Don't get banned by Google!

Don't get banned by Google! by Martin Grun

It's a simple question... Are you asking Google to penalize your website?

I'm sure you're probably thinking; Well, of course not! Yet daily I see new people complaining in search engine optimization forums that their websites have been banned by Google and they "have no idea why".

These people claim they've done nothing wrong and are absolutely clueless as to why their site is no longer in Google. The purpose of this lesson is to teach you one VERY important thing. What NOT to do when optimizing your website, to make sure you don't get banned.

How do you know if you've been banned?

First let me show you how to see if you're clearly banned by Google. Often times people think they've been banned, when in reality they've just dropped in ranking and can't find their website.

There are a couple of things you can do.

1. Check Google's search results. 2. View the Google toolbar.

Check Google's search results?

Go to Google and enter your entire URL into Google's search box. In this example we'll use a made up domain name. (www.jkhljkhkjh.com). On a side note, I tried www.somerandomdomain.com and www.fakedomainname.com and both were already taken.

Anyway, we'll go to Google and enter our entire URL and click "search" http://www.jkhljkhkjh.com

Notice that Google says there is no information available for this URL? This means that the URL is no longer in Google's database (a.k.a. index)

If you enter a brand new website into Google, you'll always get this message until the website has been indexed. But, in this case, the website we entered has been banned by Google for some reason is either banned or is brand new. If we know our website was once in Google and do the search I just showed you above, and Google says "Sorry, no information is available for URL [whatever your URL is]", then chances are... you're banned.

Another way you can quickly see if your website has been banned is by:

Viewing the Google Tool Bar

Download the Google Toolbar here: http://toolbar.google.com

Once it's installed, simply visit your website. If the Google toolbar is completely gray, this may meen that you have been banned by Google.

Banned:

* Note: Most SEOs call this "gray barred". (So if you hear that term in an SEO forum, that's what they're referring to)

Not Banned:

Ok, so now we know how to tell if our website has been banned.

What can cause your website to get banned?

There are many onpage ranking factors AND offpage ranking factors that can cause Google to ban your website. Today, we'll focus on only the onpage things that can cause your site to get banned.

Before I begin, I want you to know that many websites still get away with doing some of these things. They DO NOT help your rankings and are simply a waste of time, so don't try them. Sooner or later Google will catch up to these websites and will remove them.

It's just not worth the risk when doing them no longer helps your ranking to begin with.

Hidden Text

Hidden Text is simply text that users can't see when they visit your webpage. Some webmasters will do this so that they can add keywords throughout their webpage without it interferring with what the visitors actually see. Yet, the search engines can still see hidden text.

For example, let's say you have a white background on your website. If you wanted to hide text, you would simply make the color of your text white (#FFFFFF) and users couldn't see it.

I did a quick search in Google and quickly found an example of a website using hidden text. Have a look below:

At first glance, you're probably wondering where the hidden text is...

Let me show you. I went to the website and clicked "ctrl + a" on my keyboard. This will highlight the entire webpage as shown below:

Now we can clearly see the hidden text at the very top left side of their website that says "fat loss body fat abs weight loss diets bodybuilding dieting tips abdominals"

These are keywords that they want to rank well for and want the search engines to see when they first visit their website. Yet, they don't want their visitors to see this text. So, they've made the text white, to blend in with the background.

This website used to be ranked #1 for "fat loss", but I just did another check to see where they're ranked, and they're no longer anywhere to be found... AND it looks like they also removed they're hidden text, but it's probably too late.

Alt image tag spamming

This is another way that people will try to cram keywords into their website, allowing search engines to see their keywords, but not allowing visitors to notice any difference in their website.

The following is a website that wanted to rank well for "cabbage soup diet". What they've done is inserted a graphic of a cabbage. They've then added an alt image tag to the graphic. When a visitors visits the website, and hovers their mouse over the cabbage soup graphic, a little popup will appear.

Notice how many times they've repeated the word "cabbage soup" and "cabbage"? Way too many! It serves no purpose other than to cram as many keywords as possible into their webpage.

The real purpose of an alt image tag is if a user visits your website and the graphic will not load, or is disabled by their web browser, text will appear instead of the graphic. This is often used for blind people.

Alt image spamming is something you want to stay clear of. Using alt image tags are good, but you can overdo it, as you can see above. A good alt image tag in this case would simply be: cabbage soup diet graphic Meta Tag Surfing

What I'm referring to here is when people throw in thousands of the same exact keyword into their meta tags.

For example, the following website is trying to rank well for the keyword "tents".

< name="KEYWORDS" content="tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents">

This is obviously ridiculous. Google, and other search engines no longer use Meta Tags to rank websites.

Google WILL penalize it, and it WILL NOT help you... so, why would anyone do something like this?

Stay away from it.

Title Tag Surfing

The title is what appears in the top left hand corner of your webpage. Below is an example of Title Tag Stuffing.

Don't do it... You only need to include your keyword(s) one time in your title tag.

Anymore than 1 time will only dilute the effect, and if you overdo it as shown above, you may get severely penalized and drop in the rankings.

Those are just a few of the things that people are continuing to do online. These things WILL eventually get your website banned or penalized and WILL NOT help you rank well. It's just a waste of time and effort, plus it's just plain ignorant to waste your time on something that doesn't work and will get your website banned from the search engines anyway.

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Kontera ContentLink: An alternative to Google AdSense

Google AdSense now have another competitor - Kontera ContentLink™. Kontera provides contextual ads they called ContentLink™ using what they refer to as their patent-pending technology. You can read more about it by surfing Kontera's site.

It appears to me that there are some improvements of Kontera ContentLink™ over AdSense Text Ads. When you hover your mouse over the ContentLink™, a tool tip (a small box) will appear displaying the full text ad from the advertiser that sponsors that ContentLink™. The visitor then can choose either to ignore the ad or click on it if he find that that is what he is seeking. Furthermore, it either provides a relevant ad or an internal link to another relevant page within your site or network of sites. It may also provide 3rd Party Information Links to external information including dictionaries and encyclopedias. This provides for a better visitor experience and will encourage repeat visits. However, I do not know if publishers are paid for clicks to such sites but I very much doubt it. I will query Kontera and update this post when I receive a response.

A further improvement of Kontera ContentLink™ over AdSense is that Kontera ContentLink™ can display ads even in password protected sites.

However, there is a big difference between Google AdSense and Kontera ContentLink™. Google AdSense are prepared to work with small publishers and imposes no condition on the amount of traffic they receive to their sites, but Kontera ContentLink™ will only approve sites that have over 250,000 page impressions per month. That will rule out many blogs.