Back in February of 2011, Google released a major update to its search results ranking algorithm known as Google Panda Update. The significant algorithm update aimed to lower the rank of “low-quality sites” or “thin sites”, and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. As of today, Google released 28 panda algorithm update and the last one (Panda 4.2) was July 17, 2015. you can read about all Google algorithm update from Moz Google Algorithm Change History Timeline.
If you run a website or blog and want your site stick to the top of Google’s search result, Here are some tips to Protect Your Site From Google Penalties. Alternatively, you can read Google’s Quality Guidelines.
1.) Audit your Links Monthly.
Start by running your backlinks and getting a baseline. If you find links from spam or low-quality sites, why not email the site and request for the link to be removed? If you do, document this! Keep track of everyone you’ve emailed and when. You may need this information if you DO get penalized and have to file a reconsideration request. There are a number of SEO tools you can use to monitor your backlinks. Pick your favorite and don’t forget to do this every month!
2.) Link Ratios:
What to Monitor, and Why they Matter. When Google talks about Earned vs Unearned links, one of the ways they can algorithmic-ally monitor these numbers is by looking at ratios. Here are some of the ratios that I always look for when monitoring a site’s health:
•Link Type: Image vs Text vs Mentions
• Link Location: Paragraph vs Link List vs In Content vs Sidebar vs Header
•Domain Theme: Business vs Computers vs Reference vs Portals vs News
• Site Type: General vs Blog vs CMS vs Link Directory vs Social Network
• Sitewide Ratio
• Deep Links Ratio
3.) Watch your Webmaster Tools account.
Watching the links that Google displays in your account can help you find problematic links that Google is acknowledging are crawled in part of how your site is ranked. Keeping tabs on these links will help you to quickly identify low quality or negative links.
Perhaps Google bot is having trouble accessing your site, or something went wrong with your server and there are numerous crawl or page errors.
Monitoring your webmaster account for your site’s health will make sure you address and minimize potential problems BEFORE they become penalties or result in a loss of rankings or traffic.
4.) Create Google Analytics Alerts.
By creating Intelligence Events Alerts, you can have Google Analytics notify you if your traffic has decreased or if something has changed. Here are some alerts that a client should set up for their websites:
• 10% Traffic Drop
• Bounce Rate increases by more than 5%
• Google Organic Traffic decreased by more than 5% Sometimes a small drop is an indication of problems, so the site has to be reviewed before they result in penalties or major traffic loss.
5.) Avoid Shortcut Methods.
A lot of SEO experts claim that they have a short cut method (Usually they keep it secret from their client) to rank higher on SERP.
Shortcut method may work on a very short-term basis, But there’s a risk involved in tricky shortcut method.
The problem occurs when Google’s spider finish analyzing your website and find the tricky method that you/your expert implemented to dodge google.
The only way to get rid of it and get your rank back is if you find your SEO expert did or doing any Shortcut Method on your website, abandon the expert and clean your content.
6.) Anchor Text Diversity.
The question of Anchor Text Diversity is heavily debated. In the past, experts believed that Anchor Text Optimized Backlinks is the key to dominate in the search rank. Again, Anchor Text Optimized Backlinks doesn’t look Natural Link Profile to user or Google.
Today Anchor Text Diversifying for the link is a must. Since Google uses Latent semantic indexing, you don’t have to worry much about anchor text. Use a mix of brand, domain, webmaster name, and keywords as anchor text more often.
Finally, remember to stay ethical and creative with your link building. Let quality content and superior user experience drive your creative link building strategy. Stay away from these penalties by taking these steps.