Cleanliness is next to godliness (or so we’re told) and this goes double for SEO. In many cases it turns out that your website isn’t performing as well as it could be even though everything seems fine at the first glance. It’s like you’re looking at your bedroom, and it seems spotless, but your house dust allergies start reminding you of their existence every time you enter (hint: it’s the mattress; most dust mites live in the mattress and trigger your allergies). It’s the same with your website. Everything may seem fine, but at the end of the day a few bad links are enough for a Google penalty, and Google love their penalties.
The first thing you need to check is low quality links to your site. Google can’t know if that’s your master plan to get to the number one spot for your search terms, or someone is linking to you from a low-quality site for a malicious (or other reason) so they do the safe thing and penalize you. We’re not saying the system is always fair – it’s just how it works. In order to avoid that, make sure that all the links to your website are legit. Use the Disavow tool and disavow any links that you deem low-quality, malicious, or simply don’t like.
Another thing you should look at are pages that are actually performing poorly. This can be caused by poor content, clunky website design, or voodoo magic – whatever the case, figure out the reason and fix it. Make sure that all pages are loading and that the URLs are in order. Sometimes due to URL changes you get an error 404 on a perfectly awesome page. This is not minor stuff, so don’t ignore.
NXTFactor offers excellent SEO and digital marketing services for your business. We’re always at your disposal. Happy holidays!