Google search result page one is the most coveted real
estate online especially for businesses that have their eyes set on a marketing
plan that involves traffic that is organically generated. In the past few years
however, Google has made improvements in their search algorithms (namely Panda
and Penguin Updates) that aim to provide the best and most relevant search
results for their users. It has drastically changed the way SEO is done and a good
number of websites either dropped in ranking or was completely dropped
(penalized) by Google.
If you have lost the site traffic you once had because of
the Google Updates, here is a list of
the most probable reasons why you are not ranking or why Google or has penalized
your site. The list is also for webmasters who have ranking issues or who wants
to avoid being penalized in the future.
1.
Keyword Overuse
– This refers to content with high keyword density (keywords appearing too many
times) and keywords used as anchor text over and over. There was a time when SEO was all about the
keywords and links – what used to be the reason for achieving ranking goals is
now the reason why the website falls behind.
2.
Poor or
Thin Quality Content - the search algorithms nowadays apparently are able
to detect articles that are irrelevant.
It can distinguish between content that are written simply to for the
links created and content that are written to inform and make sense.
3.
Making
use of Traditional Article Marketing – If your site gets its inbound links
from the same article viscously spun over and over then distributed over dozens
of sites, you website is likely to be penalized. Somehow the Google bots have found a way to
detect websites that use spam-like strategies to generate backlinks.
4.
Link
exchange - A few relevant exchanges make sense but aggressively doing it is
bad for business.
5.
All Flash
and Images but No Content – while graphics, images are very entertaining
and engaging, it does little in ranking because search engine crawlers index
the texts on the site.
6.
Indexing
Errors – It may all be just technical errors – missing or broken links, the
disallow line on robot.txt etc. So do
not panic, do a little website housekeeping first before doing major renovations.
7.
Hiring Cheap
SEO – It is the most common mistake. Most SEO who offer low rates use fast
and easy link building techniques that are usually more costly to clean up. If
you wish to outsource your SEO needs, sign-up with a SEO team who are transparent
in their strategies and adhere to webmaster guidelines.
It is obvious that Google is pushing for the better and more
relevant sites to rank higher so that their users get what they are searching
for. This then pushes everyone who wishes to take advantage of the search
engine’s influence by setting up websites that are of better quality and more
useful content.
References:
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