SEO: All 200 Powerful Google Ranking Factors & More

SEOptimization

Sounds easy? Wish it was. But, it isn’t.

You see, Google checks each bit of content that you publish on your site for more than 200 factors. Your content’s Google ranking is a heady sum of all the factors that Google considers useful enough to make your content worthwhile for readers worldwide.

I have tried to put together, as simply as possible, all 200 Google ranking factors and more, in this article to help you understand SEO fully.

However, if you are new to this whole game of internet marketing, then you need to read the basics first. Please click here, and see how I can guide you from start to finish, in your journey of getting online.

What Exactly Is SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant searches. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to grab attention and attract prospective customers to your business.

SEO Strategy

An SEO strategy is the process of planning, outlining, and implementing steps designed to improve search engine rankings. In other words: an SEO strategy is the process that you follow when you want to get more organic traffic.

Therefore SEOptimization Is …

Aligning content to Search queries.

We take 5-6 hours to write an article. But we spend 5 minutes checking it’s SEO. I think we need to rethink and change our strategy.

SEO & Google Facts

• Google accounts for over 75% of all global desktop search traffic, followed by Bing at 9.97%, Baidu at 9.34%, and Yahoo at 2.77%.
• Of the billions of searches that happen on a given day, 15% of daily searches are new to Google.
• 67,000 searches are performed on Google every second
• 39% of all global eCommerce traffic comes from search
• 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine
• Nearly 80% of users ignore paid ads in search results
• 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020
• 58% of searches come from mobile
• 97% of page-one results have at least one image on the page
• 46% of all Google searches are local
• On the first page alone, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks.
• Google’s search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites.
• High-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search.
• 57% of marketing executives say on-page content development was the most effective SEO tactic.
• The average content length of the top position Google article contains 2,416 words.
• The average word count of a voice search result page is 2,312 words.
• 91% of all pages never get any organic traffic from Google, mostly due to the fact they don’t have backlinks.
• 55% of pages don’t have a single backlink.
• The more backlinks a page has, the more search traffic it normally gets from Google.
• The top four ranking factors are website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate.
• In general, 52% of all worldwide online traffic comes from mobile, 45% from desktop.
• 36% of SEO experts think the headline/title tag is the most important SEO element.
• Long-tail keyword searches have a click-through rate 3% to 5% higher than generic searches.
• 70% of marketers see SEO as more effective than PPC.
• 61% of marketers say improving SEO is their top marketing priority.
• “Where to buy” + “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% in the past two years.
• “Best” + “right now” mobile queries have grown by over 125% in the last two years.
• 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles.
• Updating and republishing old blog posts with new content and images can increase organic traffic by as much as 106%.
• 62% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers want visual search more than any other new technology.

SEO is important. Sometimes more important than we realize.

Have you heard of Brian Dean?

Yes?

That’s great!

No?

Well, read on …

Brian Dean put together a list and explanation of all 210 Google ranking factors. Can you believe that! All of them.

Categorization for SEOptimization

He divides them into:

• Domain Factors
• Page-Level Factors
• Site-Level Factors
• Backlink Factors
• User Interaction
• Special Google Algorithm Rules
• Brand Signals
• On-Site Webspam Factors
• Off-Site Webspam Factors

Some are confirmed, others, not 100% proven, but most are accepted by SEO experts around the world, as correct.

What are the Factors Google Assesses?

Domain Factors for SEO

1. Domain Age is important

2. Your broad Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain

3. Keyword As First Word in Domain

4. For what period have you registered your domain

5. Keyword in Subdomain

6. Domain History

7. Exact Match Domain

8. Public vs. Private WhoIs

9. Penalised WhoIs history

10. Country TLD extension: Can help locally but limit a site’s ability to rank globally.

Page-Level Factors for SEO

11. Keyword in Title Tag

12. Title Tag Starts with Keyword:

13. Keyword in Description Tag

14. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag

15. TF-IDF: Term frequency-inverse document frequency, is a numerical statistic that is intended to reflect how important your important words are to a document. A fancy way of saying: “How often does a certain word appear in a document?”.

