You may not realize the impact the following items have on your search
engine ranking but they are worth considering when developing a plan
for your website.
While Google provides a whole host of great tools,
their motivation may be more selfish than you believe. Google uses the
information they gather in these tools to make determinations about
websites.
The information they gather may impact the ranking of your
website in organic searches for important keyword phrases.
1. Low Traffic
Google collects a vast amount of information using the Google Toolbar,
Analytics, Google Search and now Google Chrome. Google can track
click-throughs, and the amount of time a visitor remains on a website.
If the website is not sticky, meaning that visitors do not stay on the
web site for any length of time, or does not attract visitors Google
may view the website as being insignificant or less important than a
competing website that attracts similar website visitors.
2. Low Value Links
The proverb "you are who you hang with" can be attributed to search
engine linking. If you consistently link to what Google perceives as
low-quality websites, your website may be perceived to be of the same
ilk, and Google may devalue your website based on the linking scheme
you use.
3. Incoming Links not Trusted
A website that has a large number of incoming links from websites that
are not considered trusted sources by Google, could impact your search
ranking. Incoming links have long been known to be a component in
organic search ranking, it was previously believed the more links the
better. What may now be true is that web sites may be penalized for
links from untrusted sources.
4. Unreliable Hosting
If Google is frequently unable to access your website when they attempt
to spider it, they will perceive that the website is unreliable and may
devalue its importance in their algorithm.
5. Spam Techniques
Using techniques that are widely known to be considered "black hat" or
"spammy" like keyword stuffing, or cloaking pages may cause your
website to be penalized by Google as well as other search engines.
6. Duplicate Titles
Avoid using duplicate titles and meta tags on all web pages within your
website. Google prefers unique titles and descriptions on all pages
within a website.
7. Unnatural Links
The links coming into your website should vary. If you have an
unnatural linking structure where the same term is always used to link
to your website, it will appear to Google that you have attempted to
"game" the system and as a result your site could find itself
penalized.
It is safe to assume that Google in its infinite wisdom evaluates the
historical performance of a website and considers the information they
collect when assessing the importance of any website.