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Posts Tagged ‘Meta Tags’

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.
Site banned by Google
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.

The search engine is normally subdivided into two separate categories that deal with two different realms. These two categories are mainly based on the payment criteria that is either it id the Non-organic or paid search optimization or the non-paid one which is the organic variant. The paid module of the search advertising relies on certain carefully designed search phrases that directs the internet traffic to the certain webpage, while the organic module relies basically on the ingenuity of the web designer as to how the page appears on the search engine results and the way it incorporates into the “organic” search engine results pages commonly labeled as (SERPS).

Organic optimization requires the sound know how of the marketing strategies. Moreover, organic optimized website is more on the A-list of the visitors and the contents are more appreciated as compare to the other variant. And by thorough embedding of the keyword in the contents a further enhanced degree of optimization is obtained. The level of search engine compatibility is the standard according to which all the aspects of the website are weighed. Most of the times, the aspects which encompass the variants like Meta tags, editorial copies and design are the prime factors taken into consideration.

All of these aspects are analytically weighed and put forward in a sequence but certain cardinal points are:

  1. Key phrases: The main point on which all the emphasis is laid as far as organic optimization is considered is the correct targeting of the keywords. The keyword placement is gauged by the mindset of the audience that which words are to be more in the limelight as far as the users are considered and than that word is incorporated more into the text or the contents. Now on the downside an excessive use of the keyword in the contents can pose certain other problems like tagging of the website as the spamming is abusing site and ultimately being removed from the engines index. So ideally the keyword should be used about 7-8 times in the text of about 200-300 words.
  2. Site Structure: Indexing power of search engines are sometimes limited because the search engine spiders or the robots are mainly concerned with two basic analogies, what is the website theme and where do the search engine should place this website. Sometimes the integral design of the particular website can really cause the search engine to go haywire. The working or the science behind the search engine indexing is important to comprehend because if that is known than the site can be desorbed effectively. Another important aspect which overshadows the search engine indexing is for the site to be rich in graphical and flash contents. Moreover java script rich sites are also not the choice of the searchers. More so different ruling of search engine keeps on changing so the indexing varies on the same very lines. Eliminating the components which cause problems should be eliminated on the first hand and than other considerations should be weighing in.
  3. Usability: Site that is difficult to load and is not swift in navigation is the one that gets low rankings on the search engines.
  4. Embedded Links: The amount of inbound links or the embedded links also play a vital role for the SEO of the website. The link popularity is rather calculated by the search engines and depending upon that, the results are streamlined. Normally practices like “link farming” and “free-for-all” links are termed as sort of Trojans in the online realm.

Hopefully with these few tips, you can really get your site ranking high, and not have a burden of potentially being penalized.

Search Engine Optimization is the process by which you tweak ins and outs of your webpage to get higher rankings for the specific keywords in search engine results. Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc. have crawlers with special coding which crawl the online pages. You can also tweak your pages to rank higher by following some simple steps.

Before I lead on to what those steps are, you should know there are two main types of SEO (Search Engine Optimization): On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. On-page SEO deals with stuff that is visible to the visitors on your page and off-page is SEO that’s working in the background. Both have equal importance but somehow off-page SEO tends to get you higher rankings and hence more quality unique visitors.

Part of the process is choosing the perfect keyword. There are a lot of tools online which will help you select the best keyword. The important thing to keep in mind here is keywords which attract a lot of traffic are most difficult to get higher rankings for. So go ahead and select the perfect keyword for you content. Now I will explain the ways you can take the maximum advantage of your keywords or key phrases.

Phrases Including the Keywords are BETTER than just the keywords:
More often than not, single keywords are highly competitive. Having a keyword phrase is usually more effective when it comes to SEO. This is mainly because a lot of times people would search for a phrase, rather than just the keyword. For example, an end user looking for Search Engine Optimization tips and tricks wouldn’t just search for ‘SEO’, they would prefer searching for terms such as ‘SEO Tips and tricks’ or ‘How to do search engine optimization’. So choose a keyword phrase and then work on it.

Placement of Keywords in the Content
Be sure your keywords are present at least 3 times in the first paragraph of your content. While writing the conclusion, be sure to include the keywords again as well. That can help you get great rankings.