16. Content-Length

17. Table of Contents

18. Keyword Density

19. Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI): LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words that have more than one meaning (for example, Apple the computer company vs. Apple the fruit). 

20. LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags

21. Page Covers Topic In-Depth

22. Page Loading Speed via HTML

23. Page Loading Speed via Chrome

24. Use of AMP: AMP stands for “Accelerated Mobile Pages.” It is an Open Source Framework that was launched as a joint initiative by Google and several other technology and publishing companies. With AMP, it is possible to create simple mobile websites that load almost instantly.

25. Entity Match: Does a page’s content match the “entity” that a user is searching for? If so, that page may get a rankings boost for that keyword.

26. Google Hummingbird: This “algorithm change” helped Google go beyond keywords. Thanks to Hummingbird, Google can now better understand the topic of a webpage.

27. Duplicate Content

28. Rel=Canonical: When used properly, the use of this tag may prevent Google from penalizing your site for duplicate content.

29. Image Optimization

30. Content Recency: Google Caffeine update favors recently published or updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. 

31. Magnitude of Content Updates: The significance of edits and changes also serves as a freshness factor.

32. History of Page Updates

33. Keyword Prominence: Having a keyword appear in the first 100 words of a page’s content is correlated to first page Google rankings.

34. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags

35. Outbound Link Quality

36. Outbound Link Theme: According to The Hilltop Algorithm, Google may use the content of the pages you link to as a relevancy signal.

37. Grammar and Spelling

38. Syndicated Content. Refers to the originality of content.

39. Mobile-Friendly Update: Often referred to as “Mobilegeddon“, this update rewarded pages that were properly optimized for mobile devices.

40. Mobile Usability

41. “Hidden” Content on Mobile

42. Helpful “Supplementary Content”. Examples include currency converters, loan interest calculators, and interactive recipes.

43. Content Hidden Behind Tabs: Do users need to click on a tab to reveal some of the content on your page? If so, Google has said that this content “may not be indexed”.

44. Number of Outbound Links: Too many dofollow OBLs can “leak” PageRank, which can hurt that page’s rankings.

45. Multimedia: Images, videos, and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signal.

46. Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page

47. Quality of Internal Links Pointing to Page: Internal links from authoritative pages on the domain have a stronger effect than pages with no or low PageRank.

48. Broken Links: Having too many broken links on a page may be a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. 

49. Reading Level: There’s no doubt that Google estimates the reading level of webpages. 

50. Affiliate Links: Affiliate links themselves probably won’t hurt your rankings. But if you have too many, Google’s algorithm may pay closer attention to other quality signals to make sure you’re not a “thin affiliate site“.

51. HTML errors/W3C validation.

52. Domain Authority: All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority.

53. Page’s PageRank: Not perfectly correlated. But pages with lots of authority tend to outrank pages without much link authority.

54. URL Length: Excessively long URLs may hurt a page’s search engine visibility.

55. URL Path: A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost vs. pages buried deep down in a site’s architecture.

56. Human Editors: Although never confirmed, Google has filed a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs.

57. Page Category: The category the page appears on is a relevancy signal. A page that’s part of a closely related category may get a relevancy boost compared to a page that’s filed under an unrelated category.

58. WordPress Tags: Tags are WordPress-specific relevancy signals.

59. Keyword in URL

60. URL String: The categories in the URL string are read by Google and may provide a thematic signal to what a page is about.

61. References and Sources may be a sign of quality.

62. Bullets and Numbered Lists are preferred.

63. Priority of Page in Sitemap: The priority a page is given via the sitemap.xml file may influence ranking.

64. Too Many Outbound Links is a distraction.

65. UX Signals From Other Keywords the Page Ranks For: If the page ranks for several other keywords, it may give Google an internal sign of quality. 

66. Page Age: Although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page.

67. User-Friendly Layout.

68. Parked Domains have decreased search visibility.

69. Useful Content: Google may distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content.

Site-Level Factors for SEO

70. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights. 

