Understanding Google Penalties and SEO
All it takes is a few seconds to search for SEO and you’ll get hit with a lot commentary on it. But what about the dark side of this? Search engine optimization (SEO) is not just heralded as a premier way to get traffic. There are issues to be had. For instance, did you know that Google has a way to punish sites that don’t comply with what they feel is the correct way to work with SEO? Millions of marketers have looked at their analytics to find their pages taken down a serious peg. How bad? Well, overnight some sites have seen their views go from hundreds of thousands of hits to nearly nothing. If you’re not working with the right parameters of SEO, you’re going to get pummeled in the rankings. How do you avoid that? You’re going to need to look at how penalties shape the current trends of SEO and manage your sites a bit better. Here are a few guidelines to illuminate the issue.
Panda’s Content Break Down
Panda has come and went, but the echoes of the update that is named after this cuddly bear is no joke. This is an update that was pushed out to get better content around the board. If you aren’t complying with unique, good SEO content, then you were penalized. Some people saw their pages lose all sorts of ranking because of the fact that Panda sniffed out “weak”, and “low-quality” content. Things that stuffed keywords, and was only “click bait” all got seriously throw aside. You couldn’t even “Snipe” Google’s keywords any longer, making this an even more difficult thing to manage.
To fight back against Panda, you will need to write better content, delete old content, delete duplicate content, and create intrinsic value in your new updates. Simply put, your content has to improve by a fact of 100 percent or else. Web 2.0 sites got hit the hardest, so if you had a lot of work on these, you most likely saw a serious decline.
Penguin’s Link Shuffle
When discussing SEO, you are no doubt going to hear about links. Backlinks can improve your rankings fast. However, with the update of Penguin from Google, links got a huge overhaul. Just like Panda dropped a ton of issues for content, this is all about links. If you saw a huge backdraft here, then you should look into link quality, link diversity, and how fast you’re getting links put in place. The fast and hard rule here is simple, don’t buy low quality links or in bulk. Bulk links are going to cause your site to plummet in rankings fast, it’s that simple.
The Mobilegeddon Issue
It’s important not to panic when you hear buzzwords. A lot of people heard about the changes in SEO from mobile updates that Google announced earlier this year. Essentially, it’s a way to get people to create more responsive design with their pages. As mobile phones are now the norm, people want and need to get through pages faster, and in a more responsive manner. That means that you will need to change up your theme, design, and code. If you didn’t, then you most likely saw a punch from Google’s SEO system. That means that your page is now in a diminished cycle of traffic, which is never a good thing. Some people talked about this like it was a perfect storm, but it’s not. It’s just a matter of changing up your site to fit the mobile elements. If you didn’t work on this aspect of SEO this year, the time is now.
The Ad Push Everywhere
If your site has a ton of advertising, and it’s all above the fold, your day in the sun is done. With the latest updates to Google’s SEO elements, you are going to end up seeing your site get pushed further and further down. Why? Well, simply put, you’re preying on individuals that are visiting your website, and in regards to SEO, that’s interfering with user experience. When you do that Google sees it as a deficiency. In the end, you can’t interfere with the experience a user has, and that means displaying ads in non-intrusive areas. Above the fold is no longer the most profitable, that’s for sure.
Finding a way to manage SEO and still comply with the Google penalties is rough. If you are hit with a penalty, you aren’t going to get a notice. You will need to determine why your traffic has dipped, and what the latest edits you need to work with overall are. Remember, Google’s SEO changes aren’t done overnight. Sometimes the symptoms take months to manifest on your specific URL, so be proactive.
