When it comes to search engine optimization, Google is like that popular kid in high school that everyone wants to please. In the past years, it was not rare for some SEO professionals to accuse Google of "playing God," but it's just a testament of how it's the go-to search engine for majority of internet users in the world.
No one can succeed in offering organic SEO services or internet marketing in general without knowing how to rank high in Google. If you don't know where to begin, avoiding the search engine giant's pet peeves is a good place to start. There are many, but here are 10 of them.
1. Publishing Inferior Quality Content
The primary reason that Google constantly releases algorithm updates is to give search engine users a better internet browsing experience, and the quality of the user experience is highly dependent on content. Fresh content in Google search ranking is extremely important. Thin content, irrelevant articles, very short content and poorly researched content are some of the things Google hate. And in an internet marketing era wherein "content is king," this is one mistake you certainly wouldn't want to commit.
2. Duplicate Content
And we're not only talking about you duplicating content from other sites. There are also instances wherein you can be duplicating your own content. Google is annoyed with redundant content so creating unique and fresh content should be part of your SEO strategy. There are many techniques you can employ such as curating content from different sources or transforming your written content into other forms such as videos, infographics and even podcast. If you have to rehash other people's content, make sure you offer your own perspective to make it unique.
3. Ignoring Social Signals
SEO veterans out there might be raising their eyebrows right now. Believe it or not, there are still those who believe that social media or social presence does not have anything to do with organic rankings. Well, Google has jumped into the social bandwagon themselves with Google+ and more recently, Google+ authorship. Next generation SEO & SMO best practices would dictate that social media should be used to help build your site's authority and credibility. Google favors those that can be trusted and reward them with high rankings.
4. Using Low Quality Directories
During the dark ages of organic SEO services, link building was all about quantity. This is no longer the case. Modern-day link building tips revolve around quality over quantity. Google will penalize you if it senses that majority of your inbound links are coming from inferior directories.
5. Purchasing Links
Google hates those who are trying to take shortcuts and for many marketers, what's a few dollars in exchange for inbound links that will drive traffic to their site. This is a complete waste of money and will cause more harm than good.
6. Unnatural Link Building Pace
Even the best internet marketing professionals won't be able to build thousands of links overnight, unless of course these links resulted from viral marketing. Google knows this as well. Patience is a virtue and if you really want your site to rank high in Google, persistence should be part of your SEO strategy.
7. Over Optimizing for Anchor Texts
Google has recently started penalizing sites that use the exact SEO-targeted keywords as anchor texts. If you're using the same anchor texts over and over again, Google will become dubious and can actually result for your organic rankings to decline rather than improve. One of the most useful link building tips today is to diversify your anchor texts.
8. Not Monitoring Your Backlinks Profile
You wouldn't believe what your competitors would do just to get ahead. While you're working extremely hard implementing your carefully planned SEO strategy and employing the best organic SEO services you can find, your competitors are distributing links to your side to sketchy directories and other low quality sites. Protect yourself by consistently monitoring your backlinks profile you know exactly where you inbound links are coming from.
9. Linking to Untrusted Sites
While inbound links coming from low quality sites can hurt your Google rankings, so does linking to untrustworthy websites. Linking to these shady sites is like giving them your approval and endorsement. As much as Google hates sites getting inbound links from low quality sources, they also penalize those who give links to bad ones.
10. Ignoring the Importance of Building Meaningful Relationships
Many experts say that the Internet has evolved from the Information Age to the Relationship Age. Before, search engine optimization is sort of a "cold" and impersonal marketing strategy. However, the more interconnected people become through social media and content generation, the more organic SEO services are becoming more personal and geared towards building meaningful relationships.
Go out of your shell! Participate in forums and converse with your peers and more importantly, get into dialogues with your audience or prospective clients and customers. Be active - listen and speak. Add value to the Internet with what you say.
You don't want to annoy Google if you don't want your internet marketing efforts to go down the drain. You see, Google is actually moving towards improvement and giving internet users a better browsing experience. Either you move forward to the same direction or you go against it and fail miserably. Your choice.