71. Contact Us Page.

72. Domain Trust/TrustRank.

73. Site Architecture.

74. Site Updates: Many SEOs believe that website updates — and especially when new content is added to the site — works a site-wide freshness factor. Although Google has recently denied that they use “publishing frequency” in their algorithm.

75. The Presence of Sitemap.

76. Site Uptime: Lots of downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your rankings.

77. Server Location: Server location influences where your site ranks in different geographical regions.

78. SSL Certificate: Google has confirmed that they use HTTPS as a ranking signal.

79. Terms of Service and Privacy Pages.

80. Duplicate Meta Information On-Site: Duplicate meta information across your site may bring down all of your page’s visibility.

81. Breadcrumb Navigation: This is a style of user-friendly site-architecture that helps users (and search engines) know where they are on a site.

82. Mobile Optimized: Google now penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-friendly.

83. YouTube: There’s no doubt that YouTube videos are given preferential treatment in the SERPs (probably because Google owns it).

84. Site Usability: A site that’s difficult to use or to navigate can hurt rankings indirectly by reducing time on site, pages viewed and bounce rate (in other words, RankBrain ranking factors).

85. Use of Google Analytics and Google Search Console seems important.

86. User reviews/Site reputation is important. 

Backlink Factors for SEO

87. Linking Domain Age: Backlinks from aged domains may be more powerful than new domains.

88. # of Linking Root Domains: The number of referring domains is one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm.

89. # of Links from Separate C-Class IPs: Links from separate class-c IP addresses suggest a wider breadth of sites linking to you, which can help with rankings.

90. # of Linking Pages: The total number of linking pages — even from the same domain, has an impact on rankings.

91. Backlink Anchor Text: Keyword-rich anchor text still sends a strong relevancy signal in small doses.

92. Alt Tag (for Image Links): Alt text acts as anchor text for images.

93. Links from .edu or .gov Domains do have a special place. 

94. Authority of Linking Page: The authority (PageRank) of the referring page has been an extremely important ranking factor since Google’s early days and still is.

95. Authority of Linking Domain: The referring domain’s authority may play an independent role in a link’s value.

96. Links From Competitors: Links from other pages ranking in the same SERP may be more valuable to a page’s ranking for that particular keyword.

97. Links from “Expected” Websites: Although speculative, some SEOs believe that Google won’t fully trust your website until you get linked to from a set of “expected” sites in your industry.

98. Links from Bad Neighborhoods: Links from so-called “bad neighborhoods” may hurt your site.

99. Guest Posts: Although links from guest posts still pass value, they likely aren’t as powerful as true editorial links (plus, “large-scale” guest posting can get your site into trouble).

100. Links From Ads: According to Google, links from ads should be nofollowed. However, it’s likely that Google is able to identify and filter out followed links from ads.

101. Homepage Authority: Links to a referring page’s homepage may play special importance in evaluating a site’s — and therefore a link’s — weight.

102. Nofollow Links: This is one of the most controversial topics in SEO. Google’s official word on the matter is “In general we don’t follow them”. Which suggests that they do.

103. Diversity of Link Types: Links from diverse sources is a sign of a natural link profile.

104. “Sponsored” or “UGC” Tags: Links tagged as “rel=sponsored” or “rel=UGC” are treated differently than normal “followed” or rel=nofollow links.

105. Contextual Links: Links embedded inside a page’s content are considered more powerful than links on an empty page or found elsewhere on the page.

106. Excessive 301 Redirects to Page: Backlinks coming from 301 redirects dilute some PageRank, according to a Webmaster Help Video.

107. Internal Link Anchor Text: Internal link anchor text is another relevancy signal. That said, internal links likely have much less weight than anchor text coming from external sites.

108. Link Title Attribution: The link title (the text that appears when you hover over a link) may also be used as a weak relevancy signal.

109. Country TLD of Referring Domain: Getting links from country-specific top-level domain extensions (.de, .cn, .co, .uk) may help you rank better in that country.

110. Link Location In Content: Links at the beginning of a piece of content may carry slightly more weight than links placed at the end of the content.

