4 Ways to get Banned by Google
To be banned by Google does have a devastating effect on your site’s performance. Some don’t even know they have been banned. If you are worried, you can find out through simple methods. Note that you would have to already been indexed to know. A perfectly new domain may not even be indexed yet, so testing that out would be pointless.
The first method you can do is to check your site on Google searches. Simple go to Google and type in your URL into the search box and see if you obtain a result. Through my below example (http://www.googlebannedmoi.com), you can see that there is no result.
Of course this is just a fake domain, but it shows what potentially a banned site. When there appears to be no information, it means your URL and contents have been removed from Google’s database.
The second way of finding out is by checking your site’s PageRank. When a site obtains a PageRank of 0 (zero), it means it has been indexed. However, if you check your site and see that it is N/A, then you are in some serious trouble.
There are many onpage and offpage ranking factors and each can cause Google to ban you. Out of those two, onpage factors have been a key destroyer in many websites.
The below 4 ways of getting banned by Google and its products are serious and should never be practiced.
1. Hidden Text
Hidden text is used to conceal major keywords and links from visitors, so they have a normal reading flow. However, bots read the source coding and so it is clear when such an act has been made. The simplest way is to make your text white (assuming white background) so users can’t see it. This will get you banned.
2. Alt Tag Spamming
All optimizers say to optimize your images with alternative tags containing relevant keywords and phrases. This isn’t what gets websites banned. What gets sites banned is that they repeatedly add the major keyword. The alt tag is there for text browsers and serves a small part of onpage optimization. However, when it is abused, Google will act upon it.
3. Meta Tag Spamming
This is simply where the owner has repeatedly stuffed the keyword/s in the main major meta tags (Keywords and Description). This won’t affect your site’s ranking regardless of 10 keywords or 100, so why do it? Google will see this as onpage spam and thus take appropriate action.
4. Title Element Spamming
This is the same concept as the above two, but for titles. Your title is meant to be explicit, enforcing major keywords. However, repeated stuffing of keywords in the title in an effort to increase in rankings won’t help you in any way, instead get you banned.
In fact, any form of spam that Google sees will impact your site’s ranking points. If Google sees a spam forum, that site will lose points. If Google sees you stuff too many links in your footer, you will lose points, and so on.
