BEWARE: Google can Possibly Downgrade your Website

There are some dangerous SEO tactics out there that you need to look out for. Following these tactics can actually cause Google to downgrade your website instead of boosting it. So, what are these dangerous tactics that Google frowns on?

Be of quality not of quantity. Links are considered as the backbone of a website. Successful SEO back linking strategy is about quality and not quantity. Back links should be from relevant pages to the website you are promoting. So if you’re optimizing for a keyword such as ‘Automated Cranes’, you have to link from pages like ‘How to operate cranes’ or ‘Crane Maintenance’. These links direct a good volume of quality traffic that will boost your website’s rankings.

Avoid Link Farms, instead try Link Wheels. Submitting reciprocal links to link exchange sites will not is a dangerous tactic that will not only fail to help you, but might actually hurt your site’s rankings. These are called ‘link farms’ and Google frowns on them. An example of this is like:

                                                                Site A -> Site B

                                                                Site B -> Site A

Instead, you can try what they call a ‘Link Wheel’. In which great amount of link juice is being funneled to your website. This is like:

In this way, more inbound links are pointing to your website which Google in return will give your site a high ranking. In addition, since each site is linking to the next one in the wheel, you are helping to boost the pages you are getting links from. This makes each linking page a bit more authoritative – and that’s what we are going for.  Please note that when doing this, make sure to not duplicate content from other sites because Google distinguishes this and can perhaps downgrade your website (or at the very least, ignore those links making all your efforts worthless).

Do not be greedy. It is basic SEO to optimize the keywords that are relevant to your website. Do not over optimize or overuse the keywords and avoid using irrelevant ones.  Overdoing it can result in Google seeing your site as spammy, which will negatively affect your website’s rankings. ‘Do not be greedy’ is considered as a Golden Rule of search engine marketing. Choosing few but meaty keywords is the key to success.

These are just few of the reminders to heed when promoting your website.

Be aware!

SEO Backlink Strategy

As we all know, building backlinks to your website is the foundation of a successful SEO strategy. As a result, many of us are tempted to make the mistake of going out there and hitting the web hard, grabbing as many backlinks as possible as fast as we humanly (or, worse, robotically) can. This is a mistake. The reason is that Google is looking for natural patterns to occur and they rank websites accordingly. So in the case of the fast and furious link-getting method, the pattern Google sees makes them think "oh, this must be a big, exciting new trend or possibly breaking news" - as a result, they will give it a nice big rankings boost. However, if you don't keep up this energetically high level of new links - Google will see this drop-off and naturally assume that the hot trend is over or the news is old - and will subsequently drop your site off the rankings like a hot potato! Consequently, as many SEO experts agree, if we want our sites to get consistent, long-term rankings, we're going to need to adopt a consistent, long-term backlink strategy. This means committing to building links over time - so don't bite off more than you can chew. If you think you can maintain that high level of new backlinks over the long haul, go for it. But the rest of us might just stick with a very achievable pace of one or two links per day - and play the proverbial tortoise in the race to the finish.

Then again, if what you are promoting really is a hot trend or a big breaking news item (maybe an event or something similar) and you've got a deadline or a best-before date - you'd better get out there and flog the backlink-building circuit like no tomorrow. That's when you want Google to sit up and take notice of your flurry of activity - sure they may drop you when the link velocity dies off, but you'll have had your 15 minutes by then and will hopefully be on to the Next Big Thing.

In conclusion, think carefully about what you are trying to achieve with your SEO efforts and craft a backlink strategy that fits. If you are hiring an SEO to promote your site, you might want to consider keeping them going on an ongoing basis rather than a big flash-in-the-pan effort. Here at Rankings Rocket, we'll advise you on the method that fits your goals best.

Happy Backlink Hunting!