The picture on the left is from a net marketing forum called warrior forum. I thought the picture pretty much summed up how most websites who got affected by Google’s recent Penguin update works. While thousands of marketers, affiliate marketers, webmasters have lost their rankings and sites to the most recent Google penguin update, I am enjoying the increase in rankings for my sites (knock on wood 
). I saw a dramatic increase in ranking when Google had the Panda update last year and in April of this year along with the most recent penguin update. The picture on the left points to new technique, loophole and a way to game Google. After every Google update I see a lot of marketers come out with a new internet marketing course that will guarantee you top rankings, or they found the ninja technique that will fool Google. Let me say one thing, the only thing or person that these marketers are fooling is themselves. If they could only put enough 10% of their energy that they are using to fool Google into following the webmaster guidelines set by Google and playing the game by the rules, there will no ups and downs.
One has to understand that Google’s main goal and focus is to give relevant and useful information to the people who are searching on Google. Imagine if its your business and others come and put crappy and spam signs on your office building, would you like it? Of course not, that’s exactly what black hat marketers or those who found a BIG loop hole are doing to Google and Google is not going to sit by and let them do it. Every week hundreds of updates are being done to the algorithm and once in a while there is a big one that wipes out thousands of websites. There are some good sites that gets wiped out as well, which is a tragedy but usually they survive if the website has solid foundation.
Here is the link Google Webmaster Guidelines. Read it and follow it.
If you feel that you were penalized wrongly, Google has a Penguin Feedback Form that you can fill out.
Here are some things for you to consider if you are small business owner, so you will not fall as a victim to Google’s update’s
- Don’t buy link packages. You may see on the internet companies selling link packages for $100, $1000 etc., Seriously? These links are from link farms that Google hates with everything it has, so please avoid it.
- If Someone or a marketing company comes and says “I can get you to top page of Google guaranteed” Run the other direction. Even Matt Cutts can’t guarantee you that.
- If someone tries to rank your company or your website without a bit of research into your industry, be weary.
As a Small Business Owner How Can You Protect Your Website from Future Updates like Google Penguin Update?
Here are some quick tips to help your internet marketing
- If your website is new, do not build too many links at once.
- Do Press- Release at least once a month to increase your visibility and buzz on the web. In the press-release always link back to your website with the keyword you are trying to rank and link with your business name back to your website.
- Try writing a guest post on other websites or blogs. For example, if you are a home inspector or pest control ask Realtors in your area to see if you can guest blog on their blogs or website. Remember your post or article should be valuable to someone who is in need of advice. Don’t try to sell your services just give them information they need.
- Write a FREE Report like “10 Things You Must Do Before Selling Your House” or “5 Things that is Destroying your house” – you get the point. Ask your website visitors to opt-in if they would like to receive the FREE report. These are leads. Building your list is how you build your business.
- Integrate Facebook Marketing with your blog.
- Have a Twitter account and at least tweet once a day.
- Make videos and post it on your YouTube channel. This is very important. Make short videos that are less than 5minutes. Do it with your iphone, or your laptop. Take videos of ” How To Do XXXX”. These are educational and you will build your audience’s trust.
- Start building quality links.
- Blog at least once a day about your industry or what is happening in your industry. Your blog will do the selling if you focus on providing valuable information to your audience to keep them coming back for more.
Always Remember “Content is KING” Online.
| Luckily, Google lists exactly what the quality guidelines are. In other words, Google tells you exactly what not to do.
There are 8 “specific guidelines”. They are (verbatim): 1. Avoid hidden text or hidden links. 2. Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects. 3. Don’t send automated queries to Google. 4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords. 5. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. 6. Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware. 7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. 8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first. Some of them are more black and white than others. For example, avoiding hidden text or hidden links seems like a pretty obvious thing. Just don’t do it. The duplicate content one is a little different. What does Google consider “substantially duplicate content”? How much is too much? Beyond the specific guidelines, Google also lists 4 “basic principles”. These are: 1. Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.” 2. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” 3. Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links. 4. Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google. Google provides plenty more guidelines and elaboration on the quality guidelines in its help center. Of course, none of this is new. It’s just that now Google has a better way to enforce them (or at least, it hopes it does). |
Got the above content from WebPro News. They said and quoted Google better than I could ever have done.
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