SEO Spam Penalties
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Google SEO Spam Violations and No’s No’s!
In the last 2 SEO Optimization Articles we spoke about the positive signals that make up SEO… here’s were going to speak about a few negative factors that you should avoid.
A word of reassurance — If you’re not trying to spam a search engine than most likely your ok… It’s hard to accidentally spam.
Search engines look at a variety of signals before deciding if someone is intentionally trying to manipulate the system and ruin the integrity of the internet. If this is not your intent, you’ll be fine.
OK, let’s talk about things not to do!
Two Main Categories to consider:
- Violations
- Blocks
The #’s beside the text show the relative important… 1 – 3 (Most Important)
SEO Spam Penalties:
SEO Spam Violations:
~ Shallow Content -2 ~
This is a brand new penalty to encourage the development of strong and interesting content on the internet. Shallow content can be an indication of irrelevant material or an old age spam technique.
When Google rolled out “Panda” in February 2011, this became more important as it’s intent was to reduce spam.
So Content is still King… remember to have value in your article and really teach people important stuff!
~ Keyword Stuffing -1 ~
This is one of the oldest tricks in the books and is when people put their keyword multiple… like a 100 times in row to really tell the search engines what their information is about.
Too much is just too much — for when people are reading your stuff instead of computers.
So this is why Google implemented this SEO Spam Violation however it does take many, many keywords to trigger it… especially if you put them all at the bottom of the page.
~ Hidden Text -1 ~
If you feel the need to hide text… so that only computers can read because you understand that keyword stuffing just isn’t cool…
Probably not a good idea either.
You might try making the text white on a white background or change the style to display:none; This is still considered Spamming a Search Engine and is considered a violation. Search Engines like to see the same thing as the users do.
~ Cloaking -3 ~
Now imagine sending a completely different website to the search engines as you display on your website – that’s called Clocking.
This has a very high penalty because honestly this isn’t something you can do by mistake… just not cool!
~ Paid Links -3 ~
Purchasing anything on the internet to try and cheat the system will truly bite you in the bottom sooner or later. Google is quite picky about this however Bing not so much.
Remember QUALITY over QUANTITY is the best SEO Strategy… this will truly get you the results you’re looking for.
~ Link Spam -1 ~
Ever consider dropping your link all over the internet — perhaps using software that tells you they can help you increase your backlinking ranking…
Don’t do it — this is Spam and is an SEO Spam Violation.
SEO Spam Blocking:
In 2011, as the internet transitioned into a more social platform…Spam Blocking went main stream.
~ Personal Blocking -3 ~
Blocking allows anyone who doesn’t like a website that resulted in a search result to ever appear again in their search results.
It’s as if everyone gets to be their own personal spam police and over time adjust the quality of their own search results. If your site get’s blocked — you won’t know about it and unfortunately you will never be re-added.
You’re gone for good.
~ Trust Blocking -1 ~
This is a summary of how many individual people block your site and over time it ads up negatively towards you.
Bottom Line? Write good content, do your best to put out value and your site is less likely to be blocked by individuals.
Isaiaha
