How to improve your Google rankings

The Do’s

1. Build quality link structure.

   Both internal and external links matter. Try to add your site to some relevant directories or websites with a similar theme. You can read this advice on a lot of websites but frankly nobody will tell you exactly what to do. Surely, you will have to find sites which run the same type of theme as yours. You can still write post on blogs that allow that and install a link or two under your keywords. I would be very judicious when it comes to that. You go after a very competitive keyword and you may put your site in a sandbox for a long time. Try less competitive combination of keywords since this may prevent any type of filter. I would focus on building internal links. For instance, if your site is about improving rankings on Google search engine, I would suggest making some internal links that would stick to the topic. Make a page about what ranking is and what Google is and link to those occasionally when you mention them. You should have a good long page (better than Wikipedia) about each of your keywords.
   Internal linkage can get you further than you ever thought possible!

2. Give your page a proper name

   Name your pages accordingly to what they are about. For instance, a page about PageRank should be named “pagerank.htm“.

3. Title tag <title>

4. The page should have a title that fits the content of the page. Google consider the titles one of the most important elements. Keep it short, but don’t limit it to a single word. That can put your page in a filter.

5. Meta tag <meta name=”description” content=”…”>

6. This tag is visible to Googlers who search for particular content. It should have a short summary of what the page is all about. If the tag is too long, Google notifies you in the Webmasters tools that there is a problem with your meta description.

7. Proper use of H1 heading <h1>

8. Your page should have one H1 heading containing your main keyword(s).

The Don’ts

1. Don’t cloak your pages! A technique where search engine bots see a different page from the one the typical readers see.

2. Don’t fill your pages with irrelevant words!

3. Don’t be deceptive! Google may respond negatively to any misleading practices.

4. Don’t hide text or links!

5. Don’t use any link exchange schemes!

What can possibly happen if/when Google decides to penalize your site for selling or buying links?This question can be fully answered only by Google, but Google is not a good communicator. You can get some scratch information from here and there and put it all into a logical whole, but the list may never be 100% accurate.

If you buy or sell links this is what can happen to your site:

1. It can lose its ability to pass PageRank. This means that any site that you link to will not benefit from the link. Your site will still retain its PR visible in the Toolbar. I guess you won’t mind this type of penalty. Nothing actually happens. This affects only the sites that you link to and the owners of these sites might be really fuming, but you’re just fine.
2. Your PageRank on the Toolbar or on the search engine may be decreased. This may cause some problems to your site. You may suffer a significant drop in SERPs or become invisible on certain keywords. You definitely don’t want this type of penalty.
3. Drop in SERPs. A lot of sites selling links suffered considerable drop in SERPs. Some SEOs gave a name to this type of penalty “-50” or “-70”. Previous penalty may be combined with this one.
4. Complete de-indexing from Google. This is a capital punishment. Basically the Google guys shoot you between the dot and the com in an execution-like style. If you didn’t like the previous two penalties, you’re definitely not gonna like this one. Even if you type the name of your website in the search box, it’s gonna be out of the Google cyberspace.

Hot to get out of the penalty?

This is from Matt the Knife-Cutts blog:

“Q: What recourse does a site owner have if their site was selling links that pass PageRank, and the site’s PageRank in the Google toolbar was lowered?
A: The site owner can address the violations of the webmaster guidelines and submit a reconsideration request in Google’s Webmaster Central console. Before doing a reconsideration request, please make sure that all sold links either do not pass PageRank or are removed.”
The only thing I would mention is that I would not recommend removing paid links, applying for a reconsideration, and then add paid links back onto the site. That would strike search engines as very deceptive/spammy and could result in sites being permanently removed from Google’s index”

I guess, the only recourse you can take is to remove the paid links (or marked them with a “nofollow attribute”), get down on you knees (translates into admit the violation in the Google reconsideration request), and file a reconsideration request.
What happens then is a great unknown. We’ll have to wait and see how Google responds to these requests.

There is only one little thing left out of this equation. What happens in this whole hassle to relevancy. If your otherwise good site does not show under relevant keywords, because Google suddenly removes it from its index or pushes it down the SERPs, how is that gonna create a positive user experience? Did Google forget about its core priority?

The almighty Google set a policy against link buyers and sellers which reads “punish punish punish”.

Fighting the so-called webspam might be a noble thing and I don’t think there is anyone out there who would mind it, except the spammers, of course. We can only applaud Google for finally taking action against garbage that appears in the SERPs. The problem is that under the spam umbrella Google places all sites that sell and buy links. This is not right! But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Google is right (there might be some twisted convoluted logic behind it). How does the almighty Google explain the fact that the link buying & selling is fully justified when a portion of the money involved trickles down to the pockets of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Here is and example of what I’m taking about:

Search for link sale on google.com

You see the “Sposored Links”on the Google result page? Let’s deal with the ads one by one.

One may say that it is OK to sell links that don’t pass any pagerank. Well well well…

www.LinkAdage.com is an Internet auctioneer specializing in links sale. Here is an example taken from their page:

“For the first time ever this 5 year old technical journal of an “Internet Architect” will be selling text link ads. This is a very clean site, and since it has never sold links until now, PR is sure to be passed on. Your PR4 text link ad will be on the home page of this website.

Get in early. Only 10 links will be sold. Currently 2 of 10 links have been sold.(http://www.linkadage.com/Auction/APViewItem.asp?ID=60561)”.

Any doubts that the links won’t be “nofollow”?

Next one.

http://www.linkexchangeexperts.com - a link exchange system offering 800 backlinks for $24.95 per month

“If you decide to join, all of these will be linking to you. If you decide to buy the subscription, you will have all of these as one-way links which the major search engines give more importance. We have a robot that checks everyone on the system to make sure all of the links stay on their website. We have software that lets you check each website that points to yours. If you are not happy with the way your PR is growing you can cancel at any time. You can get free links or Pay. There is no risk to you. (http://www.linkexchangeexperts.com/FAQ.aspx)”

Any doubts that the links won’t be “nofollow”?

Next

http://www.sponsoredreviews.com/ an innocent sponsored article seller. Provides examples of blog articles and believe me there is no “nofollow” tag to be found anywhere.

Examples are available on this page:

http://www.sponsoredreviews.com/advertisers.asp

The remaining three sites:

http://www.b2bwebonline.com/

http://www.buy-link.eu/

http://www.goodprlinks.com/

are bid directories – some vagueness around those since they are human reviewed and Google is not very specific whether this type of “paid link” is allowed or not. Some of the Web directories get banned and some survive just fine. Only Google knows the standard it applies to directories.

Certainly my favorite search engine runs a double standard.

It says NO to regular guys who try to sell links and YES to those who are doing the same via Adwords. After all, Google gets paid for that transaction and buries its own guidelines in the process. So, it’s Ok for a site to sell links as long as it is willing to share the profits with Google.
If Larry and Sergey, two guys who make billions of $$$, can’t resist a little Adword payola, it’s obvious that small guys like you and me will go for that pocket change like dogs for a bone and sell links violating the Google guidelines.  But watch out!!! The buzzword from Larry and Sergey is “No No No”. And these guys will surely screw your site beyond recognition if you don’t stick to the guidelines  even they don’t like.