How to Avoid Google’s Manual Actions

Google has established general webmaster quality guidelines that serve to support Google’s efforts to find, index, and rank websites in search results listings. If you (or your web developer) perform an action on your website that Google views as negative or in violation of those guidelines – an illicit, deceptive, or manipulative practice – you will find yourself in trouble with Google sooner or later.

In cases where spam is the violation, Google’s own algorithms automatically detect the violation and demote the website in search rankings. Google also relies on humans to review web pages manually. If these reviewers find a violation of the quality guidelines, they take a manual action to address it. Depending on the circumstances, the manual action could be lowering your website’s ranking, removing specific web pages or content, or, in extreme cases, removing your website completely from Google’s search index.

Information relating to all manual actions taken can be found in your website’s Manual Actions Report. You might also receive the following message on the dashboard of your search console: “This site may not perform as well in Google results because it appears to be in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”

Google takes a manual action any time they detect that a website is attempting to trick or manipulate their search engine results and website rankings. While a manual action by Google may appear to be a negative for you or your website, it is not; manual actions are taken to ensure everyone plays by the same rules when it comes to website security, content, SEO, etc.

Manipulation of a website occurs in many forms. A few examples follow.

• Hacking of your website
• User-generated spam that appears on your site’s user profiles or guestbook or forum pages
• Artificial or deceptive external links that point to your site with the intention of manipulating your page ranking
• The content on your site is of little value, low quality, and not unique, such as occurs with content that is generated automatically or from blog posts from others
• Images and pages appearing differently on Google’s search results from those on the page or image where a user actually lands when they click on the image, an action called cloaking
• Overuse of keywords and phrases with the intent of manipulating search rankings

How to Handle a Manual Action

First and foremost, when building your website or developing content for it, understand and adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. As long as you follow the rules, do nothing that intentionally attempts to manipulate your website’s search rankings, and take steps to keep your website secure, you should not be worried about your website receiving a manual action. In fact, web developers should be doing everything they can to avoid appearing to trick Google and instead provide the best possible experience for users and visitors to the website. Of critical importance is to ensure all aspects of the technical SEO for your website are set up and working optimally so that Google can find the website and be certain it is working well and within the guidelines.

Should you receive a manual action notification, review it and take steps to address the issue. Once you have fixed the problem, you can submit a reconsideration request to Google’s webmaster team to manually review your site again.

The web developers and designers at Perfexion, Inc. take the performance of every client’s website seriously. We manage websites and regularly monitor SEO and search results. If we find something off or unusual, we check all analytics and reports to find the issue and then take immediate steps to correct the problem. When your website is properly ranked and reaching your target audience, you can trust we are following the rules.

Contact us to learn how we keep your website safe, ranked appropriately in search engines, and out of cyber jail. We want customers and visitors to your website to find your content valuable and relevant to their needs. Most of all, we want them to feel they can trust you and your website and feel secure doing business with you.

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* https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2017/03/nohacked-year-in-review.html

How to Use Search Console for Quick SEO Wins

How Google’s Search Console Helps You Improve SEO

If you are not already using Google’s Search Console service to monitor how well your website is performing in Google searches, put signing up for the service on your to-do list for today. The intelligence and data Search Console provides is like nuggets of gold just waiting to be mined. Business owners, website managers, and digital marketers, regardless of their level of technical expertise, can use Search Console easily and apply the takeaways they learn to strategically enhance the performance of their website, including increasing traffic and improving conversions.

With Search Console, you can:

Monitor website performance
Submit content you want crawled for searches and remove content you don’t want the search engine to index
See which search queries work best to bring visitors to your website
Track and monitor your site’s backlinks (hyperlinks from other web pages to your own website or web page)
Be informed when an error occurs on your website, such as a broken link, missing page, or crawl error

Quickly, easily, improve your website’s SEO

One especially important reason to be signed up for Google’s Search Console service is to utilize the intelligence the data provides – those nuggets of gold – to improve your website’s SEO. Without search engine optimization, your website stands little chance of ever showing up in a Google search or getting found.

Improve SEO, SEO Best Practices, Technical SEO — Improve SEO, Google Tools, Improve Site Ranking

The following list provides ways to use those nuggets of information to quickly and easily improve your site’s SEO.

