Google Penalties – How to Avoid Them in 2020 

Google Penalties – How to Avoid Them in 2020  If you’re actively building links or outsourcing SEO services, you’ll want to know how to avoid Google Penalties during the process, find out how.

SEO rankings grow in significance every day now, as every online business faces never-ending competition. Google certainly keeps business owners and digital marketers on their toes by updating its algorithms.

Search engine penalties are some of the most dangerous things that can happen in website marketing, as they have the power to change your business’s status from highly profitable to not bringing any profit overnight.

There are two types of Google penalties- algorithmic and manual. It would be best if you watched out for both, as they can be equally destructive. It is highly helpful to learn how to avoid penalties and secure your website by engaging in preventing activities. Without further ado, let’s dive into the Google penalties prevention tactics. 

Know the Google Guidelines 

It’s crucial to be familiar with the rules and guidelines it is using at the moment to distinguish quality from bad/fake sites. Following the rules is not an ‘if’ here, it is an absolute must if you want your relationship with the most powerful search engine in the world to remain friendly. 

You should be aware that Google’s guidelines change over time, and algorithms are frequently adjusted, which is why following the rules is not as easy as it may seem. 

Nevertheless, the Google guidelines should be your business’s bible, so to stay on top of the updates, it is an excellent idea to follow the blog section of industry experts, for example, the Search Initiative SEO agency or Ahrefs. With their expertise, your website should remain safe from penalties. 

Never Hide Any Content

Google focuses on transparency and bans on attempts to trick the search engine. An old SEO trick is to publish content that is invisible to the human eye (white text on a white background), and include a lot of additional keywords inside the hidden text. 

However, the search engines went through many updates since this trick was working, and these days, you can expect a penalty for hiding content. If you have any old content that benefited from this trick, make sure to update it or delete it as soon as possible. Also, avoid hiding any content in the future. Being transparent is the only way to be seen as a trustworthy website in the eyes of Google. 

Avoid Buying Links

If you decide to buy links, sooner or later, your website will be penalized by Google. 

Don’t expect any mercy when you try to buy yourself the way to the top of the ranking page. The truth is that if you have paid links, Google will eventually detect them and ban you. 

You shouldn’t trust an expert who offers you “undetectable” paid links, as they don’t exist. It is a risk that is not worth taking by any online business. 

Perform Regular Content Audits

To drive organic traffic, you need to ensure the content on your website is still relevant. It doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Once you are familiar with the Google guidelines, all you have to do is use this knowledge to scan your content and look for possible mistakes or changes needed in order to be up to date with the current rules. 

Making sure that all of your content is working to your advantage is something you should do regularly, every couple of months. If you do content audits, your website will not only avoid penalties, but it will also achieve continued success and longevity.

Forget about Keyword Stuffing

Most SEO experts will agree that keyword stuffing is one of the biggest setbacks when it comes to your digital marketing strategy, and is an easy way to get banned by Google. It might surprise you, as Google has been perfectly fine with keyword stuffing for at least a decade, but it’s not anymore.

Everything changed after the Google BERT update (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), as it made the search engine “understand” your content. Moreover, natural language understanding became a thing. In general, if your content doesn’t sound natural and is stuffed with keywords that don’t make much sense, get ready for Google penalty.

Build a Credible and Legitimate Business Image

Showing that your site is trustworthy by providing valuable information is another penalty prevention tactic. Google is all about delivering the highest-quality experience for its users. The giant of search engines wants to ensure that their rankings are relevant to exactly what their users are looking for, hence the constant algorithm updates. 

Therefore, Google tends to put quality websites (that are easy to navigate and beloved by an audience ) higher on their list. Both the customer experience and the credibility of your content count. You can increase your website’s rankings and decrease its chance of a penalty by optimizing your site according to Google suggestions. Building authority is just as important as including the right links and keywords.

The Bottom Line

You put so much effort into building your online presence for your brand; you simply can’t risk it being taken away from you because of a ban. This is why it is crucial to implement some or all of the Google penalty prevention strategies mentioned above. Follow the rules that the most influential search engine makes to determine the success of your website. Honesty, transparency, and quality are all things; Google will reward you for overtime. When it comes to SEO, be patient, and play the game fairly. 

by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company