7 Top Google Rank-Killer Glitches
Well, you’ve got a great website with quality content and you think you’re doing everything right to please Google and climb at the top of search results.
However, you may notice that despite all your efforts your website doesn’t rank as high as you would want it. The situation is most likely under your control. You just need to know what can go wrong to correct it.
So, here is a list of common Google glitches that may keep even best web sites from getting to the top positions in search results:
1. Bad "Neighborhood"
Google doesn’t treat all the sites in the same way. It uses its own trust thresholds to classify the sites. It’s not a secret that trusty web sites can boast more indulgence from the search engine.
To rank your web site, Google carefully analyzes your "neighborhood" – your incoming and outgoing links. You should watch over the sites you want to get links from (blogs, directories, etc.).
And moreover you should be very careful when linking to someone else’s site. Google understands that you have a full control over your outgoing links and will penalize you or lower your website ranking for your "bad neighborhood".
You know not every link is good. The most obvious example of a bad link is a broken link. If your HTTP 404 error log file reveals that a link leads to a page on your web site that doesn’t exist anymore, you can drop a quick email to the site’s webmaster asking them to repair that broken link. If the webmaster didn’t correct the link, you can use a permanent 301 redirect method to redirect the link to the right page.
There are 2 ways to find HTTP 404 error log files for your website:
1st way:
- follow this link http://www.yourdomain.com:2082/
- login to your cPanel
- look at HTTP Error codes section in Awstats and click on "404 Document Not Found" link
2nd way (if you use a WordPress blog):
- download and install this Redirection plugin. Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.
Another example of a bad link is a link with inaccurate anchor text. A classic "Click here" or "Read more" is obviously not the right anchor text you would want to have for your links.
There is nothing wrong with asking the linking site’s webmaster to change the anchor text in your link with the right anchor text containing your keywords.
Bad links are also coming from link farms. If you came across your web site listed in a link farm, get it removed from there by contacting the link farm site webmaster. The majority of link farm webmasters will remove your site upon your request.
With that said, you should be concerned both about the sites you obtain links from and the sites you link to and put your efforts to obtain as more quality links as possible.
2. Unnatural Looking Incoming Links
It’s still about links because they seem to be the primary factor Google takes into consideration when ranking a web site.
Despite the fact that Google does not favor the practice of buying links, many web site owners are engaged into such practice. If they are caught, they are typically penalized.
However, there are two "secrets" here:
- Firstly, more natural incoming links a web site has, less likely the site will be penalized for buying links or getting links from low quality web sites.
- And secondly, one just should be careful enough in order not to be caught by Google. Many web sites manage to buy and sell links under the Google’s nose. They just do it carefully, deliberately, bypassing any link brokers and other known link selling resources.
3. Keywords Abuse
Using excessive keywords on a web page is a practice that doesn’t work with Google anymore. At best, Google will ignore them. At worse, you will be penalized or your website ranking will be dropped in the search engine index. In either case it’s not worth your effort.
The common places where your keywords must be located are your title and description tags and your headers. You can also naturally intersperse your page content with keywords where appropriate.
And the best place to put the keywords in is the anchor text of your links. That’s where you will get the greatest return!
4. Duplicate Content, Titles and Descriptions
Google tends to maintain unique content in its index. So, if your website has content identical to the content found somewhere else, your web pages may not be listed in search engine results. The same thing applies to meta Titles and Descriptions.
If several pages of your website have the same title or description, Google will choose itself which pages are worth to be listed in the search results and which ones are not. This may be a problem if you want all of your pages to be displayed.
Therefore, you should take time to make each page of your website look unique and valuable to Google.
But there is a trick here. You have a great chance to be listed in search results and leave your competitor behind if:
- your web page obtains more incoming links than the competitor’s page with the similar content, or
- your web page has less links but those links are from the websites with a great weight and authority.
5. Low Visitor Count
Google is able to track your website visitor count (through the Google toolbar and through the tracking links in SERP) and compare this metric to the ones of your competitors’ websites. If during a certain period of time the relative visitor count for your website is lower than your competitor’s one, Google can rightfully consider your website as low quality, less important and less relevant to the search terms. Thus, you should put your efforts to ensure a consistent and steady traffic to your website by posting comments on other people’s blogs and submitting your site to web directories.
6. Slow Hosting Server
The server response time is another factor that affects the website ranking in search results. If your website response time is consistently slow, it’s reasonable to suppose Google won’t value your website highly.
Don’t get me wrong but if your budget cannot afford a high quality hosting service with a fast server, the game is not worth the candle. So, if you are unhappy or not sure about your hosting company, consider looking for another high quality web hosting service that would provide you with a fast response server with a dedicated IP address.
7. Website is Often not Accessible
Ensure that your website is up and running. If a Google bot comes to your website and consistently gets the "Page Not Found" error, how do you want Google to rank your site? This may be the primary reason why your website cannot climb at the top of the search results. You may have a brilliant website with quality and unique content but if it is frequently down, you lose any chance to be at the top.
Once again, be concerned about your website availability and look for a web hosting company with a good fast hosting server. Don’t wait until your competitors eat your lunch. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time and efforts.
