In Part 1, we listed 5 reasons why Google could down-list your medical website.
Now, to finish up the series, here are seven additional things to avoid doing with your site if you want to make Page 1:
- Website technical problems
Technical issues within a website that prevent Google’s robots from indexing properly could cause Google to see your website as unreliable and down-list it as a result. Technical issues include bad links or images that don’t load correctly.
- Stuffing keywords
While keywords are very important for the success of a website, filling your content with an overabundance of keywords can have a negative effect. Past developers have been caught cluttering keywords on a page or cloaking to hide keywords from visitors.
- Following poor guidelines for search engines
In general, search engines have a reference guide explaining required usage guidelines. Google’s Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) is free. Failing to follow these rules can result in down-listing.
- Having doorway pages
Doorway pages are multiple home pages created for different users or additional versions of a website: one for users and another for robots.
- Having duplicate content
Ensure that all of the content you upload to your site is original not copied directly from another source. You must rewrite passages to avoid plagiarism. Additionally, this unique content should not appear elsewhere on your webpage. There are free tools available to search your page for duplicate content.
- Making use of a host that was blacklisted
This is unusual today; however, there are always people who use a friend to help them get their website together. However, this can lead to unwanted results.
- Astroturfing
This is the process of creating fake online comments in order to make yourself look better to readers. Most sites have tools in place to source out these fake reviews.