A Brief Guide to Google Blacklist: How to Get In and Off

One of the things that make Google effective is the fact that it’s packed full of resources that identify and flag off websites that have potentially malicious content – this is commonly known as “blacklisting.’ After getting such a notification, it is unlikely that a user will continue using your website.

Reasons Why Your Website Can Be Blacklisted

There are certain reasons why your website can get blacklisted by Google. These must be avoided if you want to grow your business without any fears that visitors may not get to your site:

Weak Security

Google will blacklist a website if it poses a security threat to its users. For instance, it is important to keep themes, versions and plugins on a WordPress site updated. Any installations that have not been updated for a long time are a potential threat to security and create loopholes for hackers to attack. Handy security plugins can be installed to carry out daily scans and block attacks.

Sending Links to Spam Sites

When there are many links from your site leading to poor quality sites, that is a good reason for Google to blacklist your site. In fact, this may cause it to drop down the google search rankings significantly.

Receiving Links from Spammy Sites

This can be difficult to control because you cannot restrict who links back to your site. However, Google will still flag sites that have many incoming links from spammy sites because the internet gets littered with vague SEO companies whose linking practices are misleading.

Selling Links from your Site or Buying them to Your Site

Google may not easily detect this but both selling and buying of links don’t work in the online circles. Once identified, they are considered as spam because there is no value addition to users online.

Posting Junk and Duplicate Content

Poorly written content is harmful to your users and is a trigger for search engines to flag off your site. You will get blacklisted for producing junk content.

Keyword-Stuffed Content

Too many keywords tell Google you are trying to use shortcuts to get ranked highly without adding any value. This is one of the dangers of keyword stuffing, especially when it is repetitive.

How to Get Off the Blacklist

If for any reason, your site gets blacklisted by Google, there is a way to fix the problem –but it will take time and more than a little effort. Here is how to proceed:

Enhance the Security of Your Site

The first move is to make sure that your site is well protected –this way you can be sure that the site won’t get attacked in the process of establishing a way out of the blacklist. Make sure that your site gets frequent updates and that all the security plugins are installed. Use complex passwords and have your servers and backup for your PCs protected.

Get Rid of Bad Content

Once the security measures have been put in place, embark on cleaning out the bad from your website. Get rid of any links coming in and going out that are spammy. If you don’t know how to proceed with this, it’s important to use the services of a professional to fix an SEO disaster and other issues.

Every user with access to the website should be scanned once you are offline and working on your site. All passwords should be changed as well and all new and unrecognized users removed. Use Google Webmaster Tools to help you sort out this mess.

Notify Google After the CleanUP

Once everything on your website is sorted, inform Google that you have done that with the goal of keeping site visitors safe. Google Webmaster Tools should be able to guide you to select the site that is affected via the security issues tab to fiund out the details of the blacklisted site. This is where you “Request a Review Link” to send Google a message about your website being fixed.

Conclusion

You obviously do not want to be blacklisted by Google but to remain in the searches, you must adhere to these rules and regulations even with your keyword SEO practices. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, your site will get blacklisted for failing to meet these basic requirements. However, there is a way to get out of the mess as explained here should you find yourself there.

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 ** About the Author: Amber Wilson is an educator and a technical writer from Everett currently employed as a content strategist at ThesisRush. She believes that blogging is the new type of journalism.