LUCID Public Relations » LUCID

SEO Tip: Google Penalty – How to Remove or Avoid One

Dan Sevigny — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:07:04 +0000

Detecting and diagnosing the presence and cause(s) of a Google penalty or ban can be very difficult, but don’t worry it is always possible. Google provides a very thorough list of Webmaster Guidelines in Google’s Webmaster Central; we will touch on many of the points described there, but to get all of the info I suggest you read that article in full at some point.

Let’s get straight to it – if your website has stopped showing up in search results, has dropped for certain keywords or has experienced a large drop in traffic lately you may be worried that you have been penalized by Google. you may be right, or you may have experienced the drop in rankings for a variety of other reasons (which we will go over at the end of this article).

Has your site been banned by Google?

Double check by performing a site:yourdomain.com search like this one: for LUCID Public Relations. The site search will show you all of your website’s pages that are listed in Google’s search index. If your website doesn’t show up for this search, you have been banned and need to find out why, then submit a reconsideration request with Google (2-3 weeks processing time).

How can you find out if your site has been penalized by Google?

Search for your domain name (not a ‘site: search’ just the domain – example: http://lucidpublicrelations.com) in Google – if it doesn’t show up #1, you have a penalty. Jump to the Webmaster Guidelines List list below to see where you might be violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Next, search for unique page or article names – if your article titles are common, this may not work, but if you have an article or page with a name like “SEO Tip: How to Remove (or better yet, Avoid) a Google Penalty” this should work. For unique names your site should show in the first page of results. If not, Jump to the Webmaster Guidelines List.

Have your dropped off completely for your major keywords or have you dropped from first place/first page to 3rd page or worse? This is probably due to a devaluing of your inbound links by Google. Basically, Google has determined some of your links to be spam, advertisements or the result of SEO work. See the section below on building quality inbound links to avoid penalties like this.

Webmaster Guidelines List: Most Common Penalty Causes:

This list is not an official Google list of the most common Google penalty causes – these are the causes we have noticed from years of SEO work & through our discussions with other SEO experts.

1) Bad Link Building Penalty:

It can sometimes take Google a while to discover bad inbound links. The problem is simple – when Google devalues your inbound links your site loses authority for the keywords that those links helped you with (the keywords used in the Anchor Text or on the page the links pointed to).

Building Good Links:

Content of linking site should be relevant to yours

As a general rule, there should be very few other outbound links on any given page (as a general rule we use 25-30, but even that is a lot, shoot for 5-10 if possible)

Build links consistently, not for volume of links – If you are manually influencing the number of links that are coming in to your site, you want to give Google the impression that these links are being created naturally (through user interest in your content). Natural links will either build or remain consistent over time – avoid situations where you are building a large amount of links then dropping that number off in any given period of time.

2) Recently Changes Effecting Accessibility:

If you made and changes to your site and/or content recently, make sure that search engine bots can still see all of your content – you may have also dropped in ranking just because your content changes have reduced the relevancy of some keywords for your site. Check your website using a LYNX text-only viewer to see what your website looks like to search engines and other bots. If all of your content isn’t visible, you have some accessibility problems that need to be addressed. Make sure that your content is written in text, not in iframes, javascript or image based Flash on your website.

3) Duplicate Content:

Some webmasters have duplicate content problems without even knowing it – any time you have multiple URLS with the same information you are facing a duplicate content problem. Google created a short snippet of code that can solve this problem. In addition to using this code on sub pages, you should use it on your home page so that all versions of your URL point to a single, preferred version.

Example: http//:yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, http//:yoursite.com/index.php, http://www.yoursite.com/index.php should all point to one version (usually http//:yoursite.com or http://www.yoursite.com) as the preferred version. This will clear up any possible confusion Google is having about preferred versions of your content.

See the full list of potential Google Penalty Causes in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines Article

SEO Tip: Google Local Business Center

Dan Sevigny — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:04:17 +0000

Getting listed in Google’s local search results is a great way to get your company increased exposure with a large local audience of potential consumers. Many business owners know how to set up a Google Local listing but very few know how to properly format their listing in order increase it’s prominence on Google maps and in search engine results. By the time you are done reading this, you will know how to properly set up & optimize your Google Local account.

What is a google local business center account?

Google’s Local Business Center is a directory of Businesses that are organized by location and keyword relevancy in Google Maps and in Google search results. Often times, you will see Google’s local business results above organic results in search engine results pages for search terms that include a geographic location (example: Santa Monica Dodge). The image below shows Google local business results on top of organic search results for the term ‘Santa Monica Dodge’.

You can see how important having a local business result can be – after all, even after getting ranked #1 organically, you can still get pushed down several result spots by a large local business listing. It is very important to get listed in these results.

How to set up a local business account:

Go to the Google Local Business Center and add your company to their system. Follow the simple set up instructions and include as much information as possible on your company (store hours, pictures, videos, descriptions, multiple phone numbers, etc) – this will provide search engines with more info on your company to rank you with.

