Basic SEO mistakes that will cost you a Panda penalty

Today we will talk about some Basic SEO mistakes that can cause you a penalty from Google. As we all know SEO has become as complicated as it was never before. Penguin, Panda and Pirate algorithm updates have made it so difficult to deal with. You would have read many online SEO gurus who are telling you that don’t do this or don’t do that or you will be penalize by these algorithms. Yes, they are right. Many things have changed in the Search Engine Optimization World. 

Today we will talk about some other mistakes which webmasters do and no one is talking about them. And believe me that these basic seo mistakes on which I am going to talk about can cause you a Panda penalty.

In this particular post we will only talk about Panda penalties. Many of you know that Panda is an algo which is designed by Google to penalize those people who are using black hat tricks to get better rankings on SERPs. Panda only deals with On Page SEO such as keyword density, anchor text etc, Or I can say that Panda’s duty is to penalize every single website who has spam.

If Panda finds a website or a blog which has spam then it may cost them a penalty which may result to a complete disappearance from SERPs.

What Online gurus will tell you is that you should just focus on On Page SEO to avoid Panda penalties and should not take care about your internal link structure because it is something which Penguin deals with. However, it isn’t the case. Panda can penalize a Blog who have a bad internal link structure(broken links, spam pages etc).

And believe me many Blogs have these spam pages and their administrators even don’t know about them. In this article I will tell you that what these spam pages are and how can they make your Blog penalized from Panda, We will talk about some other usual SEO mistakes too which are done by Bloggers.

Basic SEO mistakes that can lead to Panda hit

Spam Pages

Really, This is the biggest thing which will cost you a Panda penalty and you even don’t know about these spam pages at all, nor you know that what are these spam pages and neither you know that how can these pages can lead you to a penalty.

First of all, let me tell you what these spam pages are:

•  Tag pages (yourdomain/tag/atag)
•  Category Pages (yourdomain/category/acategory)
•  Blog archives
•  Unnecessary pages (yourdomain/page/2/)

Now when you know that what these spam pages are you surely want to know that why are they spam pages. And I want to explain it too.

Tag pages, Category Pages and Blog Archives

These Pages are spam because whenever a Google spider will crawl a page (lets say a tag page) then the Google Spider won’t be knowing that this is a tag page but not a content page thus it will crawl it and consider every thing content which will be present there. And you know how these tag pages look like. They have all the posts align on the page which are filled under them which means that that tag page is linking to every single post which is filled under it. So as I said first when Google spiders will crawl that tag page they will not be knowing that this is a tag page and will consider it a content page. And when Spiders will find that this page is linking to so many other pages and the anchor text is very rich then here’s the problem starts from. 

Now Google spiders will report this page to Panda Algorithm and Panda will penalize it for having so many links to other pages because Google will consider that this is a page which is selling paid links.

Same happens with category pages and with Blog archives. So how to fix this problem?

How to Fix this Problem?

You can fix this problem easily by stopping Google spiders from crawling these pages. You can do this easily by adding no index codes to your robot.txt file. However, you should not even touch it if you are not good in using codings just install WordPress SEO by Yoast to figure out this problem and make some necessary adjustments as shown in the images below.

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Duplicate Content

One another thing which has a great role in content market. Duplicate content is not just bad for your Blog’s reputation it is also a basic SEO mistake that webmaster do very often. They just copy and paste content from some where or copy their previous content to the new article to save some time which is not a good practice indeed.

However, by working a little more smartly you can use duplicate content and can avoid Panda hits. For Example here is a phrase about a fish jar “There are two fishes in a jar”, Now if you want to copy it to your new article you should have to make some alterations to the phrase to sabotage Panda algorithm. For example the sentence can be changed into “There are a couple of fishes in the fish jar”.

Did you get it? Just change some words of the phrases you are copying and you will be fine in SERPs. However, I will recommend to not copy anybody’s content because its an offence and if you will not do the work smartly you can be caught by Panda and your readers which will harm your Blog’s reputation.

Believe in Unique Content which is purely yours

Poor Loading

That is a thing which distracts both users and Search Engines. You need to install a good and friendly theme to your Blog for both “better user experience” and for “better Search Engine rankings”. As Matt Cutts has declared that websites who take less time to load will be featured on top Search Engine Result Pages.

One Extra Tip

Do not install tons of plugins on your Blog just have some necessary ones and avoid HD images, images with 600 to 700 pixels can also work fine for you.

