While we all try hard to be good at what we do, the fact of the matter is that everyone makes mistakes. Whether it’s a Google update that you’ve missed or you just slipped up, penalties are bound to happen. But what do you do once those penalties occur?
We’ve found the most common SEO penalties and paired them with a solution, because we know that everyone from the experienced to the novice needs a bit of help from time to time.
PENALTY 1: LOW QUALITY CONTENT
Low quality content that consists of copied paragraphs, poor information or borrowed content from other website is a common and easy way for your site to be penalised.
The solution? Luckily, the solution is almost as easy as the problem. Revise your website content, delete duplicates, add content that is information rich and useful to your readers.
PENALTY 2: UNNATURAL LINKS
Unnatural links are bought links or links from schemes that are used to boost SERP. Because this it’s directly against Google guidelines, it leads to almost automatic penalties.
The solution? Filter through each of the links on your site to find out if any of them violate Google’s guidelines and remove the links that you find in violation or unnatural.
PENALTY 3: KEYWORD STUFFING
It seems like good SEO practice to repeat keywords as many times as possible, but this isn’t the case. In fact, keyword stuffing leads to penalties as users get little benefit from it.
The solution? Mention your keyword no more than 3x throughout the text and ensure that each mention is useful and informative to the audience. Avoid using the keyword in sentences that don’t make sense just because it is the keyword.
Penalties are a pain and sometimes out of our control, so there’s no point stressing about them too much. What is important is knowing how to fix these problem when they do come along.