One of the biggest question asked every now and then by website owners and bloggers is why their website is nowhere in Google for any major/minor keyword or even for their domain name. So keep on reading to know why your website gets banned in Google and what you should not do to avoid the same result in near future:
- Content Duplication – If you are coping content from other websites without adding any unique content on your website, you are inviting Google to Ban your website. So avoid copying content from other websites if you don’t want Google to punish your site. Also avoid using the same section of content over and over on your website/blog.
- Hidden text or Links – if your website contains some hidden text or hidden links, your website will get blacklisted. Never tries to use white text or links in white background on your website. Google will easily detect you if you use hidden text or links even in a small section on your website.
- Using Cloaking – In general, cloaking means creating two different versions of the same website or webpage, one for the visitors and another for the Search Engine crawlers. WebPages that are created for Search engines on your website are packed with keywords and related terms; you want your website to appear on Top in search engines. If you are doing such kind of activities on your websites, you are actually cheating the search engines and asking them to drop your website from search rankings. So avoid this kind of techniques to get high rankings on search engines including Google.
- Doing Keyword Stuffing – Keyword Stuffing/Spamming is using the same keyword over and over on your website and in the code section (like Meta Keyword, Meta Description, Image Alt Tag, Title Tag, Comments Tag etc) without any sense. Don’t use keywords repeatedly on your website and keep your code and content part clean. Keywords on your page should flow naturally.
- Bad Neighborhoods – Linking to already banned websites is a good way to get banned on Google. No Doubt, linking is an important aspect of website promotion in today’s world. But we should avoid adding any kind of links for websites that are already:- Banned Websites
- Porn/Adult websites
- Involved in Some link farms
- Gambling websites
- Older websites with no cache or Google page rankSo when you link to a website, make sure that this website is not banned in Google. If you find a website with no indexed page and no Google page rank, you can think that website may be banned in Google. You should regularly check the websites you are linking to verify they are not involved or doing in any kind of spam activates on their websites. And if any of your partners is involved in spam techniques, immediately remove the link for that website from your linking partners. - Spreading Viruses or Bad Files – Don’t distribute any virus or bad files to users for download via your website. Google will put some kind of penalty on your website if they found you involved in such kind of activity. It is Google first priority to protect its users from viruses and bad elements when they surf Internet while making search using their search engine. So double check your documents for viruses before uploading them on your website that are downloaded later by your website readers.
- Problems in Robots.txt File – Easiest way to prevent search engines from indexing and ranking your website is disallowing search engine in your Robots.txt file by using:User-agent: *
Disallow: /And another way to stop search engines from entering your website is using in your webpage header section. So avoid all these techniques if you want to get any kind of rankings in search engines. - Doorway Pages – They are creating to spam search engines for particular keywords with a motive of sending traffic to different pages. Doorway pages are sometimes called as portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages, bridge pages, portal pages, zebra pages etc. They are created to draw search engine traffic to a website and most of the time, they are not in the navigation bar or part of website. A doorway page is like keyword based advertisement about a website and is one click away from the main website for which that doorway page is designed.
- Text link buying or selling – buy lots of links for your website if you want to get your website banned in Google. Google keeps tracks of website that are someway involved in link buying or selling activities. So stay away from such schemes if you don’t want to hurt your search engine rankings. Google may put some penalty kind of penalty like ‘Sandbox’ if they found you involved in such activities.
- Automatic content writing – using some scripts or programs for writing content for your website can ban or hurt your rankings. Google has lots of techniques to determine if the content on a webpage is human created or generated by a program.
And if you end up getting your website banned in Google, go to Google reinclusion request form available in Google webmaster tool and request Google to uplift the ban from your website. And don’t forget to mention the things you followed to get banned and promise them that you will never do any such activity in near future.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m glad you mentioned duplicate content. Google sees that coming a mile away. When I started a blog about a month later I purchased a better domain name, one I could stick with. I ended up going about things wrong and now google doesn’t even want to list my site. The old site is 301 to the new one now, I’m hoping things will straighten out over time. If not I may have to make a request. Another closely related issue to add is duplicate meta/title tags. It may not ban you but it can do a number to a sites rank.
I just want to also emphasize something for a moment to piggyback on your last point – #10 about automatic methods…Google will pick any spammy methods and is getting so good that those trying such methods could save much more time if they just stayed legit!
Great list. This is the first time I’ve seen list like this. Thanks for sharing.
OK I have to challenge you on a couple of points here.
Point 1. Duplicate content. You will not be penalized with duplicate content and Google has said this before. Here is my reasoning and I have tested this out.
Look at any press release sites. By their very nature, when you post a press release, it could easily end up on hundreds or thousands of places. Yes, you should always try and have unique content on your site overall, but I could place articles all day long on my site and won’t worry about duplicate penalties. News sites are always adding content and stories from other places, yet they are not penalized.
Point 10. I use an article rewriter to leverage my time. But the big difference, is that I make sure the article makes sense first and foremost. There is no difference than rewriting an article manually, except I am using technology.