Did you know that Google can detect spammers and low-quality websites with shocking accuracy? Even if you’re not a spammer, Google can still recognize low-quality content. They do this because they want to give the best possible results to their users.
So, what’s the effect of Google’s spam detection algorithms on your SEO? Is it worth taking any action to mitigate the effects?
If you’re not sure, keep reading. This article discusses the pros and cons of dealing with Google’s spam-detection algorithms and what you can do to optimize your site for a successful SEO campaign.
Google’s quality guidelines
Generally speaking, if your website meets Google’s quality guidelines, you will have an easier time receiving quality traffic from Google. This means that your site has to adhere to certain content standards and be written in a way that Google’s bots can easily read and understand.
For example, your website’s content should adhere to a certain level of quality, SEO practices, and it should not contain any spammy techniques.
Google also highly discourages using techniques commonly associated with spam or low-quality content. These include manipulative keywords, cloaking, hidden text, and too many ads.
Spam is any content that could send users to a website other than what you intended. This can take many forms, from “fake” or “manipulative” keywords to cloaking and the use of misleading or deceptive text.
Unfortunately, having a “spam” problem on your website is common, and it has one reason behind it: Google’s spam detection algorithm.
What is Google’s SpamBrain?
Google has many different algorithms and methods to to rank documents or detect spam, and gives them various names like Google Penguin, Google Panda, Rank Brain and also SpamBrain in the Web Spam report for 2021.
Image source: Google.com
Google’s spam-detection algorithm is designed to identify spam and low-quality websites with high accuracy. The algorithms “learn” from your website, and it improves over time. If it finds that your site is still spammy, it’ll continue to punish you.
The best thing you can do to avoid getting caught in this algorithm is to ensure that your site adheres to Google’s guidelines.
Google states
“Links still help us discover and rank results in meaningful ways, and we made a lot of progress in 2021 to protect this core signal. We launched a link spam update to broadly identify unnatural links and prevent them from affecting search quality”
But some SEOs call it “business as usual” if you build your links right.
In most cases, nothing changed at all. If you build links smart.
The main problem with links are: index, anchors and dynamics.— Victor Karpenko (@karpenkotop) April 22, 2022
Aaron Wall of SEObook considers the successful SEOs the 99% that are successful not affected by SpamBrain.
we are the 99% 😀https://t.co/wwt158gqqZ
“SpamBrain’s ability to identify disruptive and malicious behaviors among billions of web pages has allowed us to keep more than 99% of searches spam-free.”— aaron (@aaronwall) April 21, 2022
Paul Madden’s from Opphive, Ex-Kerboo has the opinion that Google is not quite as joined up on fighting spam, as they portray it, yet.
The SpamBrain stuff is interesting but appears to be focussed on preventing spam appearing in serps rather than preventing its ability to impact offpage signals to other sites… FEIW my opinion is that they’re not quite as joined up on that as they portray yet— Paul Madden (@PaulDavidMadden) April 21, 2022
What is Google’s Spam Detection Algorithm?
The algorithm that powers Google’s spam-detection functionality is a technique called “machine learning”. The algorithm “learns” by comparing your website to other spammy sites. It then gets better over time.
This is a good thing for you as an SEO because the algorithm is improving over time. This means that you can make adjustments to your site to ensure that it meets Google’s guidelines, and you don’t have to worry about getting punished by the algorithm.
Google’s algorithmic updates
Google is constantly updating its spam-detection algorithms to make sure that it’s getting the best possible results. This means that your SEO strategy should also be kept in mind.
There are three factors that Google considers when updating its spam-detection algorithm:
The amount of spam on the internet – The more spam on the web, the more likely that it’ll be detected.
The level of quality on your website – The more high-quality content on your website, the less likely that it’ll be detected as spam.
How your website is written – Google says that “websites that use lots of cloaking techniques, manipulative keywords, and hidden text will be detected as spam at a higher rate.”
SEO Strategies to cope with Google’s Spam Detection
The good news is that, unlike other SEO factors that you have no control over, this one you can actually do something about.
The key is to make sure that your site stays compliant with Google’s guidelines, while also making sure that you’re providing high-quality content.
This will be extremely important when it comes to the next step: optimizing your content for better rankings.
What to do when you get a Manual Action by Google
If you’re unfortunate enough to get a manual action by Google, don’t panic! The worst thing that you can do is to make changes to your site that could get you punished by the algorithm.
The best thing you can do is to contact an experienced SEO that can help you get back on your feet.
Conclusion
Google’s spam-detection algorithm is designed to find and remove low-quality websites from the search results. It flags websites that use manipulative keywords, cloaking, hidden text, and too many ads.
If your website fails to adhere to Google’s quality guidelines, you’ll receive a high number of these manual actions.
This can be a severe issue for your SEO campaign, so you must keep it in mind. The good news is that you can mitigate the effects of this algorithm by ensuring that your site is compliant with Google’s guidelines while also ensuring that you’re providing high-quality content.
