July 11, 2007 - by Bill Nixon
Don't Break The Rules
Google's Quality Rules for Websites
Market My Website - RULE # 1 - Don't break the
rules! I am asked all the time, "how do I market my
website and get it found by the Search Engines?" That is a
difficult answer to give in less than 5 minutes, but I usually
offer to analyze their site to give them some pointers. Most
often, after analyzing a web site for possible reasons they are
not winning in the Search Engine rankings, it is because they
are breaking the rules the moment the game gets started. Unless
you start out by following the rules, you simply won't be
successful in marketing your web site. Marketing on the
web is just like football Say you are watching a
football game and one of the players on the defense keeps
jumping off-sides and tackling the QB prior to him saying
"hike." After the third or fourth time of doing this, the
referees would boot him out of the game, the fans would be
tired of it, and certainly the other players would be tired of
it.
- In the web site world, the referees
are the Search Engines. They try to keep the game in play,
they penalize people for breaking the rules. They also have
laid out all of the rules well in advance for us.
- The players are the other web masters
and web site owners. If they are playing by the rules, they
take great offense to the sites that don't.
- The fans are the web surfers. They
want a good game, fair search results and relevant
information.
Below, you will find the rules as laid out by
Google. Here are Google's Quality Guidelines. They lay
out all of the rules you need to follow in your web site
design.
- Cloaking - 15 yard (page) penalty - Second
Down: Google directs us to not deceive our users
by presenting different content to search engines than to
them, which is referred to as "cloaking."
(read more...)
- Tricking - 30 yard (page) penalty - Third
Down: Google directs us not to try to trick them
by hiding stuff like invisable text, links, redirects,
forwards, or etc. They say to ask youself these questions,
"Would I do this if search engines did not exist." If you
are just doing it to rank well on the search engines,
don't. It is against the rules.
- Bad Linking - 10 yard (page) penalty - Still
Third Down: Google recommends that we not
participate in link schemes. The web is built off of the
principle of links adding weight to or validity to a site.
Link farms, schemes, and perhaps even paid link sites in
the future are given negative weight.
- Illegal equipment - 20 yard penalty - Fourth
Down: Google says that it is against their terms
of service to use computer programs to submit pages, check
rankings or analyze anything. They specifically name
WebPositionGold as one that is unauthorized.
- Loaded pages - Irrelevant Keywords - 10
yards: Pages that are loaded with keywords rather
than content are worthless and will be penalized by Google.
- Too many pages on the field - 15
yards: We are directed to not create multiple
pages, subdomains or domains with substantially
duplicate content. You might cause
both sites to be removed from the listings.
- Trojans - Virus - Badware - 100 yards:
You should have sand poured into your computer. If you
participate in this practice, you should have fine grain
sand poured into your hard drive. More
- Doorway pages - affiliate pages - no yards
gained: You won't be penalized so to speak for
using one of these cookie cutter programs where you pay
a fee and you have your own website. Those pages are
simply not going to every make Google's index. They sort
of fall under the duplicate content area, but they add
no substantial content to the web, therefore Google
ignores them. More
Does it mean you can't participate in affiliate programs.
Certianly not. But pages and sites must contribute something to the internet. For
example, a gardening tips site that happens to have
affiliate links on it is totally fine.
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