10 Remarketing Tools For Reengaging & Winning The Conversion Ep. 538
10 Remarketing Tools For Reengaging & Winning The ConversionRemarketing can help get your brand in front of a more relevant audience. Here are 10…
Agency & Business Growth
9 Roadblocks That Could be Harming Your Google Rankings by Barrie Smith #301
Nine roadblocks harm Google rankings, including duplicate content, thin content, anchor text over-optimization, bad backlinks, non-optimized page titles, insecure sites, accidental no-indexing, poor user experience, and using a bad agency.
Key takeaways
- Duplicate or thin content triggers a Panda penalty, so write original, meaty content and fix canonicalization issues on tag-generated URLs.
- Over-optimizing anchor text looks unnatural to Google, so mix keyword anchors with click-here text, company names, and raw domain links.
- Bad backlinks trigger a Penguin penalty, so link out to relevant suppliers and research sources rather than chasing any link available.
- HTTPS is a confirmed ranking factor and adds user confidence, especially for WordPress sites and any site collecting visitor information.
- Check your robots.txt file to make sure your site is not accidentally blocking Google from indexing your content.
search ranking can only get you so far. If your user experience is bad, it doesn't matter how many visitors your site gets.
About this episode
Join as today as your hosts Chris and Charles talk about an article by Barrie Smith where he highlighted nine roadblocks that could be holding your website back from ranking success. Don't miss this!
Questions this episode answers
What is the Panda penalty in SEO?
The Panda penalty is applied by Google to sites with duplicate, thin, spun, or irrelevant content. The episode explains it is triggered when content is not original, not useful, or copied from elsewhere, and it prevents the site from ranking well in search results.
Does site security affect Google rankings?
Yes. The episode states Google announced that site security is a ranking factor, with HTTPS sites receiving a ranking benefit. A secure server also builds user confidence and adds a layer of protection, especially for WordPress sites that make up about 20 percent of all websites.
How can a site accidentally get no-indexed?
A robots.txt file can be configured to tell Google to ignore an entire site. The episode describes a real client whose site was fully disallowed in their robots file, meaning no SEO work would ever produce results until that file was corrected.
In their words
Google proactively penalizes sites which don't have original content.
Host
Google changed the algorithm to actively penalize anyone who over-optimized their anchor text.
Host
Terms defined in this episode
- Panda penalty
- A Google algorithm penalty targeting sites with duplicate, thin, spun, or irrelevant content that provides poor user value.
- Penguin penalty
- A Google algorithm penalty that targets manipulative link profiles, including paid links, link swapping, and link spamming.
- Anchor text over-optimization
- Using keyword-rich anchor text excessively in links, which Google now penalizes as unnatural; a healthy link profile mixes keywords with brand names, domain names, and generic text like click here.
- Robots.txt
- A file on a website that instructs search engine crawlers which pages or folders to index or ignore; misconfiguring it can accidentally block an entire site from Google.
Full transcript is being added.
This episode answers
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
Related episodes
Building An SEO Business Case Your Boss Can’t Say No To Ep. 536
Building An SEO Business Case Your Boss Can’t Say No ToSome stakeholders struggle to see the value of adding SEO to your marketing mix. Use this…
Agency & Business Growth
4 Key Areas Of International SEO Focus For Entering A New Market Ep. 535
4 Key Areas Of International SEO Focus For Entering A New MarketGoing global? Don't miss out on these 4 important opportunities to set your brand up…
Agency & Business Growth
3 Ways To Optimize Internal Linking Ep. 534
3 Ways To Optimize Internal LinkingPoor internal link structure can end up harming your site's rankings. At SMX Next, Jonathan Epstein showed how…
Agency & Business Growth
The show explains it. EWR Digital does it.
The Best SEO Podcast breaks down SEO and AI search; EWR Digital, the agency behind the show, implements it for operators. Start with a free, no-pitch audit of where you stand in Google and in AI answers.
Get a free AI visibility audit