De-Indexed by GoogleHas Your Website Been De-Indexed by Google?

There are a whole host of reasons why your website isn’t ranking on Google SERPs. Maybe it’s because your website just isn’t as good as your competitors and there’s some SEO improvements you can do – but it can also be because you’ve been de-indexed by Google.

Whilst standard SEO practises might seem simple – actually seeing results can be more challenging than expected. There’re competitors to think about, intricate algorithms and influences like engagement, traffic and oldness.

Have You Been De-indexed by Google?

One day you’re getting relevant website traffic and you’re ranking highly on SERPS. And the next, your website seems to have gone completely off the radar no matter how you try to find it.

Or perhaps you’ve always struggled to find your website from its launch.

This is called being de-indexed by Google – where your pages pretty much vanish in the blink of an eye.

Why Websites Get De-Indexed by Google

We’ve put together the common reasons why websites get de-indexed by Google and how you can resolve the problem.

1. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a sneaky SEO tactic that involves cramming keywords into web pages to better a website’s ranking on Google.

Whilst websites who stuff their content with keywords might see better rankings – it won’t last for a long time. At some point Google will notice and your site will be heavily penalised.

Styles of keyword stuffing include:

The use of irrelevant keywords

For example, your website is about hair-dressing but you feature random keywords about restaurants to get more website traffic

Keyword repetitionDe-Indexed by Google

Repeatedly using the same keyword when it really isn’t necessary. For example, “We are a restaurant in Manchester. In our restaurant in Manchester, we offer Indian cuisine. Our restaurant in Manchester boasts a contemporary setting and excellent cocktails. If you’re thinking about a restaurant in Manchester, then come to visit us!”

Keyword repetition is a tricky one – because of course you want to include keywords wherever possible – but there’s a line you shouldn’t cross.

Hidden text

Is a sly tactic where keywords are placed in websites, but the font matches the website’s background or it’s far too small to read.

Whilst your website visitors might not notice your deviousness – Google certainly will.

You’ll find our blog posts useful:

2. User-generated Spam

The use of techniques that violate Google’s guidelines might cause them to de-index your website.

If you have spammy accounts on free hosts, spammy posts on forum threads or comment spam on blogs, then you’re polluting Google’s search results and they penalise you for it.

Google have some tips to prevent abuse on your website’s public areas, check it out here.

3. ‘Free Hosting’

Don’t be fooled by the phatic promise of ‘free hosting’. Because there’s no such thing.

Instead of a free service, you’ll actually get spammy ads and a rubbish service. Free hosting is usually so bad that you’ll wish you’d have paid for it in the first place.

You need an SEO friendly hosting service – like ours!

Contact us to see what we can do for you.

De-Indexed by Google4. Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is when the copy is in more than one place on the internet.

Website owners don’t always create duplicate content on purpose. It’s not always something to worry about, Google say …

“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. When search engines run across duplicate content, they’ll try to rank the most authoritative version.”

Google have a few good suggestions to fix duplicate content issues.

5. Bad Links

Link building is an excellent SEO strategy, but only if it’s done properly.

It impacts website authority – the more links directing to a website the more Google views it as a good resource for user. Typically, the more relevant links the greater ranking on search results.

You’ll find our blogs handy:

But … if you have dodgy links Google will likely de-index you:

  • – Spammy comments
  • – Paid links
  • – Bought links
  • – Irrelevant guest posts
  • – The use of link farms

6. Doorway Pages

Google literally shuts the door on doorway pages – once Google discovers the tactic the website is usually de-indexed.

Doorway pages rank highly for specific search queries. But they’re unhelpful for users because they direct to several similar pages in user search results – yet each result pretty much takes the user to the same destination.

Google offer’s some good examples, like – Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s).

Conclusion

Dodgy SEO tactics always come back to haunt websites in the end.

Having your site de-indexed by Google can have detrimental repercussions: missing out on website traffic, targeted users, leads, sales and ROI to name a few.

Google removes sites that think they can out-smart it – so if you want to rank on Google then do it the right way:

Why not check out our Digital Marketing Terms Glossary?

About the author:

Marie Harwood is a Digital Marketing Assistant at Different Gravy Digital, Hale, Cheshire.

Different Gravy Digital are a full service Digital Marketing Agency operating in the Hospitality & Leisure, Financial Services, Legal & Property sectors. Products and services range from; 3D & 360° Tours, Website Design & Build, Social Media, Video Production, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Content Creation, Email Marketing, Online Feedback / Review Systems and Paid Advertising (Google, Bing and Social Media).

Contact Details:

marie@differentgravydigital.co.uk

0161 706 000

120a Ashley Road, Hale, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA14 2UN