Google Hands Down Unnatural Backlink Penalties

All I can say is, "It's about time!" A few weeks back Google began handing down penalties for using unnatural incoming links. How about all those sites that SEO firms cross-link to each other as referred links? I'm sure that they are next. Here's a quote directly from Google that was received by webmasters:

If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to the affected portions of your site. Actions that affect your whole site are listed under Site-wide matches. Actions that affect only part of your site and/or some incoming links to your site are listed under Partial matches.

Figure A - Unnatural Linking

However, once again, Google's warnings seem to go in one ear and out the other with a lot of SEO firms and site owners. Take "Small Business Trends," for example. Here's a website that is supposed to be an authority on SEO and yet weeks after the Google penalties were handed down they place an article 'explaining the basics' of SEO. In this post they put incoming back-links as the number one thing to consider with SEO for beginners. And, not one mention in the post about relevance. Not one. As a matter of fact, they actually have the audacity to call it a 'popularity contest.' Well, what happens when Google deems a back-link, or inbound link, unnatural? Google can penalize the site and devalue all of the other natural links on the site because of an unnatural incoming or outgoing link(See Figure A). Google seems to be upping their game. And, it makes me wonder why so many webmasters still think it's 'proper SEO' to purchase back-links, participate in link sharing schemes or take some form of compensation for including links when all they have to do is create substantive, high-quality, relevant content? Way to go in helping beginners with their SEO.

Time and time again I ask my fellows in SEO, "Is what you are doing part of a scheme or is it actually beneficial to the site visitors?" Chances are that if it is part of a scheme (or, you are being paid for it) then eventually the practice will be penalized. Don't be lazy because once the penalties start coming down then there is little else to do but backtrack and undo every instance on on every site. Have fun explaining to your clients why all that money they spent was wasted and how you must go back and do everything the right way. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

Keyword Stuffing the Image Alt and Title Tags

Alt vs. Title Tag

    What is the image alt tag? What is the title tag? The image alt tag is the descriptor text that is displayed when the image cannot be displayed on a web page. Sometimes images are disabled or there is not sufficient bandwidth. The title tag is the text displayed whenever the user hovers over an image on a web page. In example A the mouse pointer hovers and the title tag gets displayed. Example C shows the alt attribute, or tag, when the image does not display. Example B is the HTML that would be in the pages overall code.

   The alt tag and title tag can be over optimized by stuffing keywords into them. Keyword stuffing can get your site penalized just as easily in the alt and title tags as in the body of the site. The title tag used for the above image is "This is where the TITLE TAG is displayed." The alt tag is "black 10 point star shape." The caption "Alt vs. Title Tag" in the above image is actually a CSS defined table class but can still be stuffed.

Keyword Stuffing Example

While it may be tempting to place a few keywords in the alt and title tags, it is quite obvious from the HTML snippets to the left that the tags were constructed purely for impact on the index spider and have no useful value to visitors. There was a time when this technique was considered, by some, to be proper SEO. However, it was a scheme and eventually, around 2012, the search engines began penalizing sites that used such techniques. Want to take a guess at what the site owners that stuffed their tags had to do when the penalties came down? That's right, they had to go back and change every single tag on their site that was stuffed. Want to take a guess at what the site owners that properly used their tags had to do? Correct again, they didn't have to do anything at all.

   Time and time again, the search providers(mainly Google) have stated that the best practice is to design your site and its SEO campaign for the user and do not try to manipulate the search engines. The use of schemes and tricks may produce some initial SEO success. But, it can only be imagined the level of difficulty an SEO firm could face when they must undo every instance of such shenanigans on every page of every site and for every client. It's always the best practice to do things the proper way and avoid shortcuts no matter how tempting they may be.

Search Engine Optimization and Website Construction

   So, you have a shiny new website. Maybe, it's been up for a few weeks and you can't seem to find it in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Why not? It just may be that your site is not optimized for the search engines. "Optimized for the search engines?" you might ask.

   The process of making a website more 'friendly' to the search engines is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. More often than not, any given website is riddled with HTML markup errors. HTML stands for 'Hyper Text Markup Language.' In a nutshell, it's the language that tells a web browser, like Mozilla Firefox, how to display or 'render' a web page. Errors in the HTML of a given website or page may or may not affect the way the site gets displayed. However, too many markup errors may affect the way that a search engine indexes a site.

   The proper approach to SEO is to to begin with code that is as close to error free as possible. A few minor markup issues are to be expected and Google, at least, seems to indicate that minor errors do not affect indexing. The greatest reason to begin with code that is as clean as possible is that future tweaks of a website in shambles can only further the problems within the markup. And, all websites need proper maintenance and upkeep. Here's an example of a very bad website, http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/. Notice that it still renders.

   Begin the development of any website with the validity of its code placed first. It only takes a few moments to check it and there are lots of free online sites that will check your code. The W3C Markup Validation Service is considered one of the best.

   Here's a parting thought. If you are building your own website then one of the best things you can do to insure a smooth future is to start with clean HTML.

How Old Is Your Website?

   Just how long has your website been online? Chances are that if it's been in place for more than a few years and hasn't really changed then it might be time for an overhaul. Web browsers such as Google Chrome and search engines like Google itself are constantly evolving to meet the needs of new technologies. As they add new functions, change requirements and so forth, they also deprecate other aspects. If your website doesn't keep up with these changes then eventually it will have issues that change the appearance, functionality and search engine performance.

   The landscape of the World Wide Web has always been in a constant state of flux. Mobile devices have taken over online search and browsing. In today's world, like it or not, if you don't have a responsive website then your site may not render properly to over half of its visitors. Statistically, one in four visitors leave any website that takes longer than four seconds to load. Four seconds. That's pretty impatient. But, the site visitors aren't the only ones who have patience issues.

   The search engines can be just as impatient plus also quite temperamental as an added bonus. Let me introduce the web index spider, Sammie. Sammie goes looking for fresh content to for the index. She is finicky and likes everything to be up to date, fairly error free and have a little substance. Old, stale websites riddled with deprecation and stagnant content often get tossed in 'sort later' pile.

   If the search engine doesn't like your site and most of your traffic just bounces then it's really not doing much good. There's no 'set it and forget it' with the World Wide Web. Great long-term performance with any website requires a moderate amount of maintenance.

   How old are your pages?