Google Local Business SEO:

There are a number of factors that come into play when Google decides to rank your business in the local search results – these include (but are not limited to):

Using the target city in your business address:

The most successful local business SEO campaigns are actually located in the city that they are attempting to optimize for. This is not to say that you need to move your business, or lie about your location, just that it is a very important (if not the most important) factor in getting ranked in local search results. You can get ranked in the local search results for a city if you are in a city nearby (especially if Google Local has a small number of competing businesses for that city).

Getting citations or business mentions from highly accredited outside sources:

Perhaps the most important aspect (that is within your control) of getting ranked highly in local search results is outside citations. Getting listed with local directories and IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages) can be the boost you need to get to the top of local search results. These outside sources serve as votes of legitimacy for your business – make sure to include the same city, address and keywords you used in Google Local Business Center in each IYP or directory listing in order to get the maximum benefit.

Some of the most popular IYPs to get listed on:

Superpages
Citysearch
Yelp
Yahoo Local
InsiderPages
YellowPages.com
BizJournals
AreaConnect
MagicYellow
Switchboard
MerchantCircle
GetFave
Yellowbot
Yellowpages.Lycos.com
Kudzu
Discoverourtown
Loqal.com
Local.Ingenio.com
YellowUSA.com
IAF.net

Selecting the right categories for your business (when setting up your account)

Claiming/verifying your business ownership:

This is a such simple task to perform, yet is forgotten by many business owners – claim your local business listing! Simply find your business on Google Maps, and click on Edit (you may have to click on ‘More’ to find this). Next, look for a line that says: “Are you the owner? Claim your business” and click on the link to claim your business.

Next, Google will ask you if you want to edit your business information (update business name, contact info, payment types, hours, categories, etc), suspend the listing. If you are ready to go, simply click the box checking that you want to edit your business information, confirm the information listed there and click ‘Submit’. Google will send you a postcard with a pin number on it within 2-3 weeks; you can also verify your listing using the phone number you provided when you set up.

Good luck and remember, if you need help, LUCID Public Relations is only a phone call away!

SEO Tip: Using Description Meta Tags

Dan Sevigny — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:14:46 +0000

The description meta tag as we mentioned in our last installment of SEO Tips, is the only meta tag that holds any weight with major search engines like Google (keep in mind, it is not used for ranking purposes, rather it effects the way your site is seen in search engine results).

Description meta tags should be formatted like this:

It is important to keep in mind that you will need to use a different meta description for each page on your site (otherwise it is more or less useless to your users). The meta description should accurately describe the content of your page.

Why we choose not to use meta description tags:

When a user searches for something on a search engine like Google, they are looking to find a website that has content matching their query – or in other words, they want to find a site that is relevant to their search. You may notice that when you search on Google, certain parts of the description under each site listed are bolded – this shows the user that each site listed has the keyword they are looking for and more importantly shows the context in which it is used.

Consider the following search result for ‘LUCID Public Relations’ – this user is searching for our company. The fourth result down, lucidcommunications.ca has ‘LUCID’ and ‘pr’ highlighted, but given the context that both terms are used, the user would be able to tell that it is not a link to the right company.

Whether you decide to use meta description tags or not – just keep in mind that by not using them you are allowing Google more flexibility to show users why your page is relevant to their search (and keeping irrelevant clicks off your site, because they will bounce anyways).

When to use meta description tags?

We do think it is appropriate to use the meta description tag on pages that have little or no visible text (although this issue would be better resolved by adding more) and on pages that have only pictures (say, for example, an image gallery – but again, providing accurate text descriptions of each picture is probably a better way to go).

What is your preference for meta description tags? Why? Let us know!

SEO Tip: Don’t Worry About the Keywords Metatag!

Dan Sevigny — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:38:18 +0000

Keyword’s meta tags are (and have been) out for some time now. Google, the largest search engine on the web actually claims to ignore them altogether. In fact, for ranking purposes, Google ignores all meta tags – the only useful meta tag is the ‘description’ meta tag, which can provide a custom set snippet of your text in search engine results (the text below your link in search engine results).

We have a lot of clients ask us about their keywords meta tags – some of them have heard from confused SEO “professionals” that it is important to stuff as many keywords as possible into this meta field – this is actually the reason that Google and most other search engines stopped taking meta data into account – it was too easy to spam.

Stop getting stressed out about your meta tags – the only meta tag you need to worry about is the descriptions meta tag and even then, it is not necessarily all that important; We will go over the benefits and drawbacks of having one of these in another installment of LUCID Public Relations SEO Tips.

For your education and enjoyment I have attached a video from Google’s Matt Cutts below. Matt is the head of Google’s Web Spam team and is one of the leading authorities on Google’s search policies. Enjoy!

