3 “Get Traffic Quick” Methods to Avoid – or Your Website Will Suffer

The most important feature a website can have is visibility.

Unfortunately, a lot of website owners take a “get traffic quick” perspective when it comes to gaining visibility, though, thinking that taking shortcuts will help a website rise in search engine rankings.

That isn't true, however; in fact, you can be penalized heavily for these schemes after the Google Panda Update and Google Penguin Update.

Three “get traffic quick” schemes commonly used are duplicating content, using poor backlinking strategies, and using poor website architecture for reduced web crawlability. As we'll explain, a lot of money is wasted on these strategies – and if Google catches you, you'll be penalized.

The Google Panda Update and Duplicate Content

One of the most frequent ways websites try to “get traffic quick” is through duplicating content.

This means one of two things:

1. The website copies other peoples' content and puts it on their own pages;
2. The website puts multiple copies of an article, page, post, etc. on multiple places online.

Both are bad. Google sought to penalize this practice with its Google Panda Update, launched in February 2011.

The Google Panda Update mostly targeted duplicate content. It changed the search engine algorithm that sought out and downgraded websites that featured an excessive amount of duplicate content. As many as 12% of websites after the update experienced a massive loss of traffic.

After the Google Panda Update, the “get traffic quick” method of finding content and copying it, or just submitting the same content to a wide variety of destinations online, became costly for website owners.

Now, if you use duplicate content, your visibility will suffer.

The Google Penguin Update and Backlinking Strategies

Another “get traffic quick” method is improperly backlinking to your site.

One metric Google uses is determining how many people think your website is useful and relevant. They crawl the internet to see how many people link to your website and see value in your content.

Website owners cheat the system by creating dozens, even hundreds, of low-quality backlinks to their site from other sites. One common way is to buy them – pay a website to create links that go to your pages. You can also submit articles to websites that are “article directories” but provide no real value.

To counter this, Google launched the Google Penguin Update to its algorithms. The Google Penguin Update took direct aim at low-quality backlinking strategies by penalizing websites that took advantage of these backlinking affiliates. As a result, many websites took a traffic hit after the Google Penguin Update.

Bad links are any links that are paid, or aren't connected or relevant to the topic a website represents, or are automated. Google hates them, and so should you.

Bad Site Architecture and Web Crawlability

Finally, another “get traffic quick” scheme is making your website architecture sub-optimal – or, even worse, cheating.

It all relates to web crawlability. This refers to how easy it is for Google's search engine to crawl your website, or go through its pages and see what's there. When it does this, it creates connections between your pages so it can see where everything is – and so can visitors.

Some website owners create tons of links on their website to other pages within their website. This is an attempt to make Google think your website – or a particular page – is more popular and authoritative than it is.

Add to other common bad architecture problems – like not having a sitemap file, having a page all by itself, not making it easy to navigate – and web crawlability suffers.

Avoid the Penalty: Optimize the Right Way

To avoid problems with the Google Panda Update or Google Penguin Update, and to enhance web crawlability, focus on what works. This includes creating unique, original, and compelling content; getting high-quality backlinks the natural way by having reputable websites host unique content; and creating website architecture that is SEO-ready and easy to navigate for Google and users alike.

EntrepreneurWeb.com can help you take advantage of what works – and avoid costly penalties from what doesn't. Learn more; contact us today for the next step.