5 Actionable Tips to Safeguard Your Website From Google Penalties

If you try taking shortcuts to achieve quick ranking boosts, expect to be penalized, which can hurt your website more than you imagine. A penalty lowers your ranking, affects website traffic and harms your brand's reputation. Therefore, it’s vital to prevent penalties in the first place rather than take corrective measures to address them. Luckily, here are five actionable tips to safeguard your website from Google penalties.

1. Skip the keyword stuffing mindset

Keyword optimization is the mainstay of white hat SEO. Optimizing your content with keywords that match the user intent gets your site the ranking and traffic it deserves. But finding relevant keywords and using them naturally in your content takes a lot of effort and creativity.

Keyword stuffing sounds like an attractive option as it apparently gets the site ranking fast, but Google is smart enough to detect excessive and senseless use of specific words in your content. You may end up with a penalty as soon as Google detects an anomaly in your content.

2. Avoid content duplication

Plagiarism will kill your SEO presence, and you’ll pay a hefty penalty for using duplicate content. The problem is even more serious because the content owner can also take action against you for stealing their work. It’s the last thing you want to encounter because you may lose your reputation besides getting a penalty.

Avoiding content duplication should be a top priority for marketers. Instead, invest effort in creating unique, informative and well-researched content that matches user intent. At times, duplication may not be deliberate, but it can still get you in trouble. You can also use plagiarism checker tools to detect unintentional duplication and correct it.

3. Prioritize link relevance

Besides unique and high-quality content, link relevance is another factor to protect your website from penalties. Be cautious while building external links for your website. It seems easy to pick them from random websites that aren't even related to your niche. But growing numbers without focusing on relevance can do more harm than good.

The trouble with irrelevant backlinks is that you may not realize it while creating them. But problems arise when the bad ones start affecting your ranking. You can use a combination of tools like SERP trackers and backlink trackers to identify the concern and address it before getting a penalty. Commit to cleaning up your links regularly by disavowing the irrelevant ones.

4. Stay ahead of negative SEO

Surprisingly, your competitors can leverage negative SEO and hurt your good work. The worst part is that it can even bring penalties for something you haven't done. Unfortunately, negative SEO is easy as your competitors only need to get several spammy site links to your website.

When Google detects these spammy links, it will consider your site as a low-quality one. You may end up with a massive penalty just because a competitor wants to pull you down. Once again, checking your backlinks regularly can keep you ahead of this practice. Look for spammy sites linking to you and disavow those links right away.

5. Ensure optimal UX

The success of your website depends on the user experience it delivers. Failing on the UX front is the sure-fire way to attract a Google penalty, so you must go the extra mile to optimize it. Consider factors like website speed and mobile responsiveness in the first place because they can make or break your UX.

Also, check the navigation to ensure intuitiveness so that visitors need not have to work hard to find the product or service they want. A good UX is also about clean aesthetics and valuable content. If Google finds flaws in these areas, it will surely penalize your website. Check them often with regular site audits, and take corrective measures at the earliest.

The best piece of advice for companies is to avoid penalties by following best SEO practices. Although the black hat SEO techniques seem like an easy way to gain faster results, you will inevitably land in trouble at some point. You can’t cheat Google, no matter how smart you act. 

Besides steering clear of wrong practices, you must also avoid breaking the rules unintentionally. Stay on track with evolving algorithms and check your link-building campaigns regularly. A penalty can be painful for any business, but avoiding it is absolutely possible. Follow these simple measures to stay ahead of penalties and safeguard your website from their impact.