The Beginner’s Guide to Creating an SEO-Friendly Website

Search engine optimisation has always represented the backbone of the e-commerce community. While the techniques have changed over time, the intention remains the same. SEO is meant to enhance the end-user experience while simultaneously enabling a website to rank prominently within a search engine results page (SERP).

Still, some may have more difficulty grasping the finer points than others. As opposed to throwing in the proverbial towel, it is much better to clarify the basics so that you can avoid common mistakes that could cost time as well as money. Let’s examine some key takeaway points.

Choosing the Best Website Hosting Service

Although shared hosting platforms are common, these are sometimes associated with drawbacks such as relatively poor security protocols, and a lack of virtual storage space. The best way to avert these issues is to select a virtual private service (VPS). For example, the VPS hosting from IONOS supports unlimited traffic, and speeds as high as 1 gigabyte per second. Note that 24/7 expert support is always on hand in the event that a problem happens to arise.

Avoid Black-Hat SEO Techniques

The term “black hat” is used to describe a handful of strategies intended to provide a website with an unfair SEO edge. Examples include keyword stuffing, cloaking, and duplicate text. However, these practices will often come at a price in terms of potential Google penalties. It is much better to adhere to well-established practices. Not only will this help to improve your search engine rankings, but a more transparent website is always looked upon favourably by the average visitor.

Use the Tools at Your Disposal

There is no need to “go it alone” when creating a sound SEO campaign from scratch. Most experts recommend leveraging the numerous utilities found across the vast expanse of the Internet. For example, Google provides plenty of helpful SEO plugins that can be directly embedded within your browser. Another powerful utility comes in the form of Google Analytics. This package will help you appreciate whether or not your ongoing efforts are paying off. You can then make the appropriate changes when the time is right.

The Power of Linking

Inbound and outbound links should represent yet another facet of any well-planned SEO strategy. These links serve two purposes:

• They provide an easy means for visitors to find what it is that they happen to be looking for.
• Quality links help to boost your SEO clout; resulting in higher search engine rankings.

However, note that the term “quality” was mentioned above. Avoid spurious and/or blind links (such as redirects to an entirely irrelevant third-party website). These can actually harm your SEO campaign, and possible lead to reduced rankings.

Search engine optimisation is a constantly evolving concept. Rules change from time to time, and it pays to keep up to date with the latest protocols. Although much of this work will occur behind the scenes, there is little doubt that the end results are well worth the effort that you have put forth.

Surviving the Storm: A Step-by-Step Guide to Google Penalty Recovery

Understanding Google Penalties

Google penalties can be a real nightmare for website owners and SEO professionals – these penalties, often resulting from perceived violations of Google’s guidelines, can lead to a significant drop in rankings or even complete removal from search results; understanding the nature and cause of these penalties is essential for recovery. This guide explores the world of Google penalties, demystifies the recovery process, and highlights the importance of preventive measures and the role of Google penalty recovery experts.

How to Identify a Google Penalty

Manual Actions

Manual actions occur when Google’s staff manually review a website and find that it violates its guidelines; this could be due to suspicious backlink patterns or misleading content.

A notification within Google Search Console usually signals this penalty, requiring immediate attention.

Algorithmic Penalties

Algorithmic penalties are automated and often more challenging to identify; they result from updates to Google’s algorithms and can severely affect a site’s ranking without any clear warning.

Careful analysis of traffic patterns, ranking changes, and alignment with known algorithm updates is vital to recognise these penalties.

Types of Google Penalties and Their Causes

Thin Content

Thin content refers to shallow or low-quality content that doesn’t provide value to users; whether it’s a lack of depth or duplication across multiple pages, Google aims to penalise sites with such content to enhance UX.

Unnatural Links

Unnatural links that manipulate a site’s ranking are viewed as attempts to deceive Google’s algorithms; creating or buying these links may lead to a penalty, hampering the site’s performance.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing, or the excessive use of keywords to manipulate rankings, harms the user experience; this outdated tactic can lead to penalties, as it disrupts the natural flow of content.

The Process of Google Penalty Recovery

Assessing the Damage

Assessing the damage means understanding the scope and nature of the impact; this involves a comprehensive analysis of traffic drops, ranking changes, and identifying corresponding manual actions or algorithm updates.

Identifying the Penalty Type

Proper identification of the penalty type, whether manual or algorithmic, is crucial for a recovery plan.

Understanding the specific nature of the penalty provides a roadmap for effective SEO penalty removal.

