Google’s search engine is one of the most common ways we research information today. More people use the company’s algorithms to get answers to their questions than any other method available. It has become so popular in fact the word “Google” has officially become a verb in the English language and even been included in the Oxford Dictionary.

But as common as the phrase “Google is your friend” has become in implying that all your answers are just a search away, it has also become the authoritative  body (of sorts) overlooking the way search engines serve the information they gather from individual websites.

A webmaster or website owner that chooses to ignore the strict rules Google has put in place to curb illegal ways of ranking high on its search results pages (SERPs) will soon find their site looked upon unfavorably by the company. And once they decide to penalize your site for trespasses (whether intentional or not) it really is an uphill task to win back their favor.

Therefore, every care must be taken to make sure your site doesn’t get penalized. And towards that end, we will list some of the most common mistakes that could lead you down into the internet’s version of purgatory.

Slow Page Load Times

Everyone is in a rush to get somewhere, it seems, and Google agrees. It wants to make sure the right information is served up in the shortest possible time.

If your pages take more than 3 seconds to load, you are in trouble. Check codes, unload large graphics and disable unnecessary apps. At least, grab your visitors’ attention before you decide to bombard them with peripheral information.

Mobile Friendliness

Google likes to see itself as a company that treats all devices equally. If your site is not mobile friendly, then you will find yourself sidelined.

And this is quite an understandable approach by the company considering the fact that more than half of the world’s internet users access it using mobile devices. If your site isn’t ready for them, you will be costing them valuable user experience – and that is a no-no.

Poor Content Quality

Google’s algorithms can detect whether or not the content on your site is of poor quality. Points that might raise a red flag include (but are not limited to) too many typos, too much advertizing, plagiarized content and poor quality text. Once your site triggers the algorithm, it leads manual reviewers to your site.

Therefore, clean up all your content and make sure it is presented in as professional a way as possible.

Uninformative Content

One way Google finds websites with content that doesn’t contain the information people are searching for is by the time they take to bounce off of your pages and return to the search page. If people keep coming to your site after being led by a link on a SERP and immediately go back to it, it means they either didn’t find what they are looking for or it was presented in a way that was unsatisfying to them.

Make sure your pages address an issue or deliver the information promised in as detailed a way as possible. When people come to your specific site they are looking for a specific answer – they would otherwise choose sites like Wikipedia.

Keyword Stuffing

There once was a time when Google picked up pages with certain keywords and considered the content to be relevant. But that method was abused by website owners who simply repeated the keywords over and over again and fit the rest of the content around it.

As you can imagine, reading an article with 300 words in it but had 60 of them be just one word could be truly annoying. And so Google considered it a point sites should get penalized for.

Hiding Content

Yes, people might not be able to see content that has been cleverly camouflaged to disappear into the background of a webpage, but there’s no fooling Google.

So, if you think you can get away with having all your keywords written (100 times) in the smallest possible font and in the same color as your background, you’re simply asking for trouble.

Link Building

Google used to consider inbound links as a sign of a webpage’s authority on the subject. After all, if everyone was linking to your site, it meant you really did have some quality content, right? But then people started spamming blogs and forums and leaving their links everywhere with the hopes of climbing up the SERPS.

Well, Google soon put an end to that nonsense with its Penguin algorithm update in 2012.

Content or Link Farms

If your site only serves the purpose of collecting content or links you will find yourself penalized. Google doesn’t allow sites to rise up its search rankings simply because they have the right keywords in their content – which is highly likely given the amount of content that is bound to be there – but rather those of which are dedicated to one specific topic, subject or purpose.

So, instead of trying to rank for multiple loosely related keywords, make sure you work on a focused few. It will eventually be worth the effort.

And there you have it. If you really think you can outsmart Google, think again. If you’ve made a mistake, you’ve been warned – so act fast and correct it.