Sometimes its not your fault when you get a penalty, you either didn’t know that what you were doing was wrong - or you were doing something that was quite suddenly banned in Google’s algorithm update. Times like this can be hard, as it feels like you pretty much have to start all over again, and all your hard work has gone to waste. Particularly with Google’s recent change of heart towards paid directories, it’s left a lot of people wondering what to do.

So where do you start?

Well there are a number of ways that you can go about recovering, but most of them depend on how badly you’ve been affected.

If you’ve noticed a couple of pages drop positions then it may just be a general penalty. The first thing to do here is review your link strategy, do your best not to link to any sites more than 2 page ranks below you, and do not link to anything that is PR1 or lower. (The exception here is a PR of N/A as the site has not yet been through a PR update)

Once you’ve (hopefully) cleaned up your outbound links, you can apply for ‘reconsideration’ in your Google Webmaster Tools account in the form pictured below, whereby you promise to be a good boy/girl from now on.

If you’ve received a manual ban from Google, then it may be best to try the ditch ‘n dash method;

To do this you simply apply a 301 redirect from your site, to all your content on a new domain, this way you keep your PR and power, even your users - but your site is associated with a new domain and not affected by the ban. A word of warning though, if your site was manually banned, then it was for a reason… and Google will see straight through this old trick if you haven’t cleaned up your act!

What exactly is ‘cleaning up your act?’

Well, you’ve been penalised for a reason (intentional or otherwise) and you need to ensure that you not only resolve the initial issue, but also remove anything else on your site that is even slightly dubious.

Here are some points to get started with

• Key phrase saturation - check how many times you’re using key phrases throughout titles, descriptions, meta keywords, page copy, navigation, and baselinks. Too many = spam, and as you may have figured out, Google is not a fan of spam. You can use a keyword density checker to assess whether or not your site is overkill in the key phrase dept.
   
• Hidden elements - are you using css display:none on certain things? or matching any text to the background colour? (you have to be a really special kind of stupid to do that second one) Or maybe you think you’re being really clever by using javascript to mask certain elements of your site, or having different content served to bots vs users. You may think you’re tricking Google, but chances are that you’re really not. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, real SEO is not spam, and real SEO is not an attempt to trick search engines. So don’t do it!
   
• Inbound links - have you set up a massive network of sites (or social media platforms) that all link back to your site? If so, consider trimming that right down. Overkill on inbound links is the quickest (and most obvious) way to get yourself a penalty. Instead of trying to build thousand of backlinks yourself, write some decent content that people will WANT to link to.
   
• Outbound links - what sites are you linking to? If you’re linking to a site that has just received a PR penalty then it could well have filtered down to you. You need to be meticulous about only linking to high quality sites - as linking to a ‘questionable’ site can seriously damage your reputation amongst the Google spiders.
   
• Still confused? - If you still have no idea why this has happened and to your knowledge, your site is squeeky clean; review Google’s terms of use. They have some pretty detailed information as to what is and isn’t ok, and you should be able to get yourself going in the right direction.

And finally, if you’re still stuck - you’ve done everything you can think of and you still don’t know how to get out of this big hole that you’ve dug for yourself.. drop me a line in the comments and I’ll see if I can help.

This isn’t specifically internet marketing related, but it popped up on my computer today, and I laughed so much that I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity of sharing it with you.

Apparently Apple don’t have a very big budget when it comes to hiring writers.

Aluminum Keyboard Firmware Update 1.0

The Aluminum Keyboard Firmware Update will update the keyboard firmware on your aluminum Apple Keyboard.

Personally I thought the title was pretty self explanatory without having to be told that a keyboard firmware update, will update the firmware on my keyboard.

I’m so tired of spam, and I’m not talking about the kind that comes through your front door, or even the kind that comes into your email inbox every day. I am sick of internet spam that is pawned off as ‘linkbuilding SEO’.

I’ve already talked previously about how Google page rank works and yes, this is based on linking. What I also said, (but probably not clearly enough) is that links do NOT equal positions. So many people think that in order to optimise their sites, they need to go out there an sign up to every social network imaginable and spam them to hell with links back to their site. Not only does this not help with search engines, but it hinders you with traffic, as you will become known for being ‘yet another spammer’ - causing people to ignore/block you altogether.

Having links will NOT get you positions, if you are already ranking for a key phrase based on other SEO elements, then yes PR may help you that extra little bit from Google’s point of view because you are considered to be an ‘important’ site, but again this cannot be achieved through spam links.

Where’s The Pitfall?

