How To Avoid Google Penalties ?

Bloggers and webmasters who create blogs and websites know about Google penalties. Google gives penalty to the blogs or websites which create any kind of spam. We all work hard to create a website that could rank high in Google search results and get us some good traffic. But if we willingly or unwillingly do some activities that Google doesn't like then we might face a Google penalty. Before going any further we want to clear the term "Google penalty" so that all of our users can understand actually what is Google penalty ?

What is Google Penalty ?

Google penalizes or gives penalty to all those sites that create spam, linked in spamming activities, try negative SEO techniques to rank high in Google, provides very low quality content or copied content, malwares etc. Google uses algorithms that checks quality of a site and the two most common algorithms are called Panda and Penguin algorithms. These algorithms automatically check the sites for quality and penalize sites for spamming and providing low quality content. The penalties could be minor or major. If a website faces a penalty then as a result of it, it will face some issues like - some drop in rankings, not ranking at all in Google search results or even the site could be totally De-indexed from Google. Almost every site faces Google penalty whether it could be a big site or small but as Google works for providing quality to its users, so, site owners also maintains their site for ranking high in Google. So, its better if we could first understand about the most common algorithms used by Google to check quality of a site and also the penalties associated with them. So, our first very common algorithm that almost affects all sites on internet is Google Panda Algorithm.

What is Panda Algorithm?

Google Panda is an algorithm that evaluates the quality of a website. Google call it a "Quality Algorithm", which determines whether a website is providing quality content or not. If a website provides low quality content that is duplicate or repetitive content, copied content, thin content (extremely less content), missing site-wide information like contact page etc then Panda algorithm considers the site as a low quality site and assigns it a low quality score, which makes it difficult for a site to rank high or even rank in Google search results. The penalty given by this algorithm is called Google Panda Penalty. The affects of this penalty could be, your site will face a big traffic decline, your post or pages will face difficulty in rankings, your specific posts could be De-indexed from search results etc.

Now, the other very common algorithm used by Google is Google Penguin Algorithm.

What is Penguin Algorithm ?

Google penguin algorithm is an algorithm which checks the quality of links that is whether a link created is solely a genuine or natural link or it is just created to manipulate the search results. Any link created with the purpose of increasing the rank in Google results is considered as the violation of Google webmaster guidelines. This includes negotiating link exchanges, paid links, automatic links created by SEO tools etc. The penalty given by this algorithm is called a Penguin Penalty. The affects of Google Penguin Penalty could be, sharp drop in rankings, De-Indexed pages or site etc. To find out whether your site has been De-Indexed or not, you can simply search it on Google as mentioned below:

• Go to Google.com
• Then enter site:www.yourwebsitename.com and click on search tab.
• If the resulting page is your website's homepage then you don't have to worry about anything otherwise your site has been penalized by Google.

If you want to check whether on some specific keyword your site is ranking or not then simply follow the below steps:

• Go to Google.com 
• Then enter "site:www.yourwebsitename.com keyword" in the search bar and click on search tab.
• If Google returns your pages then everything is fine otherwise you will be facing penalty on specific keyword.

So, these are the two major algorithms and penalties associated with them. But, Google also gives another penalty called manual penalty, which is given manually to sites.

What is Manual Penalty ?

Manual penalty is a manual action taken against your site, this could be a result of violation of Google webmaster Guidelines, which includes selling links, unnatural links, cloaking(serving different content to Google and user) . This penalty can also cause drop in rankings, De-Indexation of pages and website etc.

How To Avoid These Penalties ?

You can avoid these penalties easily by following the below steps:

• Write high quality content.
• Write at least 400-500 words articles.
• Do not purchase or sell links.
• Do not copy others content.
• Do not create duplicate articles or the articles that are almost duplicate to other articles present on your site.
• If your site's niche is something like that forces you to write duplicate content then simply try to increase your post length with some different keywords.
• Do not use excessive links or affiliate links, if your site provides excessive affiliate links then use nofollow attribute for your links.

An example of nofollow attribute: <a href="http://howdon.org" rel="nofollow">HowDon</a>

Note: Nofollow attribute tells the Google bots not to count these links for ranking.

• If you are providing high number of external links then try to back them by enough content.
• Do not provide anything like script or code that could be considered as spam.
• Do not infringe copyrights or patents.

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• How To Search Copyright Free Images For Your Blog ?
• How To Refresh Old Articles Of Your Blog ?
• Why Webmasters/SEO Blogs Rank High In Alexa ?

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How To Search Copyright Free Images For Your Blog ?