111. Link Location on Page: Where a link appears on a page is important. Generally, a link embedded in a page’s content is more powerful than a link in the footer or sidebar area.

112. Linking Domain Relevancy: A link from a site in a similar niche is significantly more powerful than a link from a completely unrelated site.

113. Page-Level Relevancy: A link from a relevant page also passes more value.

114. Keyword in Title: Google gives extra affection to links from pages that contain your page’s keyword in the title (“Experts linking to experts”.)

115. Positive Link Velocity: A site with positive link velocity usually gets a SERP boost as it shows your site is increasing in popularity.

116. Negative Link Velocity: On the flip side, a negative link velocity can significantly reduce rankings as it’s a signal of decreasing popularity.

117. Links from “Hub” Pages: The Hilltop Algorithm suggests that getting links from pages that are considered top resources (or hubs) on a certain topic are given special treatment.

118. Link from Authority Sites: A link from a site considered an “authority site” is likely to pass more juice than a link from a small, relatively unknown site.

119. Linked to Wikipedia Source: Although the links are nofollow, many think that getting a link from Wikipedia gives you a little added trust and authority in the eyes of search engines.

120. Co-Occurrences: The words that tend to appear around your backlinks help tell Google what that page is about.

121. Backlink Age: According to a Google patent, older links have more ranking power than newly minted backlinks.

122. Links from Real Sites vs. “Splogs”: Due to the proliferation of blog networks, Google probably gives more weight to links coming from “real sites” than from fake blogs.

123. Natural Link Profile: A site with a “natural” link profile is going to rank highly and be more durable to updates than one that has obviously used black hat strategies to build links.

124. Reciprocal Links: Google’s Link Schemes page lists “Excessive link exchanging” as a link scheme to avoid.

125. User-Generated Content Links: Google can identify UGC vs. content published by the actual site owner. For example, they know that a link from the official WordPress.com blog is very different than a link from besttoasterreviews.wordpress.com.

126. Links from 301: Links from 301 redirects may lose a little bit of juice compared to a direct link. 

127. Schema.org Usage: Pages that support microformats may rank above pages without it. This may be a direct boost or the fact that pages with micro formatting have a higher SERP CTR:

128. TrustRank of Linking Site: The trustworthiness of the site linking to you determines how much “TrustRank” gets passed on to you.

129. A number of Outbound Links on Page: PageRank is finite. A link on a page with hundreds of external links passes less PageRank than a page with a handful of outbound links.

130. Forum Links: Because of industrial-level spamming, Google may significantly devalue links from forums.

131. Word Count of Linking Content: A link from a 1000-word post is usually more valuable than a link inside of a 25-word snippet.

132. Quality of Linking Content: Links from poorly written or spun content don’t pass as much value as links from well-written, content.

133. Sitewide Links: It has been confirmed that sitewide links are “compressed” to count as a single link.

User Interaction Factors for SEO

134. RankBrain: RankBrain is Google’s AI algorithm. Many believe that its main purpose is to measure how users interact with the search results (and rank the results accordingly).

135. Organic Click Through Rate for a Keyword: According to Google, pages that get clicked more in CTR may get a SERP boost for that particular keyword.

136. Organic CTR for All Keywords: A site’s organic CTR for all keywords it ranks for, maybe a human-based, user interaction signal.

137. Bounce Rate:  A recent study by SEMRush found a correlation between bounce rate and Google rankings.

138. Direct Traffic: It’s confirmed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine how many people visit the site (and how often).

139. Repeat Traffic: Sites with repeat visitors may get a Google ranking boost.

140. Pogosticking: “Pogosticking” is a special type of bounce. In this case, the user clicks on other search results in an attempt to find the answer to their query. Results that people Pogostick from may get a significant rankings drop.

141. Blocked Sites: Google has discontinued this feature in Chrome. However, Panda used this feature as a quality signal. So Google may still use a variation of it.

142. Chrome Bookmarks: We know that Google collects Chrome browser usage data. Pages that get bookmarked in Chrome might get a boost.