As always, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in comments below.
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Tags: bad neighborhood, inbound links, quality content, search engine, site optimization, trusted sites
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Filed under: SEO, Search Engine Marketing
This is all old hat. I really didn’t see anything new here about how to improve my long time website rankings.
I believe that Google is placing less relevance on inbound links and is focusing on quality content once again. I am not saying that inbound links aren’t important. What I am saying is that inbound links are pretty easy to get these days.
I think the trend will be to discount “general links” even with good anchor text. You will need authority sites linking, and great content. Content is becoming easier to detect. Just take a look at the CUIL algorithm statement. Seems like technology is getting to the point where proper grammar, coherence and other literary models are being used in evaluating a site.
I’d personally look to the long term - If you have a lot of links and aren’t getting anywhere - focus on beautifully done content. This seems to really move my own sites to the top of the pile, and its causing me to rethink my strategies.
Interesting article Julia, long ago, bad neighborhood could also have meant that there were other sites on the same ip address or very close in the C Class that could have been detrimental to your site. Sites carrying adult material etc.
The sad thing was that especially when using shared hosting facilities this could have been quite possible and certainly beyond the ability of a webmaster to do much about.
No doubt 404 errors and slow response times can cause Google to judge things negatively for a web site owner. I have experienced this firsthand. Mr. Leger says that sometimes when this happens the only way to get your PR back is to blog like crazy.
Trevor
Regarding inbound links, what’s to stop you hiring a cheap Indian company to add a ton of links to your competitor’s website from a bad neighbourhood, and thus damaging their rankings? I don’t think inbounds can harm you because of this possibility, but I also think there are MANY MANY ways in which inbound links have zero positive effect on your rankings because they just look dodgy from the point of view of the search engine.
Of course outbound links you are in control of (unless your site’s been hacked!) and this does say a lot about what neighourhood you live in.
Hi Julia,
Your number 5, low visitor count, can this really be true? It would become a self-fulfilling prophecy if few visitors will lower your ranking, the lower ranking will result in fewer visitors, fewer vistors results in… and so on. IMO that wouldn’t make any sense to Google either.
And as for number two. Why should Google choose to derank my site, just because I buy some marketing somewhere? My website will definitly not be of lower quality and value because of that?
If these theories are true, I can’t figure out the benefits to gain from search engines - seen from a user perspective…
I always enjoy your articles Julia.
As an adjunct to your topic, any website’s links can be listed in a search engine in its search bar with this syntax….link:domain
[not the url — and not in Google, use Yahoo. Yahoo is more accurate.
Hey Julia,
Thank you for this very informative post. I have procrastinated about my 404 pages. Your post reminded me of how important it is. I need to put this at the top of my “to do list”. Do you have any material you can recommend that teaches how to correct this 404 problem?
Apart from the obvious bad neighbourhoods are going to be what people perceive as Google will certainly not be publishing a list of sites not to link to.
Julia,
Great article. I do have a question about the bad neighborhood theory. If Google took such things into account heavily, couldn’t your competition simply list you in these bad neighborhoods and hurt your ranking? Wouldn’t Google take that into account? I have seen many sites that sell links get busted, but it seems sites that buy links are treated a little better. It seems the same thinking would apply here. What do you think?
Jasons last blog post.. How Dangerous is Link Buying?
Thanks for the post Julia.
I somewhat agree with the first post, in that while inbound links still matter obviously, that quality content is just as important. I have experienced this first hand with some of my sites. I mean, gaining much ground in Google rankings, only to be dropped down after a while. After updating the page with more and better content, the page shot up even higher in the rankings than it was previously without adding any more links. Proof that the content was indeed a major factor in the ranking issue.
Julia - I also always like to read your posts - another cracking post that is very valid and points us in the right direction!
Keep up the good work.
Thanks,
John
Much food for thought and most of what you post seems credible but do you know this to be true and is it based on testing and research. I sometimes think that too much respect is given to Google and we tend to believe all these thoughts on how good their analysis is and how powerful their algorithm is…. but why do we still find rubbish in their Serps and obvious gaming of their rankings?
Great article.
Just had a quick read of it and managed to pick up some good points. I knew all about link farming etc. but had never even thought that google priorities sites with more traffic. I always thought that a better rank would bring you more traffic (which is true) but i never thought it worked the other way aswell.
thanks for the info!
Free iPhone 3Gs last blog post.. Google Earth for iPhone 3G - Great Free App!
Interesting and timely post Julia. Interesting debate springing up via the comments as well which is all food for thought for me as I’m literally about to start a campaign with a brand new site. Don’ t get me wrong i have done well with SEO in the past with content and a few good links, however for the first time I have a planned strategy and am interested in how the results stack up against my more hap hazard approach in the past.
I have to say the debate started here has given me a timely reminder to ensure that i remember to concentrate on high quality content as well as Off Page SEO. Rest assured however i will be using FastBlogFinder in my strategy.
Thanks to all you contributors for the advice
Iain
Iains last blog post.. Slot Car Video : 1966 Batmobile - Drag Racing!