Take advantage of all the functionality Google provides to monitor your website’s performance and see where improvements are needed or things need to be fixed. When you systematically address the technical areas of your website that impact SEO, you both improve the ability of your site to rank well in searches and enhance the user experience across the entire site. The end results are well worth the effort. At Perfexion, Inc. we put our web development and web content expertise to work for you. We are a Philadelphia-based web design and development company located in Plymouth Meeting just outside King of Prussia. We specialize in making sure clients’ websites are technically sound and perform to the best of their ability at all times. Contact us today.

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Online Marketing 101 – SEO and SEM Basics

Online Marketing SEO and SEM

Online marketing is a broad term that refers to the marketing of goods and services using available digital technologies. This article will encompasse both SEO and SEM basics. The most common digital technology used is the internet. A company or business that has a website is already doing online marketing to advertise their business; promote their product and service offerings; and/or announce sales, promotions, news, and events. But the extent to which they are successful with their online marketing efforts is a different question altogether.

You already know how important online marketing is to the survival of your business. If you don’t market your company – or market it well – potential customers may never know you exist and they will shop elsewhere. By understanding the basics of online – digital – marketing, you have the knowledge and power to put digital marketing strategies and techniques to work for you.

As technology and digital platforms have evolved in recent years, so has online marketing, which, today, comes quite close to being an exact science. Online marketing is also known as internet marketing, digital marketing, and web marketing, and the phrases are often used interchangeably. Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are two strategies that fall under the online marketing umbrella. They work in concert with each other to produce the desired results of increasing and enhancing a company’s online presence and relevance to targeted users – that is, to clients and potential clients – to improve conversions, increase web traffic, provide more qualified leads, and ultimately, grow the business and profits.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – involves taking steps on a website with the goal of increasing the site’s ranking and visibility within search engines, so that it can be easily found when people search for the goods or services the business offers.

SEO –

o Follows and reacts to how search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing operate

o Takes into account how users query and perform searches on the internet – including what they search for and the words or terms they use when performing a search

o Looks for relevance and value in a website’s content

o Involves having quality (well written) content and relevant backlinks, as well as a properly managed and maintained website in terms of HTML coding, sitemap, etc.

o Requires removal of items and issues such as broken links that restrict a search engine’s ability to properly index a website

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – is placing paid online ads that appear alongside other search engine results when a user performs a search and meets the targeted location, demographic, and other criteria associated with the ad.

o Can be an extremely valuable component in your company’s digital marketing efforts

o Is also known as paid advertising, pay-per-click/keyword advertising, targeted advertising

o Lets you to reach a target audience by placing an online marketing message directly in front of them

o Involves bidding on the advertising and then paying when a viewer clicks on the ad

o Incorporates SEO of keywords and phrases to increase traffic to your website as a result of a natural (organic) search query

o Increases the visibility of your website by placing paid ads alongside user search results when they enter queries into search engines for the products or services you offer

o Can be used in conjunction with social media marketing

SEO and SEM strategies both require close attention and maintenance to know what is, or is not, working. Savvy web developers continually test, monitor, and adjust ads to ensure each ad investment returns the maximum results. They track which keywords perform the best and can make real-time adjustments if they see something is not working or is performing poorly.

Why Do SEM?

The benefits of doing paid advertising include attracting more customers and new website traffic. A properly run ad campaign will rank well in search engine results, and ensure ads appear in front of the very people who are looking for a company’s specific services. This ensures the people who visit their site are the most qualified and are more likely to follow through with a phone call or inquiry.

Occasionally, the way search engines index web pages and websites and present results to search queries can change. Such changes can affect the performance of SEO and SEM which, in turn, may require a change in the strategy a company uses when doing its online marketing. Good web developers follow and stay abreast of the trends and updates in internet marketing that affect their clients, and inform and educate them on the topic. If your own web or IT team is too busy managing other aspects of your business or website to keep up with the lightning-fast changes that occur with internet and search engine marketing, contact a reputable web development company for information on the latest requirements. Some will even perform an audit of your website and recommend changes or updates you’ll need to make to ensure your existing digital marketing efforts remain effective.

Perfexion, Inc. specializes in online marketing and understands what is needed for a website and all related digital marketing efforts to perform at optimum levels and achieve maximum results and profitability. We are a Philadelphia-based web design and development company located in Plymouth Meeting just outside King of Prussia. We specialize in making sure clients’ websites are technically sound and perform to the best of their ability at all times.

E-MAIL hello@pfxn.com
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How Google’s Search Console Helps You Improve SEO

Quickly, easily, improve your website’s SEO

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Online Marketing SEO and SEM

Why Do SEM?

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