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5 Quick Ways To Get Your Website Penalised
- Categorized in: Search Engine Ranking
We see it so often, it's worth saying again.
Search engines are very clever, and they don't like it when people try to artificially manipulate their results. Optimising your site to rank higher in the search engines is one thing, but certain tactics will bring you unstuck. And many people do them without realising it.
- Invisible text
Never do this. As a general rule, search engines will penalise you for anything that is on your site that a normal human being can't see. If you've got invisible text on your site (eg. white text on white background, red text on red background), it will only be a matter of time before the search engines find this and either penalise your site (drop it in rankings), or remove it altogether - Link Farms
Link farms are programs or communities where you join them and you all instantly link to each other. Building proper links with other websites is fine, but if you join a program that artificially increases your links, you'll soon be picked up by the search engines. They see this as artificially raising your "link popularity" (importance). - 1 x 1 Pixel Images That Are Hyperlinked
A 1 x 1 pixel image is an image that is so small you can hardly see it. Originally used for statistics counters, this became a way for people to spam the search engines by creating hidden links that the human eye can't see. As a result, many of the major search engines are now suspect about 1 x 1 pixel images that are hyperlinks, and you could be penalised for using them, even if your intentions are genuine. - Overstuffing Keywords
Ever seen a site that has sentences like: "Widgets are really great. If you're looking for great widgets, we have a great widget maker who makes great widgets"? What they're doing is trying to fill their webpage with as many keywords as possible to try and increase their chances of ranking higher for people looking for widgets.
Search engines have become quite clever in working out when a site is doing this on purpose and will often penalise them. Just make sure that your website wording sounds natural, and you should be OK. - Multiple Copies Of Similar Content
Search engines don't like seeing identical, or very similar, content on different websites or webpages. If you've got identical content on many different pages, or even on different websites, they'll often see this as an attempt to get your content listed more than once. Again, they could penalise you for this.
There are many other ways you can inadvertently bring your site into "disrepute" with the major search engines, but these are the main ones that we see happening.
We see it so often, it's worth saying again.
Search engines are very clever, and they don't like it when people try to artificially manipulate their results. Optimising your site to rank higher in the search engines is one thing, but certain tactics will bring you unstuck. And many people do them without realising it.
1. Invisible text
Never do this. As a general rule, search engines will penalise you for anything that is on your site that a normal human being can't see. If you've got invisible text on your site (eg. white text on white background, red text on red background), it will only be a matter of time before the search engines find this and either penalise your site (drop it in rankings), or remove it altogether.
2. Link Farms
Link farms are programs or communities where you join them and you all instantly link to each other. Building proper links with other websites is fine, but if you join a program that artificially increases your links, you'll soon be picked up by the search engines. They see this as artificially raising your "link popularity" (importance).
3. 1 x 1 Pixel Images
A 1 x 1 pixel image is an image that is so small you can't see it. Originally used for statistics counters, this became a way for people to spam the search engines by creating hidden links that the human eye can't see. As a result, many of the major search engines are now suspect about 1 x 1 pixel images, and you could be penalised for using them, even if your intentions are genuine.
4. Overstuffing Keywords
Ever seen a site that has sentences like: "Widgets are really great. If you're looking for great widgets, we have a great widget maker who makes great widgets"? What they're doing is trying to fill their webpage with as many keywords as possible to try and increase their chances of ranking higher for people looking for widgets.
Search engines have become quite clever in working out when a site is doing this on purpose and will often penalise them. Just make sure that your website wording sounds natural, and you should be OK.
5. Multiple Copies Of Similar Content
Search engines don't like seeing identical, or very similar, content on different websites or webpages. If you've got identical content on many different pages, or even on different websites, they'll often see this as an attempt to get your content listed more than once. Again, they could penalise you for this.
There are many other ways you can inadvertently bring your site into "disrepute" with the major search engines, but these are the main ones that we see happening, even here in the south west.
Search engines are very clever, and they don't like it when people try to artificially manipulate their results. Optimising your site to rank higher in the search engines is one thing, but certain tactics will bring you unstuck. And many people do them without realising it.
1. Invisible text
Never do this. As a general rule, search engines will penalise you for anything that is on your site that a normal human being can't see. If you've got invisible text on your site (eg. white text on white background, red text on red background), it will only be a matter of time before the search engines find this and either penalise your site (drop it in rankings), or remove it altogether.
2. Link Farms
Link farms are programs or communities where you join them and you all instantly link to each other. Building proper links with other websites is fine, but if you join a program that artificially increases your links, you'll soon be picked up by the search engines. They see this as artificially raising your "link popularity" (importance).
3. 1 x 1 Pixel Images
A 1 x 1 pixel image is an image that is so small you can't see it. Originally used for statistics counters, this became a way for people to spam the search engines by creating hidden links that the human eye can't see. As a result, many of the major search engines are now suspect about 1 x 1 pixel images, and you could be penalised for using them, even if your intentions are genuine.
4. Overstuffing Keywords
Ever seen a site that has sentences like: "Widgets are really great. If you're looking for great widgets, we have a great widget maker who makes great widgets"? What they're doing is trying to fill their webpage with as many keywords as possible to try and increase their chances of ranking higher for people looking for widgets.
Search engines have become quite clever in working out when a site is doing this on purpose and will often penalise them. Just make sure that your website wording sounds natural, and you should be OK.
5. Multiple Copies Of Similar Content
Search engines don't like seeing identical, or very similar, content on different websites or webpages. If you've got identical content on many different pages, or even on different websites, they'll often see this as an attempt to get your content listed more than once. Again, they could penalise you for this.
There are many other ways you can inadvertently bring your site into "disrepute" with the major search engines, but these are the main ones that we see happening, even here in the south west.
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Search engines have become better at recognizing the above five issues and do penalize... often in harsh ways which actually lower the ranking for the websites that try it.
Link farms are the worst in my opinion. I had this one guy ask for a link farm (he didn't call it that though) that included links to competitors, links to patent medicine (miracle cures, etc), link spamming sites and more. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted it must be in there, and then shortly after I added it his SERP decreased significantly, and so did his traffic.