Banned or Penalized by Google?

If you do something on your site that gets you penalized by Google, you have wandered off into a deep swamp! That said, you have to figure out what to do about it to repair the damage, if that is possible. Matt Cutts, the well known Google "insider" blogger, has some information about the process in this very long thread.

"First off, what’s a reinclusion request and why would you want to do one? If you’ve been experimenting with SEO, or you employ as SEO company that might be doing things outside Google’s guidelines, and your site has taken a precipitous drop recently, you may have a spam penalty. A reinclusion request asks Google to remove any potential spam penalty."

Matt provides a link to the site where you file your request, but there are a lot of important unanswered questions that you have to deal with. First of all is the question of how you know that your problem is the result of something that Google has identified as spam? Second, how do you find out exactly what behavior is considered spam so that you can fix it? Third, how long do you have to wait to get any resolution after you have cleaned up your site and filed your reinclusion request? Fourth, is there anything you can do to acelerate the process?

I read a lot of the postings on this link and found a lot of discussion and even more questions, but never really found the answers to these questions outlined above.

The lesson here is that it is important to create a clean website and to make every effort to avoid the techniques that can lead to such problems. Once you get into trouble, you have a huge task ahead of you (possibly) to get it resolved. It will absorb a lot of your time and energy under the best of circumstances, and looks like it will impact your site performance for at least six to eight months (this is only a guess!)

What are the things to avoid? Well, there is a long list, and lots of them are obvious, like hidden text, keyword spamming, etc. The activity that seems most likely to create problems for you inadvertently is the pursuit of an aggressive linking strategy that involves you with the wrong sites or generates too many links too quickly. As we have talked about in our classes many times, go after good quality links, not after sources that promise lots of links in a hurry. The other point that one might consider important is to pay close attention to whomever is implementing your link strategy. Someone you hire to help you might do a great deal of damage to your business by making a mistake.

'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ads - washingtonpost.com

"From her home surrounded by cornfields in Dow City, Iowa, Jackie Park spends hours each day on her computer, earning half a penny every time she clicks on an Internet advertisement."

With a lead-in like this, it is easy to understand why search engines might have trouble dealing with click fraud. The woman described above earns about $300 per year for clicking around the web on sites that her "handlers" direct her to.

There does not seem to be any way for a search engine to determine that the clicks coming from this computer are fraudulent. The only recourse they have is to examine the impact on the sites that are being defrauded to see any patterns that do not make sense. But that raises a different question. How do you determine that an increase in clicks is legitimate or fraudulent?

The advertisers are looking for an increase in clicks as a payoff for their ads. Getting clicks is an indication that the ads are working. Of course, what they really want is sales, not clicks. But how do you determine that the reason you are not selling is because the clicks are fraudulent rather than the fact that your landing page is not effectively selling your product?

As always, we continue to emphasize the benefits of creating an effective web site that will rank well in the organic listings. Spend your resources where they will give you the maximum payoff over the long term at the least cost to your business!

Flash sites still will not perform on search engines!

"The options for Flash sites today, though, remain limited. Shaw and Markel agreed that sites should avoid Flash if search engine optimization is a top priority and if the multimedia and interactivity features of Flash are not necessary."

This article features a group that is trying to "reform" Flash sites so that search engines will index them, but they are fighting an uphill battle. As the article says, "It's a trust issue at this point. The search engines need to trust that the content they're searching is the same as the Flash [sites] are displaying."

Our advice remains the same, don't use Flash on your front page or on pages that you need the search engines to find. Reserve it for pages buried in your site that you use to display specific material that your users will want to see AFTER they have come to your site and decided that it meets their needs!