The best SEO tips can be found in the Google guidelines for webmasters, but you don’t want to look up all the information and read through it? This blog offers an overview of useful SEO tips to prevent a Google penalty.
SEO tips based on the Google guidelines for webmasters
Of course, you want to score well in the free Google search results. This doesn’t just happen. It is a lengthy process that simply takes time. Above all, accept it. To be able to score well in the free Google search results are three factors that have the most influence on the ranking:
1. Content
2. Technical optimization
3. Link building
Content is king
Yes, still … Content will gain even more influence over the years. Longer articles are becoming more and more the norm. For example, they receive more shares and backlinks than short pieces and are therefore usually easier to find.
Virtual assistants such as Google Now, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana also help search engines find answers to numerous questions. We can give you many SEO tips about content, but make sure that you provide a good headline and keyword structure for long blog articles .
Technical optimization
The headline and keyword structure have just been named, but there are many more technical aspects that must be taken into account and therefore must be added to the list of SEO tips.
When it comes to SEO, avoid the following techniques:
Automatically generated content
These are often random paragraphs of programs that have little to no meaning for the visitor.
Participate in link exchange programs
Google is not a fan of links that only serve to increase a position in Google. Google regards this as manipulating the search results.
A page without original content
This violation of the guidelines speaks for itself. Google wants original and unique content for its visitors.
Cloaking
When you deliberately show different content to visitors than to search engines. The search engine crawler, for example, will see HTML and your visitor images.
Hidden redirects
A redirect redirects a visitor to a different URL than the original URL. This is not a problem when you redirect visitors on your old website to your new website.
It becomes a problem when you mislead search engines and the content for visitors deviates from the content for search engines. In other words, you intentionally redirect visitors to another webpage because you want your visitors to see something different from the search engine crawler.
Hidden texts or links
Texts and links that for whatever reason are not visible to the visitor, but for the Googlebot, Google regards as a violation of the guidelines. Don’t think you’re smart by giving your text the same color as your background and adding extra keywords to your page.
Doorway-pagina’s
A page specially made to guide a visitor to a target page. It can be frustrating for the visitor if he finds out that he is always directed to the same page when he clicks multiple pages in the search results. Doorway pages are simply websites or pages that are created to fill the search results and direct visitors to a specific target page.
Automatically collected content
Google does not like when you copy content from other sites that are relevant to your topic and you add no value to it. Or even a step worse; copy irrelevant content, even if it’s high quality, to score higher in Google.
Participate in poor quality partner programs
You can think of a festival blog with copied content such as reviews and comments. You use this low-quality blog for a partner program.
Filling pages with irrelevant keywords
Write your page full of keywords that rank well but don’t contribute to your topic. Your page does not show the content that the visitor is looking for and visitors will therefore leave your page quickly. Google sees this among other things by the bounce rate of your page.
Pages with harmful behavior for the visitor
Of course it is a violation of the guidelines when you surprise visitors with harmful behavior that is not requested. Examples of this are phishing, viruses and other badware.
Abuse of rich snippets marks
Google manually checks the misuse of rich snippets markers. Abusing rich snippets increases the chance that you will receive a penalty and you obviously do not want to take that risk.
Send automatic searches to Google
Google does not allow automated searches to be sent to their system without your explicit permission from the search engine.
What is a request for reconsideration
You can submit a request for reconsideration after you have violated one or more guidelines. There is a possibility to request a new assessment from Google. The smartest thing is of course to first correct the problems and then request a new assessment.
A request for reconsideration is received and evaluated by “real people”, so think carefully about your request. Google says that a good request for reconsideration meets three conditions:
- It describes the exact quality problem on your site.
- It describes the steps you have taken to resolve the problem.
- It documents the result of your efforts.
We hope, of course, that you use the SEO tips in this blog and prevent a violation of the guidelines. Curious about free SEO Tools , then we have something for you!