We always try to find best images for our blogs that can make our blog attractive because a good looking blog always gets the visitors attention. People love to visit sites that look attractive, provide good content and offer a simple and convenient user interface. But nowadays search engines do not like any kind of copyrights infringement and also ad networks like Google Adsense, Tribal Fusion etc which have very strict terms also not like copyright infringement. Most of the new bloggers do not focus on image copyright issues which can affect them in terms of Google's search rankings or denial of their publishers application on Google Adsense or on some other network. More than that some companies do not like their images to be copied by someone so they can even claim for them. So, its better to search free images which are labeled for reuse and do not infringe any copyrights. So, now a question arises, Where to find free images ?

Where To Find Free Images ?

Since search engines do not like copyright infringements so, they also provide a way to deal this issue. Nowadays, search engines are providing free images that are labeled for reuse. They simply offer some filters that you can use to search the images for yourself. They offer some filters like image labeled for public use, labeled under public domain or free to reuse. Here, we will talk about two major search engines that are providing this service. So, first we start with Google:

How To Search Free Images On Google ?

Searching a free image on Google is very easy and doesn't take your much time. The all you have to do is to,

• Go to Google.com
• Then Click on Images.
• Then search your required image.
• Now you will see an option called Search Tools.
• Simply click on Search Tools option as shown in screenshots.
• Now click on Usage Rights.
• Then you will see some options but since we are talking about free images only so, click on labeled for reuse.

• Then Google will show you only those images that are in public domain that is images free for reuse.
• You can select other options like images labeled for reuse with modification, labeled for non commercial reuse etc.

Now, lets talk about our other major giant.

How To Search Free Images On Bing ?

The process here is also very similar to Google,

• First go to Bing.com
• Then click on images.
• Now search your desired image by entering your keyword.
• Now, here you will also find an option called License.
• Then simply click on License.
• Now, again you will find some options like public domain, free to use and share etc.
• Then simply click on public domain or free to use and share option to search your copyright free images.

Another way of searching free images for your blog is, you can search images on some free image sharing sites. One of the best site that we also use is Pixabay.com.

Search Free Images On Pixabay:

Pixabay is especially designed for searching free images. So, all you have to do is to enter your keyword to search images of your choice. Since all images on Pixabay are free, so, you don't have to use any filters to search free images.

Also Read:

• How To Avoid Google Penalties ? (Recommended)
• How To Refresh Old Articles Of Your Blog ? (Recommended)
• Why Webmasters/SEO Blogs Rank High In Alexa ?

Read more ...

How To Refresh Old Articles Of Your Blog ?

Photo Courtesy: www.pixabay.com

Old articles are like old pillars of a home, which holds the base of your house. You can renovate them to make your home stronger but if you remove them without a proper replacement then your home cannot stand even for a single second. Similarly our old articles are the base of our blog and they also need to be either refreshed or to be replaced with a better article that can take its place. Internet is running very fast, everyday new bloggers are writing attractive contents and making the competition tough for the pro bloggers. So in such case if you are not refreshing your content then you are definitely going to loose a huge traffic from your site. Keeping your content fresh is not a very tough task and if you are keeping it fresh by updating them with necessary updates then you can again give the life to your old articles.

Refreshing article is also important because search engines also want to be updated with time and they also try to give the fresh and best results to its users. So keeping the content fresh has become a necessity for bloggers and for this we need a proper strategy. So lets discuss some points that you should keep in mind while refreshing your old articles.

Before we start discussing about the ways to refresh the old articles, we would like to discuss three important questions that might help you later in the article, these are:

• Why it is important to refresh old articles ?
• How to select articles to refresh ?
• What is the optimum time period to routine check an article for refreshment ?

 So let we discuss these questions one by one in brief:

Why it is important to refresh old articles ?

Refreshing old article is important because with the time everything changes, so if your article is about a service, tool or any other information then with time there is possibility that it might have changed over the time. So if your article is not meeting the current needs and requirements then it is of no use for anyone either it is your website visitors or you. Also an old article can increase the Bounce rate of your blog because if a visitor comes to your blog/website and doesn't find the matter that he/she is looking for, then he/she will quickly leave your site, which will result in a high bounce rate for your blog which is not good for your Google page rank as well as Alexa rankings.

Also Read: Why Webmasters/SEO Blogs Rank High In Alexa Rankings ?

How to select articles to refresh?

To select an article for refreshment, you should focus on few small things:

• First use any traffic monitoring tool like Google Analytics, Clicky, Piwik, Histats etc to check the traffic of different pages of your blog.
• Now in your traffic monitoring tool look for the old article that are receiving huge traffic. 
• Select these articles first because if they have irrelevant content or old information that is of no use then they will definitely increase your blog's bounce rate.
• Also these are the articles that are still receiving some traffic for you so keeping them refresh can also increase the chances of getting more visitors to your blog.
• After these articles, select the article that are receiving moderate and low traffic.
• Try to select low traffic articles at last because they require more work than the articles that are receiving good or high traffic. Also there is more possibility that these articles are of no use at present date. If that's the case then simply delete the article and make your website fast loading.

