Avoid getting your Website banned from Google
November 17, 2011 By Dave Koehler

Google's challenge to provide good results for every search is not an easy one. They have instituted some measures to discourage site owners from gaming the system to improve their search rankings. Sometimes people with honest intentions make changes to their sites that accidentally get it completely removed from the search results.

The first big issue that can get a site banned isn't something anyone would do by mistake. It is called cloaking. Some people will set up their Website so that it appears differently to search engines than it does to regular users. The cloaked page is full of keywords that could artificially inflate the ranking of the page. You need a fine touch for that since loading your page up with keywords is another way to get banned or have your ranking drop. This is one method that one could do accidentally without realizing the possible negative impact.

"Bob's Shoes has the best shoes for shoe lovers and shoe wearers of all kinds including kids shoes, women's shoes, men's shoes, brown shoes, black shoes, dress shoes, casuals shoes ..." You get the idea. It is good to have terms in your copy that represent your business, but don't over do it.

Having the same or very similar content on multiple pages is also risky. You may want to establish your Website as the authority on a topic, but this method will also only hurt your ranking.

Links coming in to your site can help your ranking. Getting or buying links from other sites that are themselves using many bad techniques can lower your ranking.

In general, just write about your content in a way the represents what you do in an honest way, and you shouldn't have to worry about getting banned.