Self-Assessment Checklist on How to Avoid Google SEO Algorithm Penalties
Self-Assessment Checklist on How to Avoid Google SEO Algorithm Penalties
Here we have summarized a list of black hat SEO tactics that can be penalized by Google. Check your website content to ensure you refrain from the following activities outlined based on bad SEO practices that Google Webmaster Guidelines prohibit.
- Black Hat SEO Tactics: Any tactic that is not in accordance with Google Webmaster Guidelines will result in a violation. Schemes such as direct translating or manipulating other website's content and using it as your own will be penalized.
- Link Schemes: Link farming activities such as purchasing links or excessively spamming links without real content.
- Buy and Sell Links: Google bans link schemes such as buying and selling links and excessive link spamming.
- Overusing Anchor Links with Keywords: Tactics such as overusing and repeating highly keyword-optimized anchor links within the content can be seen as spam.
- Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing content and overuse of the same keywords in an attempt to fool search engines.
- Irrelevant Keywords: Repeating the same keywords, low value or unrelated keywords to trick search engines for ranking.
- Scam Redirects: Sending visitors to a different URL than the intended webpage for deceiving purposes.
- Cloaking: Misleading visitors to a different website other than what the anchor link text states.
- Hidden Text and Links: Purposely making keywords and links invisible or hidden to manipulate search engines.
- Doorway Pages: Generating multiple and similar pages to mislead visitors to consume duplicate content.
- Scraped Content: Plagiarizing, copying, or direct translating content from other websites. Scraping content can also result in copyright infringement.
- Automatically Generated Content: Content automatically created by programs. Stealing or direct translating other people's content and calling it your own.
- Low-value Content: Filler content that is short and offers little meaning.
- Content Farms: Websites copying content from other websites to manipulate search engines into evaluating them as information-rich. Google removes all content farming websites.
- Duplicate Pages and Content: Multiple of the same webpages containing the same content. Sometimes duplicated pages unintentionally result from improper CMS (Content Management System) practices. To avoid this issue, use Canonical Tag to claim the original webpage as the master page. This helps Google understand that the duplicated webpages exist as related content to the master page.
- Pages with Malicious Behavior: Forced download of files, viruses, malware, ad spam, or automatically changing visitor's browser settings.
- User-Generated Spam: Trolling comments with spam, spamming content on webpages, or falsified system or browser warnings.
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