Understanding Google’s Guidelines and How to Follo Them

“Pure Spam” is something that Google has defined as aggressive spamming techniques in order to receive more traffic to a website or blog. And as a result, the search engine will rank that site extremely low or not at all.

In order to comply with all of Google’s policies, it is essentially that you learn about them first. In the following sections, we’ll talk about pure spam as well as other common mistakes website owners make and how you can avoid them.

What is Pure Spam?

As we previously mentioned, pure spam is an aggressive spamming technique that revolves around using other people’s content in order to bring in traffic to your website or blog. It definitely violates Google’s guidelines and can easily be avoided as long as you are developing your own content.

If you’ve been caught by Google and received a warning with this in it then your chances of getting it fixed are very slim. It’s best to move on and start another site because Google isn’t going to rank that one high anytime soon. Black hat methods like these are sometimes unintentional but most of the time they aren’t.

This is why it is a good idea to check website content on plagiarism checking sites like Copyscape, especially if you’ve hired someone else to write your content for you. If you don’t know where this message is coming from then have your site audited. While it may not fix anything, at least you’ll understand where your scraped content is coming from. If you hire a writer to develop that content then you’ll know not to hire them in the future.

What is cloaking?

This is another common black hat SEO technique that violates Google’s guidelines. Basically, it revolves around showing human readers one thing and show search engines another. This one can be a bit trickier to implement but is forbidden nonetheless.

Keep in mind that if you get caught cloaking your website then you’re probably not going to be able to set things straight with Google. In fact, it will probably be better to just move on and start a new website.

In certain cases you may be able to discover the cloaked content and remove it before any penalties incur. But this doesn’t happen often so it’s best to understand this policy beforehand so that you can avoid partaking in it in the future.

What If Your Website is hacked?

There may be moments when your website has been hacked by a third party spam link or piece of content. Note that this can still fall under Google’s policies as spam and you will be responsible for fixing any mishaps on your website. The best thing you can do is take action as quickly as possible and fix any security vulnerabilities that your site has.

But this can be exceptionally tough considering that this hack may be completely invisible to the website owner. If you discover where it is then try to use a malware software to remove it. Perhaps the most commonly hacked website platform is WordPress. If your content is hacked here then you’ll want to scan each individual folder of your site until the spam content is no longer there.

Remember that hacks like these are often performed by expert hackers. As a result, they can be incredibly trick to remove. Always make sure that your website is up to par with the latest security features and that you are paying attention to all of your content. If you can’t figure out what the problem is then it would probably be a good idea to hire a professional.

Not only will they be able to tell you what’s wrong but they’ll also be able to keep your site on lockdown until this happens. Once the problem is fixed, you can resume your website as normal and with higher security parameters than normal.

What is Keyword Stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is another common technique that website owners’ use but that is considered a penalty by Google and other search engines. And it’s a problem that not a lot of webmasters are aware of. Basically, it revolves around placing too many of the same keywords on a single page or piece of content.

While it may seem innocent, Google has a heavy policy against it. It is important that users don’t include a multitude of keywords within their tags and that they don’t had content within the HTML or CSS of their website. All of these fall under the category of keyword stuffing and according to Google, will penalize your ability to rank higher within the search engine.

But keyword stuffing isn’t something that’s going to be obvious right off of the bat. A website audit would probably be a good idea as you’ll then be able to determine where you are making your mistakes and can then take the proper steps towards fixing them.

Other Common Situations

There are also a few other common situations that web masters will likely run into with their website or blog. The first is if their site is parked on a domain name. In short, a website like this one isn’t offering any real value so Google isn’t going to rank it very high. And there’s really nothing you can do about it either.

Simply develop some content and re-submit it. The second major mistake that web masters make is not offering enough value to their online articles and content. These days, readers aren’t searching for shallow pages that don’t provide value. Google tends to recognize these types of pages as copied or affiliate pages- both of which don’t provide a lot of useful information for the person reading them.

If you are experiencing this problem then it would be a good idea to start adding a lot of value to your website in regards to your articles and blog posts. Substance is extremely important here. At its shortest, an article should be 700 words. However, 900 to 1,000 word, well-written articles are the best route to take as Google will see them as more useful to human readers.