Developing a Recovery Plan

A well-defined recovery plan is essential; this plan must align with Google’s guidelines and address the specific causes of the penalty. Collaborating with UniK SEO’s team of specialists in Google penalty removal can accelerate the recovery process, considering this is one of our areas of expertise.

Monitoring and Reporting Progress

Once you have identified the penalty and developed a recovery plan, ongoing monitoring and reporting become critical; engaging with our professional SEO penalty removal services often includes access to detailed progress tracking:

Monitoring Stage

Regularly check the website’s analytics to gauge the effect of implemented changes; pay attention to the site’s rankings, organic traffic, and user engagement metrics to see if they are moving in the desired direction.

Reporting Stage

Keep clients informed through periodic reporting, summarising key activities and progress. Clear and concise communication helps align expectations and foster collaboration among team members involved in the recovery process.

By keeping a close eye on progress and effectively communicating the status of recovery, you increase the likelihood of success and make necessary adjustments more promptly.

This step demonstrates that recovery is not just about fixing issues but managing them strategically toward full restoration.

Practical Steps for Common Penalties

Dealing with Link Penalties

Link penalties require a thorough audit of the site’s backlink profile; removing or disavowing harmful links is a must. You should, therefore, consider seeking UniK SEO’s professional Google penalty removal services for this intricate task, as improper handling may worsen the situation.

Overcoming Content Penalties

Addressing content penalties requires a content audit; improving quality, eliminating duplicate content, and ensuring that it adds genuine value to the readers is the path to recovery.

So, How Do You Stay Ahead of Google Penalties?

Recovering from a Google penalty is no small feat – it requires a detailed understanding, a methodical approach to recovery, and often professional intervention.

By staying informed about Google’s guidelines and continuously monitoring site performance, future penalties can be avoided.

Utilising UniK SEO’s professional Google penalty recovery services ensures an effective and aligned recovery process.

The goal is not merely to recover but to emerge stronger, with a website that is both user-friendly and compliant with Google’s ever-evolving standards.

This guide underscores the importance of proactive measures and vigilance – Google penalties can be a roadblock, but with the right approach, they can also be an opportunity to improve and thrive.

Get in touch and share your experience with us, so we can help you overcome this issue seamlessly.

The APPM (Associação Portuguesa dos Profissionais de Marketing, or Portuguese Association for Marketing Professionals) is an organisation that represents marketing professionals in Portugal. 

With about two hundred members, the APPM recognises the best marketers and focuses on six main areas:

• Community: Build up a community of experts that are specialised in offline and online marketing
• Education: Offer webinars and trainings for those who want to learn new things and keep up-to-speed with new technologies
• Skills: Help each other to develop new skills and focus on career development
• Career: Network with fellow marketers and share new job offers
• Conferences: Organise conferences on topics of interest to bring the community together
• Certification: Get certified on digital and traditional marketing with the help of the APPM.

Membership to the APPM is open to students, professionals and companies, to make sure everybody feels welcome and can get the most out of it.

This way, there is a huge diversity of profiles to enrich debates and meet new people. It is with great pleasure that UniK SEO became a member of the association this year.

We believe we can share our SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), SEA (Search Engine Advertising) and content copywriting expertise, and learn about best practices from fellow professionals. We will aim to help the community grow as well as learn new ways of working from others.

In order to give to the community as soon as possible, we are already offering a SEO Webinar on the 7^th of June 2023. This will be an opportunity for our Co-Founder and Head of SEO, Greg Lacan, to share his extensive knowledge on SEO.

Greg is currently leading our team of SEO experts and helps delivering solutions that meets customer’s needs. He knows very well how Google algorithm works and he can put together customised SEO strategy for customers, based on technical SEO, on-page and link building.

The conference will be focused on how internationalising a business through SEO. In order to penetrate new markets and appear on the first results on Google, it is not enough to just translate a website.

You need to make a full keyword audit in the local language as well as think about your site structure and content optimisation. Greg will share some tips and a to-do list in order to successfully launch a business in a new market.

These are the topics that will be covered:

• Analyse market volume and competition to select the best possible market
• Choose the best structure for your website to target new countries
• Develop a detailed keyword audit focused on your niche
• Implement hreflang tags to target local languages
• Translate and optimise content to boost your rankings.

You can subscribe to the event here: SEO Webinar “Como internacionalizar o seu negócio através do SEO”

We are looking forward to this new partnership with the APPM. We will be attending upcoming events this year and we are eager to participate to new webinars soon.

This is a great opportunity for us to get more visibility as well as for our team to skill up and network with like-minded professionals.