The algorithms and their updates are implemented to Improvement of the user experience on google search. In this way, with each new update and with each new algorithm, the company tries to solve problems and bugs, to offer the end user only the best results and to filter out any inferior or spam content.
Over time, Google has changed the way it analyzes content and web pages in order to improve the user experience and only displays the content it deems to be of high quality.
To this end, Google has implemented some algorithms that have completely changed not only the way content is created and SEO optimized, but also the way users conduct searches. These are the top things to avoid while creating content so as not to be penalized by Google:
– Double content: Ever since Google Panda tried to remove low-quality websites from the search results page, Google has been penalizing duplicate content. If a website has a lot of content published, it is possible that some articles will be repeated. Google checks the entire website and if it finds duplicate pages it analyzes them looking for the original. If it finds that the page is a copy, it discards it. If this happens multiple times in the same domain, Google can issue a manual penalty, which would be a problem.
-Low quality links: Panda also started analyzing the links in and out of the web pages to determine whether they were natural or artificial, as well as their quality. Later, Penguin focused almost exclusively on this factor and penalized all websites that used unnatural link schemes. All links that come from link farms, purchased links or refer to blog pyramids or in any other way artificially increase the authority of a page will be penalized. The link profile is one of the most important factors in the SEO positioning of a page.
-High bounce rate: Google understands a high bounce rate as a sign that users visit the website but cannot find it or think they have not found the information they need. This is a very bad sign for the search engine. On the other hand, it is not possible to set a “correct bounce rate” as it depends on the subject of the website and the type of website; Blogs or news sites don’t have the same bounce rate as online stores. High bounce rates could be due to a design issue, content, or simply a poor approach to the selected topics and categories.
-Low repetition of visits: This is a factor similar to the previous one. If people don’t return to your website after visiting, Google has known that there is a problem and your content is irrelevant and uninteresting. A website with a lot of monthly traffic but few regular visitors might rank worse than one with less traffic but loyal readers.
-Charging speed: Google Panda started by looking at page load speed as an SEO ranking factor. However, later algorithms have begun to pay more attention to this factor. Users do not wait more than 2 seconds for a webpage to load completely. Pages with slow loading times will rank lower whether they meet the other ranking factors or have great content quality.
-Keywords: With Penguin, Google started monitoring the use of keywords. Until then, so-called “keyword stuffing” was a common practice. The point is to artificially add the keyword to the content, even to hide it in the background of the website. Since implementing the algorithm, Google has been penalizing those websites that abuse keywords and rewarding those who use them naturally. On the other hand, with the introduction of Hummingbird (an algorithm that does not penalize websites that meet quality standards), Google started improving it to better position the websites that use long-tail keywords.