Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
There have been thousands of threads on this site and many other regarding the 'good practice' factors which Google likes. The are many of them bring together those threads into comprehensive advice.
However, what I am looking for a top list of definately what NOT TO DO in Google. Those activities that will have detrimental effect on your website should you try them. I don't know if such a thread already exists or whether this could become one.
I understand Google's guidelines touch on several techniques to be avoided - but maybe we could create something more comprehensive. I believe what to avoid can be as useful as a best practice guide.
Any thoughts?
PS- wasn't really sure where to post as this isn't really Google News as such - so apologies if this gets moved.
On-page: Hidden content that cannot be made visible by an obvious user action.
3 way linking
Thin affiliates (websites without unique content or purpose)
"3 way linking"
This might not be accurate enough. I would suggest that "3 way linking for the purposes of developing one way inbound links" is a better way to frame this one.
There are many times I have given a link from one website which benefited the user, in exchange for a link back for another website which was much more useful for both my consumers and the user.
It is the intention behind the link that often draws the curtains of the overall 3 way game plan.
That's very important to remember. Google does not ask you your intent. They just drop you. Whatever COULD be a spammy thing can get you dropped even if it is legit and/or even if you did not do it.
I would also add duplicate content as a significant threat, either in the form of scrapes or with your CMS, although I wouldn't classify this as something that Google employees "don't like".
Also too much fiddling with 301s, 302s and the like, as well as too much fiddling with nofollows I'd say are things not too friendly with Google.
- Link buying, 3-way linkbuilding, 'link wheels' or any other manipulative linking tactic.
- Keyword spam / stuffing.
- Slow page load times due to excessive media (ab)use.
Some great reponses - what is meant by clocking? Do you mean cloaking?
Also, a guy here at work has a theory that two of the same words together has a negative affect. E.g. "expert widget" "widget expert services". Usually happens when "expert widget" is a title and the "widget expert services ..." opens the following paragraph.
Not sure I have seen this myself.
Also, a guy here at work has a theory that two of the same words together has a negative affect. E.g. "expert widget" "widget expert services". Usually happens when "expert widget" is a title and the "widget expert services ..." opens the following paragraph.
Not negative exactly, but if you are targeting "widget expert services" on other page then should avoid it use at the very beginning of page targeting "expert widget".
IMO, if primary keyword comes at the beginning of page content it would give more benefit.
Repeated/identical titlebars!
I suspect that there is a threshold and you can do some of these spam tactics provided you stay below that threshold. There may also be a cumulative threshold so a little bit of a few bad things can get you penalised. I also think that the scale of the threshold is fairly crudely set to US standards. For example I guess that the web is at least 10 times bigger in the US than in the UK, perhaps much more. The threshold is therefore set ten times to high to catch UK transgressors. In the UK some of my competitors have clearly bought a few hundred links but if Google only reacts when a few thousand have been bought they will never be caught, they are quite literally operating under Google's radar.
It would be nice to think that someone in Matt Cutts' team would get their head out of their US a*** and sort this one out.
Cheers
Sid
[edited by: tedster at 9:20 am (utc) on Nov. 24, 2009]
On-page: Hidden content that cannot be made visible by an obvious user action.
Tedster - How does this work? I've content in multiple tabs that are accessible with JavaScript. Would Google know any different if I disabled the JavaScript so a user couldn't see it.
Also, I think this content should be devalued as it's not there upon first load. It might be a factor for the 200 Factors in Algorithm Thread [webmasterworld.com].
According to the leaked human reviewer training documents, one of the major focuses is hidden content. There are so many ways to hide things on a web page with today's technology that a 100% algorithmic approach would be a nasty undertaking. It would probably generate too many false positives, even as it missed major infractions. Google really doesn't need to worry about missing hidden content if it doesn't generate lots of traffic for the page.
It's only a matter of time IMO
...or at least they'll be devalued
