It's a simple question... Are you asking Google to penalize your website?
I'm sure you're probably thinking; Well, of course not! Yet daily I see new people complaining in search engine optimization forums that their websites have been banned by Google and they "have no idea why".
These people claim they've done nothing wrong and are absolutely clueless as to why their site is no longer in Google. The purpose of this lesson is to teach you one VERY important thing.
What NOT to do when optimizing your onpage ranking factors
How do you know if you've been banned?
First let me show you how to see if you're clearly banned by Google. Often times people think they've been banned, when in reality they've just dropped in ranking and can't find their website.
There are a couple of things you can do.
1.) Check Google's search results.
2.) View the Google toolbar.
Check Google's search results.
Go to Google and enter your entire URL into Google's search box. In this example we'll use a made up name. (www.jkhljkhkjh.com). Let's say this website was in Google's index at one time. On a side note, I tried www.somerandomdomain.com and www.fakedomainname.com and
both were already taken. I guess some people just don't have enough time on their hands :-)
Anyway, we'll go to Google and enter our entire URL and click "search" Http://www.jkhljkhkjh.com
Notice that Google says there is no information available for this URL? This means that the
URL is no longer in Google's database.
If you enter a brand new website into Google, you'll always get this message until the website has been indexed. But, in this case, our website has been banned by Google for some reason. Another way you can quickly see if your website has been banned is by:
Viewing the Google Toolbar.
Download the Google Toolbar here: Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Once it's installed, simply visit your website. If the Google toolbar is completely gray, this means you have been banned by Google.
Banned:
Not Banned:
Ok, so now we know how to tell if our website has been banned.
What can cause your website to get banned?
There are many onpage ranking factors AND offpage ranking factors that can cause Google to ban your website. Today, we'll focus on only the onpage things that can cause your site to get banned.
Before I begin, I want you to know that many websites still get away with doing some of these things. They DO NOT help your rankings and are simply a waste of time, so don't try them. Sooner or later Google will catch up to these websites and will remove them. It's just not worth the risk, when doing them doesn't help your ranking to begin with.
Hidden Text
Hidden Text is simply text that users can't see when they visit your webpage. Some webmasters will do this so that they can add keywords throughout their webpage without it interfering with what the visitors actually see. Yet, the search engines can still see hidden text.
For example, let's say you have a white background on your website. If you wanted to hide text, you would simply make the color of your text white (#FFFFFF) and users couldn't see it.
I did a quick search in Google and quickly found an example of a website using hidden text. Have a look below:
At first glance, you're probably wondering where the hidden text is...
Alt image tag spamming
This is another way that people will try to cram keywords into their website, allowing search engines to see their keywords, but not allowing visitors to notice any difference in their website.
The following is a website that wanted to rank well for "cabbage soup diet". What they've done is inserted a graphic of a cabbage. They've then added an alt image tag to the graphic. When a visitors visits the website, hovers their mouse over the cabbage soup graphic, a little popup will appear.
Notice how many times they've repeated the word "cabbage soup" and "cabbage"? Way too many! It serves no purpose other than to cram as many keywords as possible into their webpage.
The real purpose of an alt image tag is if a user visits your website and the graphic will not load, or is disabled by their web browser, text will appear instead of the graphic. This is often used for blind people.
Alt image spamming is something you want to stay clear of. Using alt image tags are good, but you can overdo it as you can see above. A good alt image tag in this case would
simply be: cabbage soup diet graphic
Meta Tag Stuffing
What I'm referring to here is when people throw in thousands of the same exact keyword into their meta tags.
For example, the following website is trying to rank well for "tents".
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents">
This is obviously ridiculous. Google doesn't use Meta Tags when ranking websites. Google
WILL penalize it, but it WILL NOT help you... so, why would anyone do something like this?
Stay away from it.
Title Tag Stuffing
The title is what appears in the top left hand corner of your webpage. Below is an example of
Title Tag Stuffing
Don't do it...
You only need to include your keyword(s) one time in your title tag. Anymore than 1 time will only dilute the effect, and if you overdo it as shown above, you may get banned.
Those are just a few of the things that people are continuing to do online. These things WILL eventually get your website banned and WILL NOT help you rank well. It's just a waste of time and effort, plus just plain ignorant to waste your time on something that doesn't work and will get your website banned from the search engines.
In the next chapter I'm going to show you some of the offpage optimization techniques that you should steer clear of. Many of which are things that over 50% of the websites online are currently doing and are causing them to drop out of Google by the handful. So, pay close attention, you just may be doing something you shouldn't be!
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