Oh no! your site is no longer ranking well on Google what could have possibly happened? Well most likely what you or someone who created your site did was CHEAT. You pissed off the wrong search engine and now your screwed. Your site my not only be ranked poorly but it may have been blacklisted due to your attempts to trick Google into ranking your site above others.

First the good news.

If you were nice enough to stick to white hat rather then  black hat SEO methods then you are actually benefiting from the misfortune of your competitors. I can actually help your site play nice with search engines like Google. We do not guarantee ranking as some so called “SEO” companies do but a quick look at these companies Google rankings will tell you they are full of (insert inappropriate word choice here). I often have to laugh at the SEO claims of sites on freelance websites were the SEO company site ranks no where on google even after a 50 page spider search. If their company was ranked on the first page they wouldn’t be hitting up freelance websites for work they would be getting plenty of clients through Google.

Unfortunately many companies attempt to use Black hat SEO tactics that will kill your site in the long run by that time they will have cashed your check and moved on. Sometimes the long run is several hours or even minutes but generally its weeks or months down the line. Also Google has a huge algorithm backing their engine. How it ranks and indexes your site is so convoluted and secret that no one can predict exactly what will happen.

A final note on ranking promises…

I have explained this to many clients that seek high ranking for their business. They all want to be found on the first page of the Google search engine. Well there are only ten links on the first page of Google search and there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of sites competing for that search position.  Guess what, many of these sites employ SEO specialists to help with their ranking. So with only ten slots its best to play by the rules. Not only will Google like your site more but there are plenty of other ways to market to your audience.

If you are in trouble the following Black hat methods may have been used with your site.

Doorway Pages -

This is a site that has keyword stuffed pages directly linked to it. Basically that means there are pages linked from your home page that have nothing but a long list of keywords or keyword stuffed content.

Keyword Stuffing -

This is where keyword terms are STUFFED throughout your page. Sometimes it looks down right ridiculous and causes the content to be disconnected and unreadable.

Auto-generated content -

This is auto generated content that is placed in pages. The content is scrambled and makes no sense. Guess what Google, like any five year old, can read. It knows about grammatical structure and it knows when its being tricked.

Cloaking -

This is a page presented to search engines that looks nothing like your actual content. Using the no follow method of linking you can prevent Google from indexing certain content on your site. Guess what that does not mean it does not read it.

Hidden Text -

There are several ways to hide content on your page. The first was basically to match the text color with your background color or image. Also there are several ways to utilize CSS to produce hidden content that will appear in the source code but not actually displayed on the page. Google is hip to all these tricks.

Link Exchange -

Hanging with the wrong crowd can get you in trouble. Be careful who you link exchange with because not only can their SEO practices look bad on them but it can come back on you. Also its pointless as Google has severely decreased the weight they place on inbound links and now search extensively for relevancy from the linking page. If the pages linking to you does not have similar content then it is disregarded as an inbound link.

Buying links from spamming farms -

Bad Bad idea. If your linking text is thrown all over and is identical which it usually is when you work with these companies Google will punish you for trying to trick them.

Duplicate content -

This is one everyone has to watch. With dynamically driven sites like Busted Designs  Google will sometimes think you are trying to trick it by posting multiple pages with the exact same content. Most good CMSs have fixed this issue in their systems but some older sites screw up in this regard. Also posting link backs from .com, .org and .net sites will drop your ranking.

Selling links on your site -

This is different from advertising on your site. The Google spiders know not to follow those links and index them. If you are not careful in setting up your advertising or are actually selling links on your site kiss your Goggle ranking bye bye.

Linking out to bad sites -

Liking to link farmers will effect your site ranking. Just don’t do it.

SEO can really help a site and can really hurt one. Although I often tell people not to worry so much about Google and look for other ways to market your site it is a factor and why not work with Google. If you need help please feel free to contact me.

Damn Google

After reading this you may be upset that Google has decide to punish your indexing. You may be feeling upset but remember that Google has to do one thing well in order to stay in business and that is properly index sites. Coming up with ways to trick Google to index you over your competitors is detrimental to Googles business model because i they can not return relative results in the search returns then people will stop using thier service. The fact that Google punishes bad SEO practices is not only good business but it is good for anyone who utilizes the Google search engine. I for one am glad that Googles black lists people who dont play fair because in my mind it is just another form of disohesty that is placing greed over a usable product.

Thanks for reading and I hope that it helps.

All of my consulting tips are free to use but of course everyone’s situation is a little different. If you would like consulting on your particular needs feel free to contact me as some of these tips may not be appropriate for your needs.