Don't Let GOOGLE Kick you Out of the House!

Google is relentlessly trying to improve its search engine to deliver the most optimal user experience. Google, therefore, strives to push down or remove poor quality in favour of authority and excellent content.

It is imperative to understand what could cause Google to frown or penalize your content. Here are 8 reasons why:

1) Duplicate content.

Duplicate content is typically substantial blocks of content within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar. Google frowns on this which could result in a penalty. To avoid you could consider plagiarism or duplicate content readers such as Grammarly,, PapersOwl and Copyscape

2) Overusing H1 tags.

The H1 is an HTML tag that indicates a heading on a website. As you have seen AIOSEO has always pointed out that you should use one H1 tag. This helps with the structuring of content and SEO itself. If you use too many H1 tags in the same blog it could be read as keyword stuffing in a bid to trick Google to get a higher listing.

3) Internal 404s.

Sometimes you may have broken links or other issues on your site that might generate Internal 404’s. This is like having an out-of-order sign on the washroom door in your business. Google believes that if you don’t; quickly fix this type of issue you are showing that you do not care sufficiently about the experience of your visitors. So if 404’s appear fix them asap.

4) Broken external links.

Very similar to Internal 404’s you really should not redirect your visitors to non-functioning external links. Again this demonstrates that you have very little interest in your users as they will not arrive at a page that will provide them with the info they are looking for. It is necessary therefore to regularly check your external links, to remove and replace as necessary, to avoid this issue.

5) Footer links.

Some crafty bloggers and web developers attempt to lodge links in the footer as a navigational route. This attempt at hoodwinking Google to boost your page rank is seen by Google negatively and could result in your site being penalized.

6) Affiliate links all over the place.

While some platforms do not like affiliate marketers Google does not have such an issue. What bugs Google is if you decide to put an excessive number of affiliate links throughout a page. For instance, you might be comparing 20 cameras and have Amazon affiliate links embedded in text and in the picture making a total of 40. Google may see this as excessive and penalize your site by dropping it down in rankings.

7) Website timing out or down.

Search engines look for your site and crawl it. If they come knocking and your website door is closed they don’t wait around. They move on. So if Google and other search engines cannot find your site they will not continue to search they will just de-index your site to ensure they and more importantly your visitors do not waste their time.

8) Slow speeds

This one should be obvious as well. If your site takes a long time to load people will leave your site and your bounce rate will go up. If your bounce rate is high between 56% - 70% you need to take action to understand why your hosting speed is moving like a snail. Don’t’ wait too long because Google will give you the boot.

There are many more ways that Google can penalize your site. If you know any or care to share your experience of being penalized and how you got past it please do.

Look forward to your likes and comments.

Hugh

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