Placement of Keywords in Title and Description
Add your keywords to the page title and description as well. Just make sure it looks natural and not spam. People who are avid readers online can tell in a heartbeat if they are being lured into a money making website, not a content website. Be sure to maintain a good balance. As per off page SEO is concerned, there’s not a lot you can do personally. But there are some tricks on that as well.

For starters, the off page SEO is proportional to the popularity of your website. If you are getting a million unique visitors a day, well your website will get the first result for your keywords. By popularity, I also mean to say the incoming links. Recommendations online; people posting links to your website on social networking websites, talking about it on online forums – links on the web to your website, do the major off page SEO. Get other highly ranked websites to link you, which will get you great referrals and ranking as well. Ultimately, people will only share your link if you are providing some sort of value. Be sure, never to forget that.

SEO may be complex to understand at times, but if you try hard enough, you can get great rankings!

It’s not enough to simply rank well in the search engines, you also have to make sure the listings you get actually bring you traffic. It doesn’t matter how high you rank or which terms you rank for if your competitors are still getting most of the traffic.

Fortunately, there are some things you can do to ensure that you get more traffic from the listings you get. We’re going to look at the top three ways to make sure you get your fair share of the traffic whenever your site appears in the SERPs.

  1. Choose your title carefully. You should never use your main keyword phrase alone as your title. Not only is this unlikely to get you much traffic, it’s also possible that it will (when combined with other factors) get your site hit with an over-optimization penalty. Instead, make sure your title makes sense. For example, the title “Buy Green Widgets Here – Free Shipping!” would probably pull more clicks than simply “Green Widgets”.
  2. Don’t forget to fill in the meta description field. While most search engines ignore the meta description and keywords fields for SEO itself, they do actually use the meta description information as the description users see in the listings. So make sure your description is something exciting that will get people to click!
  3. Try to make sure your main keyword phrase appears at least once in your title and your description. Whenever someone searches on Google, the words they searched for appear in bold. This helps draw attention, so use it to your advantage. Be sure to use the keywords you anticipate ranking for in both the title and description. If possible, also use those words in your URL. If you can’t use it in the domain name itself, you can name the HTML file after that keyword phrase.

Just these simple steps do help you gain added traffic from SEO listings. It is essential to get the maximum amount of traffic as it can all eventually build up and it will be a key factor in your site’s success.

Is it possible to over-optimize a website? Definitely!

There will most likely be a penalty for this sites who tend to have great optimization and appear to rank too well for certain keywords.

The main contributor to over-optimization is to do with your keyword phrases and your title/H1 tags. If you use the exact same keyword phrase in its entirety with no other words in your title tag, H1 tags, anchor text, and HTML filename, it will trigger the penalty almost every time. This has been evident in numerous sites that may appear to do well, but in fact, in the background, they are literally committing suicide.

There are a few things you can do to be relatively certain that your site is well-optimized without being hit with an over-optimization penalty:

  1. Never use the same exact keyword phrase for the title tag and the heading tags on the page. Always add a couple of words to either to make them slightly different.
  2. When you use keywords for anchor text, make sure to vary the text occasionally. When a site has an unnaturally high number of pages all linking to it with the exact same keyword, it can throw up a huge red flag. Use your main phrase about half the time, and split the rest between two or three other phrases.
  3. Don’t use your main keyword phrase as your exact page title. If your main keyword phrase is “green widgets”, try a title like “Green Widgets for Sale”. Then you could use “Green Widgets” as the text in your page’s H1 tag.

So why is there an over-optimization penalty, anyway? Well, if you think about it, Google wants to display natural results. They don’t want to display pages that they believe are obviously attempting to manipulate the rankings, because these sites would be more likely to be spam. They feel that truly legitimate pages would rarely have “perfect” SEO. Note that I can place the most random HTML file on the Internet and that could become the next big thing without me even noticing it.

So sites can be penalized for over-optimization because those extremely well-optimized sites may seem “too perfect” to be a legitimate website. Its always good to mix things up and get your site noticed and ranked, but do it without manipulating the system through overusing your keywords and titles.

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