SEO Penalty by Google – BLOOP - "Backlink Over Optimization Penalty"

Some SEO experts believe that building too many links within a short span of time and which is based on a similar anchor text can caused the website to be red flagged by Google since it may give the impression that the those links have been acquired abnormally by using automated scripts or link building software.
This may result in the Google BLOOP or the “Backlink Over Optimization Penalty”. It is caused by the some inexperienced and so called expert over optimizing the website.  The over optimization may result in Google penalizing the website and its rankings as it frowns on such illegal activities.

Some of these activities which may cause a red flag include:

1. Building too many links in a very short time which may be categorized as excessive link building by Google. Google frowns on artificially pushing the website rankings and aggressive link campaign may cause more harm than good. Let’s say a site has been getting 10 to 15 links in a day and all of a sudden it rises to 1000 links. This will look unnatural and is not recommended.
2. If you are using similar anchor text in all of the links, then it may cause a penalty as well. This gives the impression of spam and is not recommended.
3. If you are using the same IP or related IP addresses for the SEO campaign, then Google will catch it and penalize the site.

Google likes natural SEO and some of the penalties that may arise due to BLOOP are:

1. The 30 penalty – This affects the whole domain
2. The 950 penalty – This affects only some URLS and only some particular keywords.
3. Index Exclusion or Complete ban – If the website has violated the quality guidelines and is using black hat techniques’ in the campaign, then a complete ban may be enforced by Google. Google stops indexing the website and it is excluded from  the search engine result pages

How Do You Avoid the Penalties?
You should take care of these things to avoid the penalties:

1. Try building links naturally without any blips. Content and natural linking is the key.
2. Avoid keyword stuffing in the page title, description, alt tags and in the page content.
3. Don’t use links farms and shady linking practices.
4. Never use cloaking and doorway pages.

The key focus for your website should be the user and not the search engine and the strategy should be geared towards that goal.

 
 

Google Page Rank bar is not working in Mozilla these days: Is it the end of PR era?

Did you remember when last you have checked Google Page Rank of your site? Is it since last week, last month or you have just tried yesterday? When exactly?

Why am I saying this to Firefox users? Is it because there is another PR update from Google? Or, this time Google has something special to gift webmasters?

What is in news?  I don’t know if you have noticed it yet. But it’s worth mentioning.

PR is not visible these days in Firefox:

We are not able to visualize Page Rank of a site in Firefox. Yes, none of the Firefox addons (Example: For Mozilla I used Search Status, SEO Toolbar, WebRank Toolbar) are showing current PR of a website. It is simply showing Not Ranked and in few cases PR 0.

What I experienced?

I tested the Firefox addons against many sites of my knowledge that had PR 2, PR 3 even PR 4 earlier (checked a week back, also I have the records of their PR history). Now that progressing green bar has wiped out from the tool and showing blank. This is really something different out of the blue. I believe most internet users are using Firefox as  default browser. The percentage should be more than IE and Chrome users.

I am sure this has left many like you and me  in real fix. Especially SEO professionals who are supposed to send differential rates to their clients based on PR value and those link-building partners who bait for PR gain and PR loss during link exchange.

I don’t know if others like me have come across similar observations. But a good number of people around me kept on saying this for last few days. Since I am associated with SEO stuffs my friends and colleagues have figured out this much before. Of course, for non-SEO guys this may not be stunning news. For users there is no win no loss.

I also tried popular online Page Rank checker and bulk page Rank checker to know if I am sure on my point. Unfortunately these help tools are also not working.

For long hours I continued researching if there is any official news from Google about PR visibility and all. But couldn’t find any. I was also waiting for someone to raise this issue and take coverage on what exactly is happening.

Questions raised in my mind:

1. I wanted to figure out why these page rank bars are not working whereas rest other addon features in Firefox are perfectly OK.

2. Is it something modified/ regulated by Google itself or it is an error with the addon itself?

3. Could it be a browser issue? Thanks to Chrome. It does not have such addon problems for Page Rank (as per my knowledge). Page Rank Status (Chrome’s addon) is working fine at the moment.

4. How long this hide and seek game will continue? When we will be updated about new rules of Page Rank checking if any?

5. Was it intended by Google much earlier than we came to know recently? I came know that Google is going to make some definite changes in its current line of product end of this year. Is this one among them? Really, it is confusing.

6. Finally, is it denoting the end of PR era? Today Mozilla Firefox is debarred from the service. Tomorrow it can happen with Chrome also. What if none of us could see green signal in PR bar in coming days?

7. Is it a Google’s new policy to catch more Chrome users? Or, it is the first step towards avoiding PR concept ? May be Google does not like Firefox users to take the benefit PR checker. After all it is a competition to become a domain leader in Browser’s market. Google has its own product Chrome in place. Why should it give a space to Mozilla then?  Have you though in this way?

8. What will happen to webmasters who survive on PR trade? What will happen to those advertisers and media agencies who buy links after verifying PR of site? How bloggers will earn bread and butter if a chunk of Firefox users are deprived from PR business?

There are a series of questions that are yet to land up. Did you bring it to your notice yet?