Too many links too fast can nuke a new site fast (for a few months anyway) unless there are some high quality links in there. And an existing site too many links to fast can make it really bounce around unless it has a stable and strong link pattern already in place. There seem to be a lot of linking programs out there now, so yea I would not be surprised if the number of links verse the quality of links has an impact. Everyone is jumping on the bank wagon to automate link building, so I would assume that will loose it’s effectiveness at some point, but it still can work now.
Daves last blog post.. 3 Tips To Making Money In A Recession
I think #5 (Low Visitor Count) is something that is not talked about enough in the Seosphere. Google has invaluable traffic data via their toolbar and their traffic logs. Much of this data - especially CTR - can give Google tips as to which sites are truly more relevant and/or popular than others. Just my .02.
Thanks for the article Julia.
I must say, that although the 7 points have created debate, ALL of these things are important. Sorry folks. It has been anecdotally proven that inbound links can influence rankings negatively, albeit not as severely as outbound.
As for Mr Ultimate Content, if these points were old hat, why has the article generated such debate?
I believe that bounce rate has a lot to do with google raising you or dropping you on the search engines for each phrase you rank for. I have several small high ranking sites that compete with huge high pagerank websites and I am winning with less inbound anchor text links than them. I believe that if you are having too high a bounce rate than your competitors consistently for the same keyword phrase, google sees this and realizes that this website sucks for this keyword phrase and you will drop lower. On the other hand, if your website is optimized for this certain phrase and your visitors come to your site and it has good content the surfer was looking for, than you move higher. Just my observations. Kick me if you believe I am way off.
Point number 5. Low Visitor Count is the most undervalued condition and most difficult to implement. Finding a way keep your bounce rate low and keep visitors on your site will determine how well your site ranks. This is more important than anything else for seo optimization.
I have managed to get many sites to the top of Google by using only social bookmarking, videos and blogging. I have long since ceased looking for links from other sites. It is far easier to comment on other blogs, and to keep my own blogs fresh with new information and articles.
Intresting post although i would agree with one of the other comments, Good quality content or intresting themes will win every time as people will naturally link to this.
Script also very important to how your website will perform in search engines.
Great SEO tips for anyone, including those in the Internet marketing for attorneys space. I especially appreciate the advice on cleaning up HTTP 404 errors and the permanent 301 redirect method. How does one use the permanent 301 redirect method?
Thanks.
Bentley Tolk
Bentleys last blog post.. Is Blogging a Dangerous Form of Marketing for Attorneys?
The low visitor count “glitch” seems to be a self fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t rank high, it’s because you don’t get visitors. But you don’t get visitors because you don’t rank high. But I guess they count on more than just search engine traffic.
Great post with some excellent points clearly presented. The ‘low visitor count’ point is gold. A previous commenter mentions how incoming links from ‘bad neighbourhoods’ are most likely simply discounted by Google. The possibility of penalty arises when links from known bad neighbourhoods are reciprocated - in my experience (which was painful…)
One question Julia, if you have a lot of visitors but they do not come through google how can google know? and therefore how can they justify penalizing a site for low traffic?
@ Sean,
I suppose this can be done though the Google toolbar. If a user has the Google toolbar installed, Google will most likely know he visited a website even if the user didn’t use Google to search for the website.
Quick Q regarding PR - and keyword. what if you have have a top position keyword in the search terms and have a PR of -0
does this matter ? or in future will my page be dropped to a lower page ?
Thanks
Quality content will always be important in Google’s eyes. Having constantly updated relevant content on your site should help you get good rankings. Also links from trusted sites will drastically improve your page rank.
Good points - the low visitor counts an interesting one. Google didn’t use to use this in working out who comes in at the top of the SERPs, but I suspect they will be soon if they aren’t already.
Another thing they’ll start to do (at least for blogs) is it look at how many comments you get. If you get lots of comments, it looks like you have good content, if you don’t have any comments, your content may not be so good…
I too wondered about the Page rank compared to SERP’s. My page rank dropped recently for no apparent reason but my SERPS seemed to stay the same or even get better for some keywords (touch wood!). I here that Google did a major PR drop recently but i’ve no idea why my PR suddenly dropped to 2.
Eddie, the way the Google algorithm works is that the entire internet has an average PR of 1. As more sites get added to it, the average stays the same but individual sites can and will drop unless something has been done to prop them up prior to the last google dance.
The other big reason for a drop could be that if your blogging on high PR sites, they will eventually add the no follow tag and your entry will be invalidated.
I have been having a huge indexing issue with one of my sites…I get 200-250 organic visitors day in day out for 4-5 months and growing, then…it all went away, then a few weeks later it came back - this kept happening for the last few months…ie and of google like a yoyo. I think I have it sorted now though. I had 5-6 404 errors…I have redirected them, and I hope my site stays put in google’s index from now! Good article. Cheers.
I don’t understand how Google can penalize your site if someone links to your site from a bad neighborhood. If that was the case, then wouldn’t every competitor create bad links to the competition? This linking stuff it just too confusing.