It is every Forex Broker's wish to be ranking #1 on Forex Trading keyword on Google. The latest Google webspam report contains important data for your broker to reach that goal, satisfy Google's algorithmic requirements, protect you from hackers, and ultimately supercharge your organic outreach.
09 August, AtoZForex – Famous Google ranking algorithm inspects websites putting such criteria as quality and timeliness first. This is done in order to prevent the spam websites from click baiting. As we know, Google also encourages webmasters to apply fair search engine optimization (SEO) practices.
The most recent Google webspam report covers detailed information on spam trends that were observed by Google bots over the course of the last year. Forex brokers can use these insights to create better websites, to improve the existing ones and surely, to rank higher in Google searches. So, what are the most important takeaways from the Google webspam report?
Google webspam report: more hacked websites
Last year, Google observed that the number of hacked websites increased by 180%. More websites with thin and low-quality content, which is of a little, if any, relevance were also found by the company. According to the statistics, more than 400.000 spam reports were submitted by users and Google investigated 65% of them. As a result, the company found that 80% of those under investigation were full of spam content.
180% increase in website hacks!
To fix the situation, Google sent more than 4.3 million of warnings to the webmasters in order to inform them about their websites not complying with Google‘s quality standards. Moreover, the company took manual actions such as demoting or removing the websites from the Google search results. However, most of the spam found by Google was already demoted by the search engine‘s algorithms automatically. The company stated that there are certain changes occurring already: 33% more websites implemented measures to clean up their spam comparing to last year. After doing so, these companies asked Google to reconsider their website‘s ranking in the search results.
How to prevent your website from being hacked?
The Google webspam report shows that the number of websites being hacked increased by 180%! This should alert any business owner, but especially Forex brokerage firms, as the data breach might cost the clients their personal and payment information. To prevent that and to protect your website along with your clients‘ data, you should take basic measures which were established by the Payment Card Industry Security Council. The PCI guidelines include establishing a strong firewall, updating and using proper anti-virus programs, using custom passwords instead of default ones, etc.
When it comes to dealing with card information, the PCI has stronger and more strict protocols. Those businesses who own a store can use a Lever 1 payment processing to manage this data. It will reduce the number of steps required to comply with the protocol. The payment processor, in this case, transfers and saves any data, and maintains stricter standards at Level 1 than the organizations who process fewer card transactions every year.
My website was penalized. What should I do?
The last takeaway from the Google webspam report is related to penalties. Every month Google takes manual action against spam-like websites. Only 5% of those websites submit a request to Google to reconsider their ranking after taking certain measures to fix any existing issues. Whether it was done manually or automatically, sometimes Google targets the websites which weren‘t intentionally spamming users with irrelevant or misleading content. So, as a business owner, you can find yourself in the situation where your website was downgraded in rankings due to a Google penalty. What to do in this case?
Google hate Black Hat SEO practices
First of all, if your website got penalized by Google, check your outgoing (external) links to make sure they do not direct your readers to the websites which violate Google guidelines or are using „black hat“ SEO practices. The interesting thing is that backlinks from the penalized websites also reduce your page‘s ranking in search results. So make sure to have incoming links only on the appropriate websites. Use Google‘s Webmaster to identify where these inbound links are coming from.
Identify your incoming links.
It is also very important to focus on creating your own original and relevant content. Comment on the current industry news, forecast trends and write high-quality opinion pieces – this will create you a reputation of a thought leader business in your field and surely will improve your Google ranking.
See also: China Blocked Google’s Alphabet
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