Cloud Wise Joe and co-host Chauncey help local businesses learn how to make the internet work for them, and not against them. In this episode, Google Webmaster guidelines and tools along with Google blacklisting are talked about and explained.
Hi, I’m Michael and I work on Google Search Quality team and in this video, I’m going to discuss some key points of our webmaster guidelines including syndicated content, then affiliates, and doorway sites. Syndicated content is content that is copied from another website. Some sites copy content that stays on topic but they don’t add any of their own value. Other sites copy completely random and irrelevant content to increase their search traffic. Scraped content alone, even high-quality content, does not provide any added value to your users. Similarly, if your site participates in Affiliate programs, make sure your site adds value and gives the user a reason to visit your site. An example of a high-quality affiliate site would be a bicycle blog with original reviews and common sense. An example of a low-quality affiliate site would be a bicycle blog that provides only copied product descriptions of companies. The final category is the doorway sites. They are created purely to drive users to another website and often try to crowd the search results for a particular time frame. This provides the user with more experience as more than one search result will ultimately lead them to the same site. A violation of our webmaster guidelines can negatively impact your performance in our search results and in some cases can even result in removal from our search results. Source: Google Webmaster Guidelines
Joe: Okay so let’s break video down. Two things really stuck out and they keep sticking out when it comes to Google. Almost anytime you listen to their training or you read their guidance they always circle back to the customer experience and adding value. Now I think that kind of feels like a fuzzy grey term for a lot of us but they’re literally measuring that in some things that are obvious like whether someone bounced from the page, didn’t view the page, went back or didn’t spend a lot of time in the page or whatever. I think that this is an easy guideline for businesses to follow because they really can just stop and say am I adding value when I’m creating my content or when I’m bringing content over to help create value. And if you’re not well it’s probably never going to work. But the other thing that comes up. Google will kick you out of the results. You know if you just think about everything.
I’m a business owner, have been a marketer and sold marketing services, and as a business owner, I don’t think I was always operating under the assumption that I might make a mistake that Google would find so egregious that needs kick me out. Like you think it’s just if you do something malicious or somehow you’re cheating the system. But it’s not that at all, you could be doing what you may think is fine. Or your web marketing team may be doing things or worst of all, you hired your cousin, your nephew, your sister, some family friend to build you a website. You don’t realize that they went and copied content from other places to make your website. So if you don’t know some of these things, there is this real reality that Google’s going to kick you out of search results and that matters because that’s where people are looking. You can do something about it though.
Chauncey: By verifying with Google Webmaster Tools , Google doesn’t just blacklist you, it tends to warn you. It tends to say hey we notice something shady going on with your site here and if you don’t fix it we’re going to blacklist you. For a couple of years there we did aggregate rating and we did it one way and then all of a sudden across like 60 sites Google started to say hey you’re doing this wrong and we’re going to deny you. And so we had a chance to run through and fix our aggregate ratings before anybody was blacklisted. Now, in that case, that’s a prime example of us not doing anything shady. We were just doing what we thought we were supposed to be doing.
But as a warning to other people if somebody says or if you’re thinking oh I’ve figured out this great trick or I found this loophole, those are shady. If it starts with those two words you probably shouldn’t be doing it you know.
Joe: Yeah but even you know I just can’t help but have in the back of my head that there’s still this problem of, if you’re not even talking at the level of a loophole as a business person I’m thinking about who I am going to hire to help with my website or search engine optimization or sell online or whatever it is. They know what they’re doing or I’m not even realizing the dangers that are out there. Even if it’s not malicious or tricky you still pay the price for ignorance.
Chauncey: Now you know we probably shouldn’t put too much fear into people. Google is not just going around slapping people down, they are giving warnings.
Joe: And let’s start there. That’s why I want to talk about ignorance. When’s the last time you know of a local business going into Google Webmaster Tools and looking at the warnings?
Chauncey: Oh never.
Joe: Well Google has given you a free tool called Google Webmaster Tools. Once you set it up Google is now monitoring your site and they’re now telling you about these dangers and a whole lot of other cool stuff.
And we’ll talk about Google Webmaster Tools more often but that’s the point Chauncey they don’t want to attack and pull you off. But if they’re warning you about duplicate content for example and you’re not doing anything about it they’re left with no choice.
Chauncey: Oh absolutely. I mean you know they gave you the warning and they tend to give you about a month. And they really err on the side of caution. You know so you can be doing something shady and never get that warning cause they’re erring on the side of caution. You know they’re not trying to ruin their base or make people hate them. You know they’re trying to interact and reach out to you.
Well for one they’re trying to interact with you via e-mail. For those of you who get calls from people saying they’re Google, Google will never call you unless you ask them to. So we called you out of the blue that’s not Google. You know what a lot of people don’t know is that you can call Google and they’ll help you.
Joe: Yeah I mean it’s like one little secret of being a search engine marketer is you can always call Google and ask them what’s going on. And under certain circumstances, you know with what they’re allowed to say they’ll help you understand in a lot of cases even like AdWords and things like that they’ll actually help you configure so you’re successful.
Thanks so much for listening to the Being Found Show.
