Matt Cutts Talks Spam

Google takes web spam seriously, so much so they have a spam czar, Matt Cutts, who oversees ensuring that Google doesn’t become overrun with spam. The reasons for this are obvious, no one likes spam. Spam clogs up search results and wastes bandwidth as a whole. What do you do however if by some odd chance, you find that your content or site has been categorized as spam? Is there an appeal process you can go through or are you doomed to scrap everything and start over? The answers to this lie within understanding more about what Google considers spam and how they handle it.

Sometimes, what the average person considers spam and what Google considers spam can be two completely different things. For instance, you may consider a poorly written blog that offers little if any information relevant to any particular topic to be spam. Google, may not. You may view a well optimized SEO article as valuable. Google may see that same article as over optimized and label it spam. It is a very tightly drawn line to walk.

Because Google uses bots to crawl, index and flag sites for transgressions as well, there is always room for error. If your site or content has been tabbed as spam, you’ll know it right away – traffic will disappear. Don’t panic! Be very calm and follow this quick guideline.

Go to your Google Webmaster tools. Check for any flags. Review the content and see if it can be fixed to comply with Google’s standards. It may require nothing more than lowering keyword density or getting rid of some non-relevant links making it look like you are trying to game the system. This is an easy fix. Complete the changes to each piece of content and resubmit your site. Once it has been crawled again, you can see how much the improvements you have made have helped. If you still need to tweak it a bit more, try again and resubmit.

If however it is an issue of low quality content or low quality and the above discussed issues, your best course of action is to bring in an SEO copywriter and SEO firm to “re-optimize” your site to meet whatever the Google standards are at that particular time. It is not free, and it is not overnight, but it may be your only option to get your site back up and running properly with the SERPS. While you can try contacting Google directly for guidance, it is usually a fairly lengthy process and the result is usually that you need to follow the above steps to get back in their good graces.

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