Even after massive efforts to improve your online game on Google, you are still languishing in the latter pages of the results pages. Your SEO efforts are not paying off! You spend hours creating content and building links but you are not seeing any improvement in terms of traffic to your page. Because you believe that you are doing the right thing always, you can’t help but thinking to yourself that Google hates me! Otherwise why are you not doing as well? You keep beating yourself but you never quite find answers to the why Google hates me question. So, is it true that Google hates you? If so, what can you do to woo your way into Google’s heart?
Google does not know you and never will so you don’t need to panic, Google will however know your work and will hate it if it’s whack! Sorry about the strong language but that’s how it is. Google will readily reject anything that does not impress it. Just like trying to woo a girl, you need to do things that will impress Google if you are to get any form of love from the search engine. Today, we want to help you find out why Google seems to hate you and your efforts. To do so, we had to talk to a professional SEO expert who once felt the same way but managed to work himself into the loving arms of Google. Tony Guo is a long time Google partner and SEO experts who has an immense understanding of Google and its fundamentals. We talked to him about the feeling of Google hating you and he confirmed that Google hates no one. He however mentioned that there are a few reasons why Google might behave in a manner likely to suggest that you are on its hate list. Here are few reasons why this might happen and expert opinion on what to do when in such a situation;
You might be invisible to Google
Sounds funny but is very possible. There is a possibility that Google is not even seeing and indexing your page. This will mean that all the contents and your efforts to help your page rank will be futile. The exact reasons why this happens has not been fully established but here is what you should in case this happens to you.
Visit Googel.Com and type in site:yourdomain.com in the search bar and this will bring up a list of all the pages from your site that Google has indexed. If the number does not add up, then you need to contact them and find out why some pages are left out.
You engaged in prohibited activities
The other reason why your site could be undergoing stunted development is because you have a Google penalty without your knowledge. If you engaged in prohibited activities that are against the Google code of conduct, you will get a penalty and this will affect your site’s performance and ranking.
Through the Webmaster Tools click on the Search Traffic and then look out for any Manual Actions. If you have any penalty listed there, you will have to follow the steps outlined in fixing the penalty.
Too many pages indexed
Sometimes when you have too many pages indexed by Google, it might affect your ranking. Some plug-ins result in replicated pages and pages with no content creating themselves and end up getting indexed by Google. Hacking also contributes to unwanted indexing.
Do the site:yourdomain.com search as earlier mentioned and find out the number of indexed pages. If your page was hacked without your information, then contact Google immediately. Equally if you have a plug in that could be duplicating pages on your site, disable it immediately.
Plagiarised content
If you normally copy content and duplicate it on your website, then expect no love at all from Google. Google will clamp down such duplicate content and drop your rankings. They might even penalize you.
To find out whether you have plagiarised content use Copyscape and it will tell you if another copy of your content exists on the internet. Always ensure that you create unique and original content if you are to stay safe.
Unnatural backlinks
Some people pay people to backlink to their content. Google is able to detect such unnatural backlinks because they often come from irrelevant sources and come in large numbers. They will send you a warning and eventually penalize you.
Be authentic and natural always. Backlinks should be legitimate. Always create good quality content and the backlinks will come on their own and your ranking will naturally improve.
Bad user experience
If people have very bad experiences using your website, then trust me your ranking will go down rapidly. Slow loading pages, pages that are not mobile friendly and poorly designed websites are some of the reasons why users have terrible experiences which result in poor ranking. You can see whether Google has given your website a mobile-friendly label by taking the mobile-friendly test at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
There are very many other factors like poor quality content and content that is too old that affect the way Google deems your work. The above mentioned reasons are the most common reasons why most people find it hard to perform well in Google. Apply the suggested tips and you will start feeling the love from Google.