Many businesses depend on Google traffic, and Google algorithm updates have often caused a lot of panic and frustration among digital marketers and business owners. It’s hard not to get worried when you hear stories where businesses and strategies crumble as a result of Google updates.

However, Google’s updates are only trying to make the web a better place. In fact, most algorithm updates aren’t intended to destroy businesses. They are encourage them to improve their online presence and create better experience for users. So long as you don’t intentionally use shady practices on your online marketing, you shouldn’t worry too much.

Here’s a quick infographic on what this article will talk about:

Here is the entire article if you want to learn more:

If you are not sure whether your site has been penalized by Google, here are some signs to look out for:

Minor symptoms:

Slight drop in rankings for important keywords

Slight drop in traffic from Organic

Loss or demote of PageRank

Medium symptoms:

Big drop in rankings for many important keywords

Google grays out your site’s PageRank and mark your site has major problem

Severe symptoms:

De-indexed from Google entirely

Make sure your online marketing does not involve any hidden or shady practices. Here are what you shouldn’t do and what you should do to avoid a Google penalty to ever hit on your business. If you are sure that you have been hit by a Google Penguin Penalty, here are some tips to recover from it.

Top 7 SEO Strategies that Will Get You in Trouble:

Hidden Text

If you intentionally make your keywords or links very small or the same color of the website background so that Google will index it but site visitors won’t see them. This is a very bad practice, and you are running at risk of been penalized by Google.

Duplicate Content

In order to provide a better user experience to searchers, Google attempts to avoid indexing the sites with the same content.

Link Farms

Links from irrelevant sites are not only not useful for your site, they can even be harmful. Those links are usually from link farms, where some site owners purchase or exchange links just to increase PageRank. These sites are usually unrelated to one another.

Automated Programs for Site Submissions

If you use automated programs to submit sites / pages, it could slow down Google and in turn provides bad user experience.

Keywords Stuffing

Do not stuff your keywords all over the site, make sure to write for human first. Google is smart enough to tell if your site is trying to fool its ranking or if your site is providing good content.

Use Guest Posting Sparsely

Guest posting is still a pretty effective way to build good and authoritative links, but make sure they are good and relevant. There are so many ways that guest blogging can be harmful too. If you have too many links from one source, or have an unbalance link profile, Google will devalue the links that you work so hard for. Make sure this type of links is less than 20% of your link profile. Always remember to add contextual links.

Top 5 Strategies to Boost Your SEO

Focus on Relevance

Always remember to focus on relevancy. Links from irrelevant sites just look very un-nature. According to Google’s webspam team: “Relevancy is the new PR”. The relevance of the linking domain is increasing in importance. Don’t just focus on page rank, make sure the links are from sites relevant to your site. According to a study, websites without relevant links are more likely to get penalized by Penguin than those with some relevant backlinks.

Diversify anchor text

If you are focusing on link building, make sure your anchor text is diversified and natural. Most of the anchor texts should reflect your brand name, here or something similar.

Build Brand Signals

This is becoming more and more important. Google is going to depend on brand signals to rank more and more sites. Known brands tend to rank better with less efforts. There are ways to build your brand signal. Make sure your site has good user experience and design, have a physical address, claim your business page, build up your social media presence. Google is taking in signals from various source to determine your brand. Make sure to stay consistency across all channels.

Build Real Social Signals

Building social profile is important today to have an online presence. However too many businesses fell for quick fake followers. Believe it or not, Google can tell whether these followers are fake or not. Make sure to actually invest in your social channels. They can be a great source of traffic, allows you to build brand and generate customers. Start with a great social media strategy, implement it, and then use analytics to guide your social media plans.

Trust

This is very similar to brand signals. Trust is very important because it is a factor in ranking, and it also helps you avoid Google update penalty. One way to see your trust flow score is through Majestic SEO. You can improve your site’s trust by getting links from sites with .edu and .gov domains or from sites that have high trust or brand power.

If you stick with best practices of online marketing, you don’t ever have to worry about Google algorithm updates, because they will only benefit you by removing bad players.