What is the optimum time period to routine check your article for refreshment ?

• You can routine check your article in every three months to ensure that if something changes by night then you do not loose much traffic. However if possible, try to check your articles in every two months.

Now we think we have discussed enough about importance of refreshing an article, selection procedure and time duration to routine check your article. So now its time to discuss the ways to refresh an article. Below are the following steps that you can follow to keep your content fresh and up to date:

Check Articles For Errors:

While refreshing an article, first check the grammatical errors, spellings mistakes because these are the mistakes that we often do. So if you are refreshing your article and giving it your valuable time then try to remove every possible errors from it.

Update Article:

This is the most important step in the process, update your article with any necessary details, try to make it updated. For example: If your article is about any tool and a new version of that tool is available now so update it with the details of the new version of that tool.

Add Few Extra Lines:

Try to add few extra lines in your article, and mainly focus on giving the keywords in those lines. This can bring the life to your old article.

Link Your Old Articles To New Ones:

As a blogger we keep writing articles on regular basis, so our article's directory keeps on increasing. So, look at your old article and try to track the keywords for which you have new articles. Link those keywords to new articles and also add few more articles links by giving also read, recommended articles etc. to reduce the bounce rate of your blog.

Link Your New Articles To New Ones:

This is opposite of what we have discussed in our previous step but it is also an important step. Try to link your new articles with old ones so that every article of your blog get some visitors and also it will help you to increase the number of page views of your blog.

Optimize Images:

As we already said internet is getting faster in every aspect and we all learn with time, so check out your old images whether they are too heavy or making your website slow. If this is the case then download those images and use a good image compressor to reduce the size of image and then again upload them to make your website fast.

Remove Irrelevant Or Old Information that is of no use:

Try to remove all irrelevant or outdated information from your articles and fill it up with the new and more detailed  information.

Share Your Article On Social Networks:

This is another very important step as it can also bring life to your old articles, once you update an article then share them on social networks. Since we all the power of social networks so we don't think we need to describe it. ☣

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Why Webmasters/SEO Blogs Rank High In Alexa Rankings ?

Alexa Ranking might be nothing for some people but the people who know the importance of Alexa rankings take it very seriously. Although Alexa rankings does not show the full potential of a blog/website but still it is very important to gain the interest of the users and advertisers who know about Alexa rankings. So before going any further lets first discuss about the benefits of having a good Alexa rank:

• Alexa rank is very important to gain the interest of the users. The people who use internet on a regular basis know the importance of Alexa rank and consider the blogs as good, if they have high Alexa rank.
• Again Alexa rank is important to gain the interest of the advertisers. Advertisers always keep looking for good blogs that receive huge as well as quality traffic. So if a blog has high Alexa rank then it shows that the blog not only receive huge traffic but it also receives quality traffic as it shows most of the visitors of the blog/website are regular internet users.
• Having a good rank in any field always makes you superior than others. So if a blog has high Alexa rank then people will consider it as a superior blog than its competitors blogs. Also people like to visit a blog more confidently if they see that the blog has high Alexa rank, Google Page Rank, Correct and useful information, Good layout and design etc.
• If a blog has high Alexa rank mainly under 100,000 then Alexa shows some additional stats about the blog which can help you to better optimize your blog for search engines as well as for your blog users.

So now lets back on topic, why webmasters/ SEO blogs ranked high in Alexa rankings. You can get the answer of this question if you know how Alexa ranks a blog, so now we are describing here how Alexa ranks a blog/website and we hope you will get your answer from it.

How Alexa Ranks a Blog/Website ?

• Alexa consider various factors to rank a blog such as number of visitors, page views, bounce rate, visitors location etc.
• But the main thing is that Alexa counts only those visitors who have Alexa toolbar installed in their web browsers. So to rank high in Alexa rankings your blog must be visited by the visitors who have Alexa toolbar installed in their browser.
• Alexa toolbar not only shows the ranks of blogs/websites but it also sends the information about the sites to the Alexa's central server, which then uses that information to calculate the rank of a website.

So now we hope you have got your answer. If not, then read the next point.

Why Webmasters/SEO Blogs Rank High In Alexa Rankings ?

• So the answer of this question is that webmasters/ SEO blogs are mostly visited by the users who have same kind of blogs and hence most of the visitors visiting those blogs already have Alexa toolbar installed in their web browsers. And that is the reason why their blogs rank high in Alexa rankings.

You May Also Like:

• How To Search Copyright Free Images For Your Blog ? (Recommended)
• How To Avoid Google Penalties ? (Recommended)
• How To Refresh Old Articles Of Your Blog ?

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