Whether you run a business website or just have a personal blog, its success is measured in terms of numbers of visitors.
How do a visitor reach your website? There are two ways: Either your website is already so popular that anyone can directly access it through its URL, or through a search engine. Majority of visitors your website gets come through the second way i.e. through search engine.
Google as a search engine has unanimously monopoly of search engine world. So your website’s success is greatly determined by what ranking your website has in Google search results. It is when that the term SEO comes into play. SEO, an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, means: making your website conform to the standards set by Google search engine so that your website may get the highest possible ranking in Google Search results. Now, it is a hard core fact that SEO is vital, or as the experts put it: Only way for the success of website. On the other hand in the interest of SEO, sometimes we make such mistakes that our website starts plummeting down instead of soaring high in results. Even there might be a time when you check your website in the night before sleeping and feel smug to find truck loads of visitors’ traffic coming to you and next day you get up, only to find your website virtually out of results. You feel cheated and at a loss about what went wrong and after a lot of brain racking you just draw a blank, finding never why Google scooped your website out of its search results.
So in today’s article we would focus on those SEO mistakes that you never thought were actually mistakes and have been constantly making by way of SEO. And these mistakes have taken you into abyss of Search engine results by the time time you become aware of them. So let’s see what exactly these disguised enemies are:
1. Keyword Stuffing
It is the most common and frequent mistake. First we see what the keyword stuffing is. Stuffing a keyword is using a word or phrase unnaturally and again and again in your article, to the point that it starts sounding utter nonsense.
For instance:
Vomiting in Pregnant Woman
Vomiting in pregnant women is very common. Vomiting in pregnant women is not serious because in most of the cases it is only limited to pregnant women. Vomiting in pregnant women……
It sounds very repulsive. Why would anyone do so? Obvious. It seems quite reasonable that frequency of using a word is directly related to the chances of your article being moved up the Google search index. But no.
Indeed there was a time when Keyword stuffing, if not helpful, did not have deleterious effects on website’s ranking. But now Google webmaster support clearly expresses its stand on keyword stuffing:
Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.
2.A Matter of Links
It is true that links play a very special role in increasing the traffic to your website. But as you may very well be aware, “There is no such thing as a free lunch”. Google is aware too of the adage. And the search engine giant thinks, and not very unreasonably, there may be quite a few unscrupulous reasons why anybody is linking to your website. Google monitors closely whether you might be a part of link schemes.
Link schemes or Link manipulation is getting links in return of something that Google does not approve of. Now we can categorize link manipulation in the following ways:
3. Buying or Exchanging Links
Paying money for getting your site linked to. These links mainly come from spammy websites. It can harm your website in two ways: First you are tricking Google to get your website moved up in Google results. Being a part of Google search results manipulation, it is a quite a felony in Google’s view. So when you are caught, Google is not going to relent. Secondly, Google algorithm has a concept of neighborhood. It lists websites connected in one way or another together. Since you are getting links from spammy and bad reputation websites, you are sure to end up with them in Google Search Results. It’s easy to imagine where your website is going to land in Search results, if it is listed with openly notorious spammy websites. And never be bluffed by the arguments from the link providing companies like you will never get caught by Google. In fact you are bound to be rounded up one day or another.
A similar phenomenon is Link exchange or cross-linking i.e. making an agreement like, ‘link to me, I’ll link to you.’ It faces the same nemesis, when Google gets its hands on your website.
4. Links That Are No Longer In Use (Broken Links or Outdated Links)
In physical we need cleaning almost on a daily basis. So is the case with virtual world. You have a lot of links but having a lot of links is one thing, while having productive links is another. Over time you happen to have many links which are no longer in use. These broken, outdated links needs to be removed every so often.
5. Anchor Text Links
One phrase definition: Clickable text in a hyperlink and that can be clicked on. For example: You are writing about ancient Indian science. Here the line ‘Yoga is a part of ancient Indian science’ may be an example of anchor text, redirecting you to a Yoga website . Now you might be wondering what exactly Anchor text has to do with SEO. Google Webmaster clears up the matter for you:
Google disapproves of exact match keywords in anchor text as it believes them most likely to be a part of link schemes. An exact match anchor text is when anchor text gives you the clear idea where you are being directed to.
What is more, in April 2012 Google Penguin update was launched further settling its stand on anchor text.
6. Article Marketing
Wondering what exactly the article marketing is? Let us parse it-
Marketing of your website i.e. advertising of your website through writing articles for other websites which have guest writer corner. You write article for these websites and in return they link to your website. Now you are starting to get the point. Google Webmaster Page reads again and again-
Bottom Line
Do not procure links in any way. Just let them in naturally.
7. Content Copying or Scraped Content and Originality of Content
The more articles your blog has, the more it is going to have a higher PageRank. Very True. But It does not mean that in the interest of increasing the number of articles. you would completely ignore the quality of them. Copying content from others’ blog or rewriting an article without adding anything significantly new is more likely to push down your PageRank instead of bringing your article in Google’s good books. Google wants you to add something original. Your articles should be original well-written and well researched. So always it is originality that is going to help increase your article’s Google PageRank and never copied content with small or no changes.
Now What:
As you may well have become aware what Google hates most is manipulation of any kind to Increase PageRank. Don’t make yourself a hare in SEO, a tortoise here too is bound to win the race. By resorting to any of the above mentioned lures and this way manipulating your PageRank you may get your ranking increased for a while but ultimately you are going to end up in abyss. What Google expects you to do is to produce good quality and original articles without resorting to manipulation so that it itself could give better search results to its users. Its guidelines are simple:
Never try to manipulate Google search results.
Produce original and good quality content.
There is no short cut to success.
