If you’re running a financial website, you can learn a thing or two from Google. At Google, they always try to serve their customers to the best of their ability and they know how to do it. If you follow the spirit of Google’s content guidelines, you’ll also please your visitors.
Stay up to date with Google. You’ll drop in ranking if your site’s content and design meet ever-changing content requirements. When you do something that goes against Google’s guidelines, you are penalized. Their goal is not to punish you, but to elevate the content that their users will like and push the rest down the rankings.
When Google updates, it does so for good reasons. These changes, however, can force poor quality content off the map. An example is the 2012 Penguin update, described as a web spam algorithm, which affected 1 in 10 search results.
Since 2012, the Penguin update has gone through several iterations. It works in real time, which means startups can no longer get away with shoddy content or site design for a few months until they improve their offering. Google will detect and deal with these sites immediately.
And Penguin is just one of many algorithms Google uses to maintain the quality of its search results. Since Google can take down a company with the push of a button, you better be aware of what they’re doing and when.
If you’ve been working hard on your site, but it’s still not ranking well, you may have inadvertently been penalized for something. If you search for your brand name and your site ranks poorly, or if page one rankings have dropped to page two or three for no apparent reason, chances are you’ve been penalized.
Google doesn’t always announce changes it makes. However, there are common reasons for being penalized, so we recommend that you check them out first.
duplicate content
Whether it’s within your domain or on the web, duplicate content makes Google angry.
Some people deliberately create duplicate content for non-malicious reasons. For example, you might have a content page and a duplicate page that is formatted plain for printing.
In this type of situation, you should provide your preferred URL to Google. This is called canonicalization. One way to do this is by using Search Console.
Google prefers it if you don’t try to prevent its spiders from looking at your pages (for example, by using a robots.txt file). It’s much happier when you use canonicalization to tell you which pages are duplicates and which page you prefer.
You can also avoid being penalized for duplicate content by:
be consistent with the format you use to link to the pages internally;
use 301 redirects if you have restructured your site;
minimize repetitive repetition, for example, by avoiding long copyright text at the bottom of each page and replacing it with something shorter that links to your main copyright information page;
avoid placeholders if you are in the process of (re)designing your site;
consolidate or differentiate pages with similar content.
Some people create duplicate content on multiple domains to deliberately increase keyword usage and move up the rankings. However, Google does not want its users to see an entire page of links offering the same content.
Google does not suffer from this type of deception. It will penalize these domains without a second thought.
purchase links
Having more sites link to yours used to be taken as evidence of the usefulness and quality of your site. These days, however, one link from a high-quality website is worth much more than many links from low-quality websites.
If you are buying links, the standard of the sites linking to you is likely to be very low. Not only does this not help your ranking, but it will actually work against you.
Too many reciprocal links
As with buying links, Google takes too much reciprocation, it’s a sign that you are trying to manipulate rankings instead of providing a quality experience for your visitors.
The answer? Penalty fee.
Not enough outbound links
Google expects high-quality websites to understand that they don’t exist in isolation and that there are other sites that their users might find useful. Almost all companies have complementary products, services and information. Google rewards companies that take a broader view of their customers’ needs.
Broken Internal Links – If you have broken links on your website, it means your visitors are hitting potholes and bumping into each other down dead ends. Since Google wants the best possible experience for its users, it penalizes websites that don’t take care of their infrastructure.
Broken external links: Google looks favorably on links to quality sites. However, if the details of those pages change, that leaves you with broken external links, frustrated visitors, and a possible penalty from Google.
Keyword Stuffing: Since the Penguin update in 2012, keyword stuffing and other attempts to manipulate search results have quickly gone out of style.
The best approach to SEO is to be aware of the keywords your target audience will be searching for and use them naturally in really useful content.
Excessive use of meta keywords: This is similar to keyword stuffing, but in this case, you’ve been stuffing the meta tags instead of the main content. Essentially, your meta keywords are meant to help search engines and your users understand the content of your site.
Going overboard with meta keywords is the equivalent of those envelopes where advertising messages are printed all over the envelope. You don’t even need to open the envelope to know you’ve received time-wasting spam. Do this to Google and they will blacklist your site and move on.
Spun Content: Spun content is rephrased content. The only originality you can expect from these articles is the creative use of a thesaurus. Threaded articles can push the boundaries of grammar, as writers go out of their way to rewrite existing content for the sole purpose of evading anti-plagiarism software.
There are many articles written about how much content you need for your website and how often you should post. Very few articles talk about how quality wins over quantity.
A site that offers original, useful, and expert advice will serve its visitors better than websites that pay cheap writers to spin the content.
Google agrees.
Poor Mobile Websites – Google loves mobile. As is typical of Google, this is because Google users like mobile devices.
Mobile Internet searches surpassed desktop searches in 2014. The percentage of web pages visited via mobile devices is increasing worldwide.
With access to mountains of data and a direct line to what its users want, Google knows that mobile is essential. If you’re not meeting the needs of mobile users, you can expect your site to drop in the rankings in favor of sites that have mobile versions or responsive design.
One of the more recent additions to Google’s idea of what makes a good mobile site concerns popups. Popups can be effective for lead generation, capturing many email addresses. However, they are also very intrusive and can hinder a visitor’s experience, especially through mobile devices.
Thanks to the ‘Intrusive Interstitial’ update, popups that cover an entire page are considered a barrier to the content being searched. Sites that use them face penalties from Google.
In addition to getting your site up the rankings, you need to stick to best practices to avoid going the other way. The Internet landscape is always evolving. While some factors in delivering quality, useful websites are common sense, others require some expertise to understand, decipher, and repair.
Having financial expertise and the ability to deliver it to your visitors is essential to your success, but that’s not enough to ensure you do well in the rankings.
To ensure that your financial website provides the best possible experience for your visitors and avoid unnecessary penalties from Google, contact a financial web design professional with years of experience in financial services and web design.