Has your website been banned  from Google’s search engine results or penalised in some way?

Learn how to submit a best practice “Google Reconsideration Request”.

If you are responsible for developing or maintaining a website, it is important that you familiarise yourself with the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

In particular you should pay close attention to their  “Quality Guidelines” which detail some of the illicit practices that may lead to your site being removed entirely from the Google search engine results or otherwise penalised.

According to these guidleines the following practices will almost certainly result in your website being penalised by Google:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Do not use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Do not send automated queries to Google.
• Do not load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Do not create multiple pages, subdomains or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Do not create pages with malicious behaviour, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans or other badware.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programmes with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate programme, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Although the above cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behaviour, this is not a comprehensive list. Google states that they may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here, such as, tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites. It is not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique has not been mentioned on this page, Google approves of it.

If your website is judged to be in violation of the editorial guidelines and has been removed from the Google index or penalised in some way, you will need to fix the violation issues and then submit a “Reconsideration Request”, to ask Google to reinstate or stop penalising your site.

What is a “Google Reconsideration Request”?

The following official Google video, featuring Rachel Searles and Brian White, from Google’s Search Quality Team, explains the process and provides tips on how to create a good, best practice  “Reconsideration Request”.

The main tip from the video is that you should check the Google Webmaster Guidelines, before submitting your “Reconsideration Request”, if you are unsure why you have been penalised.

Rachel also mentions that you should include in your request all the changes that you have made to fix the problem, rather than just telling them that your site now follows the guidelines.

Brian states that you should not try and fool Google by submitting misleading information. This will not help your case, as your request will be reviewed by actual humans and if the information you provide is incorrect they will simply disregard your request for reconsideration.

If you are having issues with Google penalising your site, then I would recommend watching this video.

To learn more about other issues that may affect your website and to receive regular Professional SEO Tips, subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email. Alternatively visit our main Website Promotion website for further information.

Do you use underscores or hyphens in your URL’s?

Have you ever wondered if one method is better than the other?

Have you ever considered if Google interprets an undersore differently from a hyphen?

Well, the answer is yes they do. According to Googles, Matt Cutts, hyphens are recognised as a separator and underscores are not.

This may not be important if your URL does not contain any major keywords. However if you are targeting a keyword within your URL, you will need to ensure that the relevant Keywords are separated by a hyphen and not an underscore.

For example www.professional_carpet_cleaning.co.uk would be interpreted as www.professionalcarpetcleaning.co.uk, in the eyes of Google. This is a missed opportunity as their are two primary keywords (“Professional Carpet Cleaning” and “Carpet Cleaning”) that would not be recognised by Google.

However, if this URL had been structured as www.professional-carpet-cleaning.co.uk then Google would recognise the individual keywords, which would help your Web Page Optimisation efforts.

So, there you have it, always try and use hyphens as opposed to underscores in your URL’s, for maximum benefit.

Whilst it is generally accepted that using a keyword search term as part of a web page URL will help to improve your search engine rankings, the exact position of the keywords within your website’s URL’s has always been a bit of a grey area.

However, Google’s Matt Cutts has recently clarified the situation. During a recent Google Moderator session he was asked if the position of keywords in the URL have any significant impact on ranking. For example is ‘example.com/keyword/london’ better than ‘example.com/london/keyword’?

Matt  decided to publish his answers in the following video:

It would seem that the official Google advice is that we should not obsess about the position of keywords within a URL, as they are unlikely to have any impact on a websites ranking, although having targeted keywords present within the URL will help a little bit. He warned that webmasters should not start stuffing keywords in the URL as this just looks spammy to users. He also suggests keeping the number of keywords in a URL to a minimum of 4 or 5.

So, if you are concerned about the position of the keywords within your URL’s, take the advice straight from Google and “don’t obsess” over it.

If you have any feedback based on your own experiences, feel free to let me know in the comments section below.

All of the major search engines use a wide range of highly developed algorithms to check the integrity of your website. Attempting to manipulate the search engine results, by using dubious techniques on your web pages, will almost certainly result in your site being banned!

The top 7 techniques to avoid at all costs are as follows:

• Do not purchase links from paid for link sites or link farms.
• Do not place hidden links are your website.
• Do not set up links from known spam sites.
• Do not stuff your meta tags or web page content with massive amounts of misleading or irrelevant keywords.
• Do not attempt to place hidden keywords within your web page content, for example white text on a white background.
• Do not copy content from another website or plagiarise existing content and claim as your own.
• Do not create one set of web page content for your visitors and a separate set of content dedicated solely to search engines (Cloaking)

If you try and use any of these methods, you may experience improved search engine rankings in the short term. However you will eventually get found out and your site will suddenly disappear from the search engine results, without any warning.

In the long term it is far more sensible to compete on a level playing field and only use Professional SEO techniques that are within the published editorial guidelines.

To learn more about search engine optimisation or for further information on our Link Building Service, please visit our website.

Would you like a free page one listing on Google?

Is your website listed in the Google local search results?

For small businesses, especially those that rely heavily on local trading, it is important to ensure that your website is included in the Google Local Search results. Local Search offers a primary opportunity for your website to be found by potential customers, searching specifically for a local business. Local Search should be top of the list of priorities for any small business marketing strategy.

If you are not familiar with Local Search, try searching for “carpet cleaning tunbridge wells” in Google. You will see that ten local search results appear at the top of the page. Similar results are also available on Yahoo. Google are in the process of expanding their Local Search results from ten to hundreds of businesses. Instead of just plotting the first ten search results on the map, Google will soon be including hundreds of other businesses across the map using small red circles. This enhancement has already been rolled out in the USA.

Local Search offers a fantastic opportunity of securing a page one listing on Google and best of all it is free. If you are a local business without a Local Search listing, now is the time to get included!

Local Search offers page one exposure quickly.

Unlike organic search results which can take a long time to achieve a decent ranking, Local Search can provide you with a page one listing very quickly. You will need to register your business with Google Maps in order to get listed. Once your business has been accepted you will start to benefit from the major exposure to potential local customers immediately. As this service is completely free it offers a cheaper alternative to traditional local advertising methods.

Local Search offers detailed business listings.

Local Search listings allow you to include far more information about your business than standard search results. These detailed local listings make it easier for customers to choose your business for their needs.

A similar free Local Search listing is also available on Yahoo.

To learn more about Search Engine Promotion visit our main website or view our range of Search Engine Optimisation Articles on our Blog.