10 things that google penalizes

want to get lost on google? if you’re concerned with google search ranking penalties (as anyone serious about sales and marketing should be), then below are some sure fire ways to get nabbed. grabbing page views “by any means necessary” can’t be part of any sensible, long-term marketing strategy. google protects the consumer – so what’s bad for the consumer is bad by google. getting knocked down in search rankings (or banned altogether) takes you away from the action and immediately hurts sales. beware of any company that recommends the below tactics for your business. if you’re anything like me, then you’re researching all over the internet for best practices, trends and the latest news in this important field. you’ve got someone hawking this on the daily. click on for these topics: cloaking, duplicating content, content writing by robots, embedding unrelated keywords, linking to bad neighborhoods, text hiding, title stacking, distributing viruses, creating doorways, and automating inquiries.

cloaking
designing your website so that search engines see one thing and visitors see another is called cloaking. this can be done with sneaky redirects or with programming. since nobody likes to be tricked this way, google cracks down hard on abusers. advertisers are trained to sell to the full profile and desires of a consumer. for example, if someone likes cashmere, he or she might also like cadillacs, truffles and horseracing. however, google doesn’t like you to create a truffle or horseracing entity online when you really sell cadillacs. google sides witrh the confused and/or pissed consumer. learn more about cloaking from the “about guide to web design.”

duplicating content
spam sites often try to collect page views by duplicating the same set of content on several website pages. another way to duplicate content would be to violate copyright laws and bring content from someone’s else website in a word-for-word fashion. if you find someone violating your copyright(s) in this manner, then here’s the google page for letting them know.

content writing by robots
worse than duplicating content is having a robot write your website content. there are programs that duplicate content from elsewhere but make a few negligible changes. if google finds you’re doing this, then expect your page views to sink dramatically or disappear entirely.

embedding unrelated keywords
meta keywords don’t mean what they once did to google. when you list keywords, list ones that directly relate to your site. don’t repeat keywords multiple times in the same form. listing every variation or cousin of a word from a dictionary or thesaurus will get you bit by google. you also don’t want to piggyback or steal trademarked names from competitors. talk about a sure way to get a bunch of lawyers to jump on you!

linking to “bad neighborhoods”
google doesn’t reward or like spamming sites – calling them “bad neighborhoods.” linking to these websites will lower your ranking. linking is typically a “plus practice” – but it depends on who you link to! just because someone links to you does not mean you should link back to them. do your research and protect your brand and your rankings. remember what your mom said when you were a kid? if someone comes from a bad neighborhood, then maybe you shouldn’t be friends with them.

text hiding
don’t hide keywords on the page by making them the same color as the background. this is also known as “keyword stuffing” or “font matching.” google has become savvy enough to catch instances of this and will likely remove violators from their search index. you’ll also want to watch how small you make the text on your pages. placing tiny text at the bottom of a page doesn’t work either. there’s a scene in the original willy wonka movie (a personal favorite of mine) that parodies this with a contract that starts with large text and ends with miniature you can’t read without a magnifying glass.

title stacking
don’t add unnecessary <title> tags to gain more keywords. a bit like keyword stuffing, title stacking can also hurt you.  keep it to one title per page. one thing you can do is separate the title words with a dash or slash to hit a few more keywords that do relate to your content.

distributing viruses and other bad things
if you’re engaged in spreading viruses or other bad things on the internet, google will remove you from their search index. double check any software you agree to distribute and make certain that your server is secure. this way, hackers can’t hijack your website and pass along nasty software  on your behalf. there has been a good amount of this going on at facebook – where bad folks use your friendly profile to message your friends into doing bad things they want to do (like money laundering, opening viruses, etc). thankfully, people have been educating each other in real time to minimize the problems that can be caused by this.

creating doorways
pages optimized for a single key term but are actually designed to lead you to different content are called doorways (or gateways). an example would be a consumer-friendly guide to car buying used to land you at a particular car dealership. doorway pages typically lack original content and are intended simply as a stepping stone to or lead generator for the intended website. one somewhat related topic – affiliate programs – should be minded as well. some of these may look like doorway pages when reviewed by google – even though their intents may be legitimate.

automating inquiries
just as they don’t like robots writing your content, google doesn’t like robots checking your ranking. automated queries and link submission are both in violation of google’s terms of service and will likely get your site banned. the practice ties up resources for others on the internet.

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so, what are the takeways here? optimize your website for google by creating clean, well-organized content and navigation that google  respects. earn your views through strong copy, lots of relevant content for consumers, smart marketing and following accepted seo standards. don’t seek to confuse and manipulate people.

you’ve probably noticed that there is a trend in legislative talk about looking anew at things like credit cards for their confusing and manipulative terms, agreements and business practices. this perspective will soon to spread to encapsulate many other areas of business.