subject: How to Annoy Google - and Get Placed in the Sandbox [print this page] How to Annoy Google - and Get Placed in the Sandbox
Those who run afoul of Google risk getting dramatically cut down in the rankings, and being forced to stay there for months: also known as being sandboxed. Here are the most egregious ways to annoy Google.
Having all your title tags on all your web pages be keywords, and nothing else. While making sure that your title tags include keywords is a goodand legitimateSEO strategy, their intent is to provide a brief description of the page's contents. One word can't do that, and Google's search engine will quickly know that you're interested only in SEO and not your customers, and rank you accordingly.
Overusing the keyword or keyword phrase. If a keyword appears more than 7 percent on any given web page, then you're in danger of getting sandboxed. Chances are, keyword density larger than 7 percent means that you're intentionally stuffing the page, which will only annoy Google. If you're concerned about exceeding this limit and want a quick, math-free way of testing a page, just read it out loud. If after you create a website the content sounds forced and artificial to you, then remove a couple of the keywords until it sounds closer to the way you actually speak.
Drawing too much attention to the keyword. If, for example, the keyword appears in the title tag, the meta tag, the header, all the subheaders, and in multiple times in the text, where it's inevitably bolded or italicized. You might be able to use the keyword in all these places while still keeping a keyword density under 7 percent, but still trigger Google's alarms. Google looks for words that are set apart somehow, whether through subheadings or font choices, but when it finds the same keyword repeated over and over in those locations, it suspectsand usually correctlythat the website creator is trying to juke the system.
Getting too many low-quality backlinks too quickly. Convincing other websites to link to your own is a well-tested method of boosting your page ranking, especially if those websites are popular. Popular websites, however, are often stingy with their backlinks, and some webmasters make the mistake of using link farms (a number of websites that all link to one another) to artificially boost their ranking. Another method of artificially creating backlinks is "spinning" for article directories. The person spinning writes one unique article to create dozens (or even hundreds) of "unique" articles, which are then sent to article directories. When an article directory publishes the spun article, they create a backlink to the spinner's website. Anyone who decides to create a website and who acquires hundreds of backlinks in a short period of time is in danger of being penalized by Google.
Reproducing content. Borrowing too much text from another personal website, business website or blogeven if you've appropriately sourced itcan harm your Google ranking. Why? Because if your content is the same as that on a popular website or blog, then Google wants to make sure that people searching for keywords used in your cribbed content find the popular website. Furthermore, the Google algorithm will assume that you're just syndicating content instead of providing your own. When you create your own free website, try to maintain more than sixty percent unique content on your website: a ratio that shouldn't be difficult to maintain even if your website's main purpose is to analyze text written on other blogs or websites.
After you create your own website, you naturally want people to find it, and SEO can certainly help you; however, you need to be careful about how you implement SEO strategies. Otherwise, you could just find yourself in a sandbox.