143. Number of Comments: Pages with lots of comments may be a signal of user-interaction and quality. In fact, it is assessed that comments can help “a lot” with rankings.

144. Dwell Time: Google pays very close attention to “dwell time“: how long people spend on your page when coming from a Google search. 

Special Google Algorithm Rules for SEO

145. Query Deserves Freshness: Google gives newer pages a boost.

146. Query Deserves Diversity: Google may add diversity to a SERP for ambiguous keywords, such as “Ted”, “WWF” or “ruby”.

147. User Browsing History: You’ve probably noticed this yourself: websites that you visit frequently get a SERP boost for your searches.

148. User Search History: Search chain influences search results for later searches. For example, if you search for “reviews” then search for “toasters”, Google is more likely to rank toaster review sites higher in the SERPs.

149. Featured Snippets: According to a SEMRush study, Google chooses Featured Snippets content based on a combination of content length, formatting, page authority, and HTTPs usage.

150. Geo-Targeting: Google gives preference to sites with a local server IP and country-specific domain name extension.

151. Safe Search: Search results with curse words or adult content won’t appear for people with Safe Search turned on.

152. Google+ Circles: Google used to show higher results for authors and sites that you had added to your Google Plus Circles. 

153. “YMYL” Keywords: Google has higher content quality standards for “Your Money or Your Life” keywords.

154. DMCA Complaints: Google “downranks” pages with legitimate DMCA complaints.

155. Domain Diversity: The so-called “Bigfoot Update” supposedly added more domains to each SERP page.

156. Transactional Searches: Google sometimes displays different results for shopping-related keywords, like flight searches.

157. Local Searches: For local searches, Google often places local results above the “normal” organic SERPs.

158. Top Stories box: Certain keywords trigger a Top Stories box:

159. Big Brand Preference: After the Vince Update, Google began giving big brands a boost for certain keywords.

160. Shopping Results: Google sometimes displays Google Shopping results in organic SERPs.

161. Image Results: Google images sometimes appear in normal, organic search results.

162. Easter Egg Results: Google has a dozen or so Easter Egg results. For example, when you search for “Atari Breakout” in Google image search, the search results turn into a playable game.

163. Single Site Results for Brands: Domain or brand-oriented keywords bring up several results from the same site.

164. Payday Loans Update: This is a special algorithm designed to clean up “very spammy queries“.

Brand Signals for SEO

165. Brand Name Anchor Text: Branded anchor text is a simple, but strong, brand signal.

166. Branded Searches: People search for brands. If people search for your brand in Google, this shows Google that your site is a real brand.

167. Brand + Keyword Searches: Do people search for a specific keyword along with your brand (for example: “Backlinko Google ranking factors” or “Backlinko SEO”)? If so, Google may give you a rankings boost when people search for the non-branded version of that keyword in Google.

168. Site Has Facebook Page and Likes: Brands tend to have Facebook pages with lots of likes. Google recognizes that.

169. Site has Twitter Profile with Followers: Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.

170. Official Linkedin Company Page: Most real businesses have company Linkedin pages.

171. Known Authorship: In February 2013, Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously claimed that “Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results.”

172. The legitimacy of Social Media Accounts: A social media account with 10,000 followers and 2 posts is probably interpreted a lot differently than another 10,000-follower strong account with lots of interaction. Fake accounts are identifiable.

173. Brand Mentions on Top Stories: Really big brands get mentioned on Top Stories sites all the time. In fact, some brands even have a feed of news from their own website, on the first page.

174. Unlinked Brand Mentions: Brands get mentioned without getting linked to. Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.

175. Brick and Mortar Location: Real businesses have offices. It’s possible that Google fishes for location-data to determine whether or not a site is a big brand.

On-Site Webspam Factors for SEO

176. Panda Penalty: Sites with low-quality content (particularly content farms) are less visible in search after getting hit by a Panda penalty.

177. Links to Bad Neighborhoods: Linking out to “bad neighborhoods” — like spammy pharmacy or payday loan sites — may hurt your search visibility.