Remove Ripoff Reports (RipOffReport.com)

Dan Sevigny — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:33:57 +0000

Ripoff Report (www.RipOffReport.com) is a consumer complaints board website that allows anyone to post negative experiences and reviews about companies and individuals. Although many people use the website legitimately, it is all too common for competitors and liars to use Google’s unusually high domain preference for Rip Off Report as a way to spread false information about a company in search engine results.

When an abusive Rip Off Report is written about a company or individual there is little to be done in terms of removal – the owner of RipoffReport.com, Ed Magdeson, takes pride in the fact that Rip Off Report has never been legally required to remove a Ripoff Report from the site; in fact, Ed’s message to the victims of unscrupulous users on his website is as follows:

“From time to time, the Ripoff Report receives notices from companies and individuals who claim that false or inaccurate information about them has been posted on this site. Sometimes we receive letters from lawyers with similar allegations. These people sometimes threaten to sue Ripoff Report for defamation and other claims unless the statements they do not like are removed.

If you are considering sending us a notice or demand (or if you have already done so), this page is intended to provide you with information that may help you to better understand the situation and your rights, as well as the rights of the people who post reports here. You need to understand that threats against Ripoff Report are not effective, nor will they result in the removal of any reports.”

The only way to get a Ripoff Report Removed from Ripoffreport.com is to join Ed Magdeson’s paid (monthly) service called the Rip Off Report Corporate Advocacy program – the corporate advocacy program is rumored to cost upwards of $50,000 a year. Many business owners get emails from Ripoff Report inviting them to join, causing the widely held perception that Ripoff Report is a scam and Ed Magdeson is nothing but a con artist.

You can’t remove a Ripoff Report from Ripoffreport.com but LUCID Public Relations can bury the Ripoff Report in search engine results, effectively keeping it hidden from potential or current customers.

Whatever the truth may be, in the end it all boils down to one fact: you have a Ripoff Report written about your company and you need it removed. You have come to the right company. LUCID Public Relations has had great success in suppressing and even permanently removing Rip Off Reports from search engine results – with tried & true methods that NO other SEO company, Public Relations firm, or Rip off report removal service is using, LUCID Public Relation is easily one of the most effective and efficient companies offering this service.

Depending on the severity of your case (number of reports written, keywords included in the Ripoff Report, number of responses on your ripoff report, etc) LUCID can get your report removed from the first page permanently in 2-10 months. Usually we will see the Ripoff Report bounce around from 1st page to 2nd or 3rd page for several months before it is permanently removed. In some cases we have been able to remove a rip off report in less than 48 hours

LUCID’s removal methods to not only apply to Rip Off Reports – we can suppress or remove any negative press releases, information, news articles and more.

LUCID also specializes in removing/suppressing reports on:

Complaints.com

TheSqueakyWheel.com

ConsumerAffairs.com

ConsumerAction.com

Complaintsboard.com

…and more

Don’t remain a victim of Ripoff Report & unscrupulous complaint writers & don’t lose business as a result of getting listed on RipoffReport.com.

Call or Email LUCID Public Relations today for a free analysis, quote & estimated timeframe for removal.

PHONE:310 859 4600

EMAIL:Web@LucidPublicRelations.com

LUCID Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Dan Sevigny — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:12:49 +0000

As the world’s consumers continue to migrate towards the internet, it is becoming increasingly paramount to have a web presence that dominates.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting your website ranked in the top search results for keywords that thousands of people are looking for to find companies like yours. LUCID sees great value in combining the effects of mass media campaigns with highly targeted internet marketing.

Because the internet is one of the fastest growing purveyors of information to the world, LUCID sees it as an opportunity to maximize the effectiveness of mass media campaigns. When someone sees you on television or reads about you in a magazine, where will they go to find out more information? The answer is almost always the internet.

LUCID will not only get you ranked in the top search results, but we will work with you to optimize your website for conversions – a process that has left most of our clients busier than they have EVER been before.

If you want to be #1 on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL and More, LUCID can make it happen!

LUCID Public Relations strongly emphasizes the use of search engine optimization as a standalone or complimentary marketing technique because it is one of the most effective & affordable ways to capitalize on media appearances, and connect with consumers that are looking for your product or service.

Millions of people use search engines to look for products or services every day

Our challenge is to make sure that you are ranked #1 in search engine results for keywords that thousands of ready-to-buy consumers are looking for.
If your goal is to get the public’s attention about your services, expertise, or products you need to get in touch with us!

LUCID will give your account the personal attention it needs & for a fraction of the price that other SEO firms will charge.

LUCID Basic SEO Package Includes:

Optimization for 5 Keywords: Get optimized for 5 keywords – we perform very specific keyword research that allows us to pick the most valuable keywords to optimize for.

Pay Per Click Management: We will help you to reduce your search advertising budget, while bringing you more qualified traffic – many companies are simply wasting revenue on poorly set up pay per click campaigns.

CONTACT LUCID SEO TODAY!

Dan Sevigny

Director of Internet Marketing

SKYPE: Dan.Sev

Email: Dan@lucidpublicrelations.com

Phone:
310 859 4600 ext. 3