In order for Google to provide the best experience to its users, Google uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), known as search engine crawling robots, to decide where each page belongs in Google. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows you to use keywords and attributes to enable your website to be the one these robots are looking for. However, SEO can also hurt your Google standings if you start without the direction of an expert.
One of the many issues that arise is damaged credibility. To learn more about how SEO can help your Google Standings click here. This article focuses on how to avoid using SEO tactics that can damage your reputation as a trustworthy site and cause you to not only get more spam, but become a spam site.
Search Engine Crawling Robots
Search engine crawling robots organize websites by how trustworthy your website is, how well it matches the search keywords, how many times the keywords are used on your website, etc. A trustworthy or credible site by Google’s standards is one that is secure, has a low bounce rate, a high Click-Through Rate, does not contain spam, and links to other websites Google has deemed credible.
Common Causes of Website Credibility Damage
- No SSL Certificate
- Emails in “plain text”
- Using a keyword too many times on one page
- Linking to sites that aren’t relevant to yours
- Linking to sites Google has flagged as spam
- Having a high bounce rate
- Having a low Click-through Rate (CTR)
- ClickFunnels
Where Should I Start?
First, make sure you’re using a secure version of your site. How do you know if it is secure? Look at your url. If it starts out, http:// then it is not secure. If it says https://, then it is secure!
Is your website secure? If not, then you may need to buy an SSL Certificate, or ensure that the one you’ve purchased through your hosting site is in use. Comment below with your website address or send me an email through my contact page and we can walk through some steps to make your site more secure!
Remove Emails From “Plain Text”
If you have your email written out on your website, also known as in “plain text,” bots can “crawl,” or read your site and send you spam, malicious, or sales emails. If you are getting a lot more spam emails recently, this is likely the culprit. To fix this, ensure your email is hidden within a button. That will significantly reduce your spam emails. Have you checked your site and you can’t find your email in plain text? Check your friends’ websites to make sure they don’t have your email listed in plain text there either.
Did this work for you? If not, please click the button below for a free consultation and let me know the reason you’re contacting me. If the above fixes haven’t helped, your problem is could be urgent and needs to be explored more thoroughly.
How to Avoid Being Flagged as Spam
To avoid the headache of getting flagged as spam, you want to avoid long lists of keywords without content to back them up. You can’t just type Chiropractor and Seattle 50 times on the page, because Google Search Results have a maximum cap of about 10 times that a word can be used per page, otherwise it will run the risk of being flagged as spam.
You should also be aware of the sites linking to your page and only allow credible sites to do so. Though it is hard to go through and monitor the content of sites, because you want both quality and quantity of good sites, it does help to avoid spam penalties.
You also want to create opportunities for other pages to share and read your content, such as blogs. Having a blog decreases bounce rate; a bounce rate is the rate at which people quickly “bounce” and leave your site before navigating to another page. A site with lower than a three-minute average site visit, has a high average bounce rate.
ClickFunnels Can Damage Credibility
You read that right. ClickFunnels more likely than not, will damage your site. In order to understand how, it’s important to know what ClickFunnels does. The purpose of ClickFunnels is to gain a large audience, resulting in a small conversion (or impressions) rate from that advertising. This is where those promises of 3-5 new clients a month come from.
ClickFunnels does do what it advertises, however, that has a disastrous effect for your Google ranking. The result is that you may get those 3-5 new clients, but you have made it monumentally harder to do the same thing next month because you now have a site with a high bounce rate and a low CTR. Follow my blog for my next article that will detail the dangers of ClickFunnels.
Conclusion
The most fool-proof way to avoid credibility errors made with SEO, is to consult an SEO expert. An expert will help you navigate SEO and decide which keywords best fit your target audience, how often you should use them on each page, how to avoid compromising your credibility while building yours, and more. For a free consultation to discuss next steps for your website, click the button below.
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