10 Things to Keep in Mind for Your Blog to Avoid Penalties

When global interest in the Internet was peaking, and Google's popularity was at its zenith, the first page of an organic search engine result became the Holy Grail of entrepreneurs. The progressive sites started optimizing their pages to make themselves visible to Google Bots.

At the other end of the spectrum, the aggressive sites began gaming the system to improve page ranking; tactics that were not entirely ethical and which involved elements of deception culminating in "Black Hat" SEO strategies.

Recognizing the spurt in dishonest practices, Google changed its search engine algorithms, issued Webmaster guidelines, and started penalizing violations of the laid down instructions.

According to digital marketing strategists at https://miromind.com it's immaterial whether the Google penalty comes through black hat practices or by an honest mistake born of ignorance; the effect is painfully catastrophic. Miromind strategists outlined the significant penalties that Google levies, and the remedial action that can be taken to regain your footing in the blogosphere.

10 Common Deviations That Google Penalizes, and Their Quick-Fix Resolution for Bloggers

Problem #1: Content Is of Low Quality With Little or No Value-Addition

Palliative Action:

• Eliminate auto-generated spun articles with poor readability. Use a good plagiarism tool to identify duplicate content.
• Don't rehash/ repackage another company's product or service disguised as your own brand.
• Avoid lifting entire websites or content that is wholly or partially copied verbatim.
• Scissor away content that is mostly generic and is rehashed from the material that is already available on the net.
• Eliminate doorway pages that are created for gaining search engine traction for specific keywords or phrases which result in poor user experience.
• Avoid low-count blog articles; make them thicker, longer, and more informative.

Problem #2: Google Views Your Links as Weird, Contrived or Manipulative

Palliative Action:

• Use Google Search Console (Google Webmaster Tools) to identify and download the links to your blog. A valuable tip is that you can try adding parts of your site separately in different folders to your Google Webmaster Tools account as a way of squeezing more links out of Google.
• Do an extensive backlink audit of your blog to ferret out the violators. Add a "Nofollow" instructing the search engines not to pay attention to such links, or go straight ahead and remove those links. Then submit to Google for reconsidering page ranking status.
• If removal is not an option, disavow: If there are too many spammy, low-quality linkages coming into your site, and if it's an uphill task removing them, you have the option of asking Google not to take such links into account while assessing your blog for page ranking.

Problem #3: You're Hiding Text and Stuffing Keywords With a Vengeance

Palliative Action:

• Use the "Fetch" option in Google Search Console to view the red-flagged segments in your blog. CSS positioning will also do the same job for you.
• Once you locate the hidden text, make it visible to page visitors.
• Eliminate the paragraphs that appear to be irrelevant or out of context and reword them to make them relevant.
• Just as you don't repeat sentences and paragraphs in an article, avoid repeating strings of similar words in alt texts and title tags.
• Insert keywords and phrases as naturally and relevantly as possible within the page. Don't stuff keywords to the point that you lose coherence, ruin your grammar, and impact readability.

Problem #4: Malicious Browsers May Be Generating Spam Content on Your Blog

Palliative Action:

• Zero in on the pages where users enter their comments and weed out spammy references, links, or inappropriate content.
• Remove advertisements and offers that pose as legitimate comments, and which may not be contextually relevant.
• Remove spammy sounding users like "BigMomma," especially those linking to inappropriate or illegal sites.
• Blank out spammy, generic, or irrelevant comments, making way for comments that are well reasoned, and incisive, and which generate great ideas. Moderation of comments is essential to ensure that your page doesn't get submerged in trolling and loses sight of its objective.

Problem #5: Where Free Web Hosting Services Are Abused by Spammers

Palliative Action:

• The better option is to shift to shared (and paid) hosting models where a unified server space is shared among different websites, each retaining its independence. It's affordable, many sites are doing this, and there are stronger filters to keep away spammers.
• One drawback of shared hosting is that you pay regardless of use, whereas in cloud hosting "pay for use" models may do more to protect your bottom-line, especially when you need to upscale operations.

Problem #6: The Site Is Tagged as "Hacked" in Google Organic Search Results

Palliative Action:

• Get in touch with your web hosting service and call for support.
• Isolate the hacked page and prevent the rot from spreading.
• Use Google Search Console "Fetch as Google" feature that allows you to view the hacked page and take corrective action. This feature is helpful because a hacker could have cloaked the hack, preventing you from seeing the damage.
• Analyze whether the damage has been inflicted by spam ("This site may be hacked") or malware ("This site may harm your computer") depending on how the site shows up in organic searches.
• Inspect your blog for vulnerabilities that need to be patched up. For example, your server directory may have been left with open permissions. Your CMS could be carrying a structural weakness, or you're operating an outdated version of WordPress. Another hacking point is the third-party plugin in the visitor counter for tracking visitors that must be rechecked.
• Step up protection from inbound and outbound malicious mails emanating from malware and put in place stronger filters to check spam.

Problem #7: Google Says You're Unworthy of Indexing Because You're Hosting Pure Spam

Palliative Action:

• If you've recently bought the domain, look up archive.com to detect past spam history. File for reconsideration explaining that you've changed the site substantially with fresh content.
• Google punishes "auto-generated gibberish." Were you caught in the radar because you neglected Basic English grammar and sentence structuring? You may also be penalized if you're extensively using auto-translation which throws up fragmented and unreadable English.
• Google views scraped content as a rehash of web content that is repeated elsewhere, without adding anything of value. Even if you're picking images from the web and re-categorizing them, you'll attract a Google pure spam penalty. There has to be something unique in your contribution that justifies tagging as fresh content.
• Cloaking poses another danger. If you're segregating content, one to be shown to the Google Bot and another set only for web visitors, you're guilty of cloaking.
• Some bloggers use an anti-hotlinking plugin to prevent images from being stolen from their sites, but that presents a problem. The Google Bot views an image that is qualitatively different from what normal users see. This triggers the "image-mismatch penalty." Removing such plugins is the only way out.

Problem #8: You're Creating a Spammy Effect by Violating Structured Markup Guidelines

Palliative Action:

Problem #9: Job Posting Markups Carrying Expired Jobs Are Being Penalized

Palliative Action:

• Since you may find it tedious to track and remove jobs that have expired or are about to expire, it's better to move job openings to a third-party site such as Monster or Careerbuilder that will take on the responsibility of maintaining job-related structured data markup.
• If you want the spotlight to shine on your blog and focus on what you creatively contribute to the job market, you have to move in tune with Google's policy. You need to create a good user experience by regularly removing expired or irrelevant job postings.
• Alternatively, if you want to prevent web crawlers from indexing potentially problematic pages, you can add a "noindex" directive to the meta tag.
• Ensuring that the "validThrough property is populated and in the past" essentially means that you're reporting that the job will be invalid after the specified date; this enhances user experience.

Problem #10: You're Violating Google's "First Click Free" Policy

Palliative Action:

Conclusion