Beware Of the Google Penalty Rules and Webmasters

Earlier when I search for a song and when I hit the enter button, many links would be shown in the Google result page claiming that I could download my song from their site. I would try clicking on many of the links shown but would only be frustrated to find out that most of them were bogus links which showed up just to promote spam content. But in the recent past, when I perform similar searches, I find that quite relevant search results show up which actually contain what I am looking for. Later I heard about the new penalty scheme from Google which would penalize faulty sites for any spammy content found. I was relieved to hear about this new feature as it would save so much time instead of leading me to junk content. And I am sure most of you have the same opinion as well. No one would like to view irrelevant content when they are on the search for something important.

What are the reasons for sites being penalized?
Including spam links that lead to junk sites just for the reason that those sites will offer you promotion to your site is the easiest way to get penalized. Many times we have seen that more than the relevant content in the page, the spam links seem to be a crowd in the page. Sometimes, these links become a nuisance to the readers as they appear over the text and keep moving up and down as we scroll on the page. This leads to frustration among the audience and a great possibility of someone reporting this to Google.

Another reason could be for not including a sitemap which can portray your site in a hierarchical manner. Without a sitemap, the user may not know where he can find the content he needs and he may have to navigate through a lot of pages to reach his desired destination. Google also uses sitemaps to view your site contents and they rank you site based on how you manage to convince them with good hierarchy.
Google also concentrates on providing users a faster and a friendlier browsing experience. So if your site is not fast enough then there is a chance that your site will not impress Google experts who are waiting to penalize and remove non-compliant sites

How to win favour from Google

• Ensure that your site is arranged in a proper hierarchical structure and that each page in your site is accessible from at least any one static link.
• Minimize the number of links in a given page and add more relevant content
• Use keywords which best describe the content that you are writing in your page. This way when a user searches for those keywords your site is sure to rank in the top.
• Ensure that there are no broken links in your site. All the links should lead to relevant sub sites with valid information.
• Try to minimize the usage of dynamic pages i.e. where the URL contains characters like ‘?’. Most of the web crawlers may not be able to catch dynamic pages and your site will lose its popularity.
• Create web pages which are meant for users, not for search engines. Think from the users’ point of view. Develop your sites in a way that it would work even if search engines were not there. Satisfy the users, not search engines.
• Make your websites unique and entertaining. While it is important for the contents in your page to stand out from other pages uniquely, it is also equally important that the content you present is interesting to the audience and keeps them engrossed in the page. No audience should get bored after a few lines and decide to leave the page.
• Do not include any hidden links and scrapped content which might be a hindrance to readers.
• Regularly monitor your site to ensure that it is not hacked. At any point of time if you find that your site is hacked, then remove the hacked content immediately and restore your page to its normal functionality.

Mentioned above are just some of the ways you can win favour in the eyes of the Google webmasters. Following them diligently will ensure that your site remains in the top few list of search results when content that you have uploaded are being searched for. After all, who likes to have their site penalized and removed after doing all the hard work in creating web content?