If you are doing the SEO, then the pitfall is that it will get you nowhere, you won’t see much benefit from it in the short run, and in the long run it may get you banned from certain sites, blacklisted, or even penalised by Google themselves depending on how extreme you get. If you are paying for the SEO, then the pitfall is that you are paying for a service that a 14yr old could accomplish, dropping links into random sites, and it still isn’t helping! Link building is NOT SEO.

What is Linkbuilding Then?

Linkbuilding is just that, building links. It should be named as no more or less than acquiring links from other sites, you should not charge or pay a premium for this service as there is no skill, knowledge, or qualification required!

But Then… What is SEO?

SEO is clean code, SEO is using the correct code, SEO is key phrase research, SEO is targeting your online marketing demographics through specific pages on your site, SEO is usability for both users AND search engines, SEO is coding and designing your website how it should have always been in the first place.

SEO does not mean tricking search engines having you rank highly.

Search engines work by looking for the best sites to rank highly.

SEO means IMPROVING your site until it’s good enough to rank highly.

More from the ‘Real SEO:’ series to follow… here

This is probably the most important blog that I’ve written so far, so pay close attention. Titles are absolutely everything when it comes to both SEO and click-through traffic, both of which lead to organic traffic.. which is what we all want!

The title of your page, be that a blog or any other web page, is the key factor to your SEO effort’s and the page’s popularity.

Take my article on how to get lots of diggs,

I could have titled it

• How I was successful on Digg
• Get 3000 Diggs
• Methods for Increasing The Number of Diggs on a Submission
• Get Dugg Fast!

None of which are particularly bad titles, but none of which are particularly good either.

When deciding on a title (or anything else for that matter) its important to look at the market trends and learn from other people’s mistakes. There’s no need for trial and error when it comes to internet marketing, everything has been trialled, all you have to do is research what worked and what didn’t. Based on this we know that the most popular title elements are

• How To
• Top 10
• Top 7
• Top 5
• Learn To

So lets take a look at the Title I used and break it right down

How To: Get 3,000+ Diggs in 24 Hours

What I needed to do was appeal to my two most important markets, Google, and Social Media Website users. Google likes key words, social media users like tabloid headlines.

‘How To:‘ is the ‘category’ of the article, it describes what type of article it is, and it appeals to both of the above markets, hundreds of thousands of Google searches each month start with the words ‘how to’ because many many people use the internet primarily to figure out how to do new things. It appeals to social media traffic because of the content which follows it, ‘How To: (insert something that social media website users want)’.

The next part of the title is the actual ‘body’ of the title, it quite simply defines the subject of the article and what it’s about. ‘Get 3,000+ Diggs‘
In this element I am appealing to Google with ‘Get Diggs’ as this is a valuable search term, and to users with ‘Get a Large Number of Diggs’ which is what all Digg (and stumble) users want! Adding the plus after the number is an important consideration, I could have said ‘over 3,000′ or ‘more than 3,000′ but I didn’t want to make the title too long. (You have about 5 words with which to capture your reader’s imagination before they get bored and stop reading, harsh, but true.)

The final part of the title is the sweetener, the extra little bonus that the reader will get from your article, and the little element that makes your article different from the rest. So in my case this was ‘in 24 Hours‘. The sweetener is purely for your users, Google has no interest in this as a key phrase of any relevance. What this does is set the article apart from all the other articles about ‘getting lots of diggs’ because I’ve added that extra variable of doing it in the space of a day. This adds and element of intrigue. When writing titles, ALWAYS think to yourself - if I saw that title on Digg (or similar) would I want to click on it? If the answer is maybe or no, then you need to rework it. You’ll notice that most of the popular articles on social media sites are really provocative, suggestive, and sometimes just downright wrong. This is because people want to know what content is behind the title!

The example that I’ve used is with a blog title, but you can do the same thing with the title attributes of your website - as they are what appears in the search engine results, and again, need key phrases, and to be ‘clickable’.

A Tip For If You Get Stuck

Pick up a copy of the trashiest magazine you can find, in the UK something like Heat or Zoo magazine is perfect. (these are very cheap women’s lifestyle and celebrity gossip magazines)
Have a look at the titles of the articles, particularly the ones used on the cover - take some inspiration, and apply to your own article/page.

These magazines don’t sell because they have great content, and they don’t sell because they have a ‘limited edition’ mascara brush attached to the cover. They sell because these companies are VERY good at writing titles that people want to know more about.

You may have noticed that this article has absolutely nothing to do with ‘7′ tips for writing killer titles - I lied, but you’re still here reading, and I still presented you the information relevant to the title.

Make your titles spurious to benefit you, just keep them on topic.

Got any other great title ideas? Drop me a line in the comments!