your website ranking, it will provide a complete analysis of your website and suggest if any error or suggestion found for your website.
Google Penguin update effects on page optimization and off-site page optimization and it is obvious that your site should follow Google consideration to remain top in the search engine. Below are some further recommendations for your website.
Be Calm
It is obvious that Google frequently brings updates to search engine algorithms per year. As per resource, Google makes nearly 500 minor changes in its algorithm in a year, which it does not disclose. Therefore, it does not mean that SEO era is over and we should quit now. Google changes algorithms to make search transparent and wants to implement white SEO techniques. What we have to do is to analyze our website, find the hole in our website, and take necessary actions against it.
Delete Content Aimlessly
Google penguin has spread havoc among SEO and many webmasters delete their content or the whole blog, which creates a gap in your website, with many incoming links directing to nothing. Make sure you delete your content referencing 301 redirect that means to delete it forever. Search engine believes that the whole content and its location are changed to new URL. The engines will carry link weight age from the original page to new URL. It means now your URL will address to new address permanently.
Over Optimized Title Keyword
When you repeat your keyword in title, it will make a bad impression on a website. It is called keyword stuff and Google will punish it so bear in mind the keyword you used is not over optimized. Keep your title for people not for search engine rankings. For example, SEO service, SEO services firm, the success of SEO is considered as keyword stuff so instead of it, you should keep Success of SEO, or high-ranking SEO.
Title Tag & Description Tag
Generally, people use new code to create a new page but there are imitators who copy the code of one page and implement to another page this will create a duplicate keyword pointing two different pages. Moreover, Panda another Google update penalized such sites with a low-quality content, title tag, and description tag. To avoid such penalty always make your title tag and description tag unique.
Repair your HTML
Google search console (formerly webmaster tool) can help you to identify and diagnose a problem that your website is suffering. It easily diagnoses problems and provides complete analysis report of Google search queries that drive traffic to your traffic. You can download data about internal and external links to your site. You can easily fix crawling errors, absent pages, and photocopy title tag with this tool. With the help of webmaster tool, you can boost your website ranking and minimize the ratio of errors.
Internal Links
Your anchor text in internal links should include brand and generic terms. There is a ratio to use anchor text described as follows.
- 40% for brand terms
- 40% for generic terms
- 20% target links
To create brand terms, make your website that includes your brand like www. Mcdonald.com while to create generic terms put some words like “click here”, “check out here”, “Rate this”. At last, when you plan to target keywords placed in links to improve your search ranking use relevant keywords that can bring traffic to your website.
Off Site Optimization
It is more difficult to find out the low-quality backlinks in off page optimization compare to on page optimization. Off-site optimization is not a part of your website but contributes to your page rank like referral sites, incoming links from content and pages, backlinks from social media. Off-site optimization is a result of On-site optimization. Below are some tactics to avoid Google Penguin penalties.
- Update your links as per anchor text ratio that we discussed earlier (40:40:20) in this article. Check your sidebar, headers, footers that carry target keywords.
- Check the incoming links like guest posts, comments etc. Modify anchor text from these links to change your link network ratio.
- If you link is on de-indexed site, then remove such links from de-indexed sites.
- Replace low-quality backlinks with high-quality syndication alternatives with gradually. Remove any poor quality article, blog network and never submit to such blog or article directories.
- Check your domain and recognize low quality spammed links directing to your domain and remove those links manually. For that, check WHOIS record for a domain and make request them for removing links. You can offer some money reward or you can contact other paid services to remove such low-quality links.
- Make sure you are getting links from different sources like a press release, blogs, forum sites, social media platforms etc. It will look like natural links in front of search engines.
- If your site has been punished, then submit a reconsideration request for the manual check of your website to Google and wait for 4 to 6 months for a reply. If you do not see any changes in ranking, then resubmit your request by attaching documents related to changes you made to link network and notify the reason for uplifting the penalty levied by Google.
Come To The End
Use always White SEO techniques if you like Google to care for your website. Google is on the mission to remove black hat SEO techniques and low-quality buildings and want to make the browsing experience better in near future. For that Google always try to catch low-quality backlinks, sites that do not follow Google guidelines and penalize them. However, if you are running ethical SEO practice and still your site is penalized, then do not get depressed but find out the reason for such disaster. I hope the above steps will be useful for you to get back your Google rankings.