Over Optimized Content

Google has many a times ask webmasters to write content for readers instead of Search Engines. We must also follow their simple guidance to write user friendly content for a better bounce rate and for better reputation.

Those low quality content with tons of keywords in every single line of the paragraph won’t work, So why to waste your time on writing stupid content which nor readers will like neither Search Engines.

And yes these Panda algo is to make sure that the quality of the content is not compromised.

I will recommend everyone who is reading this article to use some good SEO plugins to avoid such basic SEO mistakes.  

Advertisements everywhere

Really, this is one thing which irritates alot. Ads everywhere, Non of us will like to stay on a website for even just a second who has so many advertisements to show and affiliate banners to sell products. As I said don’t over optimize your site but now I will say don’t over monetize your site. Be user friendly, Don’t put so many ads on your blog because these ads make backlinks to the product (of which’s ad they are) and having even 10 advertisements on a single page will mean 10 backlinks to other websites.

So MORE ADS= UNHAPPY USERS AND PENALTIES FROM SEARCH ENGINES.

Content with no quality

Again content is King, Every Blogger must be known of this famous phrase said by Bill Gates. But not many are feeling the soul of the sentence thus they still creates low level and poor quality content with just a 100 or 200 words.

I have seen many Blogs with just 50 words articles, LOL. They rely on images, Yes images are useful and they can say many things which we can’t even explain in 1000 words but as my friend Rahul Dubey on his Blog said “Spiders have legs but they do not have eyes they may crawl your article’s text and understand that what your post is about but they cannot see your image thus they will not feature it on high Search Engine rankings”

Pinterest is a well known and a popular website but we don’t often got its Pages in top search results for any keyword, Do you know why? Because Pinterest is a photo sharing site where people talk with their images instead of text therefore Google spiders are unable to understand that what is that image about and don’t put it on High Search Engine results.

Keyword Rich Anchor Text

One of the common basic seo mistakes that webmasters do oftenly, They made keyword rich anchor texts which is a very dangerous thing for their Blog do you know why? Because if Google thinks that an anchor text on your Blog is made in intention to just make a backlink then you are in trouble. Just a single keyword rich anchor text can penalize your whole Blog. Are you not believing me?

Read Mr. Doc Sheldon’s story who’s whole Blog was penalized for just a keyword rich anchor text. 

Poor Meta Descriptions and Titles

One another thing which many Bloggers do, they post for something else and name it some thing which has nothing to do with their post.

Yesterday, I was reading a post about Mobile Apps and the Title of that post was “Why I love technology?” See, the title is not Search Engine friendly neither Readers friendly because if you will just read the title you can never understand that this article was about Mobile Apps. “Poor effort HAAN?”

So what could be the right Title for that specific post? Any title in which the keyword “mobile apps” is mentioned.

Spam Comments

Yes spam comments from which we all have to deal with. Actually it isn’t our fault if someone is posting spam comments on our Blog but its our mistake if we allow them to be published because Google spiders do not have senses and when they will crawl a page who has spam comments they will penalize it because they don’t know that the words or sentences they are crawling are comments, Again I will say they do not have senses.

But what spam comments I am talking about are one who have links to other websites or Blogs, Here is an simple example:

Hey, Good post. Here is mine : myblog. com/page-url

Never allow this sort of posts because they are not relevant to your niche or content neither they have anything to do with your post. This type of comments are only generated in intention to make backlinks for other websites.

Disallow, cancel or delete these sort of Comments. However, if you are having so many spam comments then Read this article to know how to block these spam comments.

Backlinks to other websites

You should be very sensitive in making backlinks for other blogs from your website. As I shared Mr. Doc Sheldon’s story his whole Blog was penalized for just a simple backlink for another site. And he in-fact didn’t that in the intention to make a paid link, it was just a guest post where the author left his blog link to have some do follow links juice.

I know this is a completely different thing which I am telling you, Many of other online gurus have told you to link back to other websites to generate some extra traffic. Well there trick is not worth implementing. Because if you even link back to other blogs then their authors may visit your post or content from where you have left a link for them but I don’t think that any of you will want to risk his whole blog for just “a” visit.

Conclusion

In the end I will like to ask everyone of you to not use paid schemes to build links for your Blog. These paid links are not helpful, they may boost your ranking in start but then every thing will be gone once Google will found you guilty for using cheap link building schemes. Remember these shortcuts are not an all time solution they may pay in the beginning but will not pay you forever.

Paid links are shortcuts thus they are unreliable and can lead you to a complete failure in future.

And don’t repeat these basic SEO mistakes that I have told you in this article.

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