Do's and Don'ts for Avoiding a Google Penalty [Infographic]

As long as your website is providing value to your visitors or online customers and you aren't using any shady black hat techniques to do that, you won't have to worry about Google Penalty. But on the other hand, if you are using SEO techniques which are against Google guidelines, your site may not be so lucky to avoid a penalty.

In order to avoid a Google Penalty, you need to keep yourself abreast of Google's guidelines as well as keep a site check to avoid using shady black hat SEO techniques. To get a better overview of this, check out this infographic from Neil's Patel blog Quicksprout.com that shows how to protect your site from penalizing following ditching the shady stuff.

Do Create Quality Content

The common thread between virtually all of Google's algorithm updates for its search rankings has been to weed out useless sites and reward useful sites. If you have to ask yourself whether or not your site is useful to your audience, you may not be at square one in the world of web development. Merely trying to grab market share from sites that already serve audiences may lead to search rank penalties. Here are some white hat ethics to follow:

• offer plenty of original content to separate your site from competitors
• provide useful and valuable comprehensive content
• make sure all your internal and external links are relevant
• focus on providing brand signals, social signals and unique expertise

Do Not Try to Fool Google

In the beginning of search engines, a search rank criterion was fragile and easy to exploit. But as search engines have matured, they have figured out how to block spammers and scammers. Link farms that only exist to exchange links with other sites have been prime examples of sites getting banned from Google, since they don't offer real content.  Here are other black hat activities that Google frowns upon:

• overuse of relevant or irrelevant keywords
• links to and from irrelevant sites
• hidden links or text containing keywords
• misuse of automated software applications for page and site submissions
• content that's thin or duplicated from other websites

Conclusion

Your site should be based on a purpose with a niche or series of niches in the first place. No matter how clever an online marketing team claims to be, remember that the best path to high search rankings is quality content.