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| Google Penalty Checklist |
Some content that point out some of the mistakes through which a website suffers from a Google penalty, They are:
- Linking to banned sites
Run a test on all outbound links from your site to see if you are linking to any sites which have themselves been Google banned.
- Linking to bad neighborhoods
Check you are not linking to any bad neighborhoods, link farms or doorway pages. Bad neighborhoods include spam sites and doorway pages, whilst link farms are just pages of links to other sites, with no original or useful content.
- Over optimization penalties
These can be triggered by poor SEO techniques such as aggressive link building using the same keywords in link anchor text. When managing link building campaigns always vary the link text used and incorporate a variety of different keyword terms. For brand new domains, add no more than 5 new one way backlinks a week and use deep linking to website internal pages, rather than just homepage link building.
- Website cross linking & link schemes
If you run more than one website and the Google penalty hits all sites at the same time, check the interlinking (cross linking) between those sites. Extensive interlinking of websites, particularly if they are on the same C Class IP address (same ISP) can be viewed as "link schemes" by Google, breaking their terms of service. The risks are even higher where site A site wide links to site B and site B site wide links back to site A. If you must use site wide links, make sure they are not reciprocal links. Link schemes built around links in the footer of each webpage are particularly risky.
- Hidden text or links
Remove any hidden text in your content and remove any hidden keywords. Such content may be hidden from view using CSS or alternatively, text may have been coded to be the same colour as the page background, rendering it invisible. These risky SEO techniques often lead to a Google penalty or web site ban and should be removed immediately.
- Keyword stuffing (spamming)
Remove excessive keyword stuffing in your website content (unnatural repetitions of the same phrase in body text). Always use natural, well written web copywriting techniques.
- Automated page redirects
The use of automated browser re-directs in any of your pages. Meta Refresh and JavaScript automated re-directs often result in Google penalties as the pages using them are perceived to be doorway pages. This technique is especially dangerous if the refresh time is less than 5 seconds. To avoid Google penalties, use a 301 re-direct or Mod Rewrite technique instead of these methods. This involves setting up an .htaccess file on your web server.
- Reciprocal link building campaigns
Excessive reciprocal linking may trigger a Google penalty or cause a SERPS filter to be applied when the same or very similar link anchor text is used over and over again and large numbers of reciprocal links are added in a relatively short time.
The dangers are made worse by adding reciprocal links to low quality sites or websites which have an unrelated theme. This can lead to a backlink over optimization penalty (known as a BLOOP to SEO experts!). A Google Backlink over Optimization Penalty causes sudden drops in SERPS ranking. To avoid this problem, reciprocal link exchange should only be used as part of a more sustainable SEO strategy which also builds quality one way links to original website content.
- Thin Affiliates and "Made for Adsense" sites
It's a well known fact that Google dislikes affiliate sites with thin content and the same applies to "made to Adsense" sites. Always make sure affiliate sites have quality original content if you don't want to get them filtered out of the search results when someone completes a Google spam report so don't spend time and money on SEO on such sites without the right content.
Check Google Webmaster Guidelines
Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and check website compliance in all respects. Since early 2007, Google may alert webmasters via the Google Webmaster Console who they feel might have unknowingly broken their guidelines to advise them that their site has been removed from Google for a set period of time due to breaking one or more of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
However, blatant spam or significant breaches of Google's rules will often result in a site being banned, with no Webmaster Console notification. Where notification of a violation of Google's guidelines is received, it usually encourages the webmaster to correct the problem/s and then issue a re-inclusion request to re-include their site or write to webmaster[at]google.com with the subject line 'reinclusion request'. From my experience, after this is done the website will usually regain its original ranking, having lost no trust.
Google Website Penalty Checker:
If you've used unethical SEO techniques your website could be Google banned and de-indexed. Check for a Google website ban using the free SEO tool at http://tools.seomoves.org/penaltychecker/
Google Banned Checker:
http://www.iwebtool.com/google_banned
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