178. Redirects: Sneaky redirects are a big no-no. If caught, it can get a site not just penalized, but de-indexed.

179. Popups or “Distracting Ads”: The official Google Rater Guidelines Document says that popups and distracting ads is a sign of a low-quality site.

180. Interstitial Popups: Google may penalize sites that display full page “interstitial” popups to mobile users.

181. Site Over-Optimization: Yes, Google does penalize people for over-optimizing their site. This includes keyword stuffing, header tag stuffing, excessive keyword decoration.

182. Gibberish Content: A Google Patent outlines how Google can identify “gibberish” content, which is helpful for filtering out spun or auto-generated content from their index.

183. Doorway Pages: Google wants the page you show to Google to be the page that user ultimately see. If your page redirects people to another page, that’s a “Doorway Page”. Needless to say, Google doesn’t like sites that use Doorway Pages.

184. Ads Above the Fold: The “Page Layout Algorithm” penalizes sites with lots of ads (and not much content) above the fold.

185. Hiding Affiliate Links: Going too far when trying to hide affiliate links (especially with cloaking) can bring on a penalty.

186. Fred: A nickname was given to a series of Google updates starting in 2017. According to Search Engine Land, Fred “targets low-value content sites that put revenue above helping their users.”

187. Affiliate Sites: It’s no secret that Google isn’t the biggest fan of affiliates. And many think that sites that monetize with affiliate programs are put under extra scrutiny.

188. Autogenerated Content: Google understandably hates autogenerated content. If they suspect that your site’s pumping out computer-generated content, it could result in a penalty or de-indexing.

189. Excess PageRank Sculpting: Going too far with PageRank sculpting — by no-following all outbound links — may be a sign of gaming the system.

190. IP Address Flagged as Spam: If your server’s IP address is flagged for spam, it may affect all sites on that server.

191. Meta Tag Spamming: Keyword stuffing can also happen in meta tags. If Google thinks you’re adding keywords to your title and description tags in an effort to game the algorithm, they may hit your site with a penalty.

Off-Site Webspam Factors for SEO

192. Hacked Site: If your site gets hacked it can get dropped from the search results. In fact, Search Engine Land was completed deindexed after Google thought it had been hacked.

193. Unnatural Influx of Links: A sudden (and unnatural) influx of links is a sure-fire sign of phony links.

194. Penguin Penalty: Sites that were hit by Google Penguin are significantly less visible in search. 

195. Link Profile with High % of Low-Quality Links: Lots of links from sources commonly used by black hat SEOs (like blog comments and forum profiles) may be a sign of gaming the system.

196. Links From Unrelated Websites: A high-percentage of backlinks from topically-unrelated sites can increase the odds of a manual penalty.

197. Unnatural Links Warning: Google has sent out thousands of “Google Search Console notice of detected unnatural links” messages. This usually precedes a ranking drop, although not 100% of the time.

198. Low-Quality Directory Links: According to Google, backlinks from low-quality directories can lead to a penalty.

199. Widget Links: Google frowns upon links that are automatically generated when user embeds a “widget” on their site.

200. Links from the Same Class C IP: Getting an unnatural amount of links from sites on the same server IP may help Google determine that your links are coming from a blog network.

201. “Poison” Anchor Text: Having “poison” anchor text (especially pharmacy keywords) pointed to your site may be a sign of spam or a hacked site. Either way, it can hurt your site’s ranking.

202. Unnatural Link Spike: A 2013 Google Patent describes how Google can identify whether or not an influx of links to a page is legitimate. Those sites with unnatural links may become devalued.

203. Links From Articles and Press Releases: Articles directories and press releases have been abused to the point that Google now considers these two link building strategies a “link scheme” in many cases.

204. Manual Actions: There are several types of these, but most are related to black hat link building.

205. Selling Links: Getting caught selling links can and will hurt your search visibility.

206. Google Sandbox: New sites that get a sudden influx of links are sometimes put in the Google Sandbox, which temporarily limits search visibility.

207. Google Dance: The Google Dance can temporarily shake up rankings. According to a Google Patent, this may be a way for them to determine whether or not a site is trying to game the algorithm.

208. Disavow Tool: Use of the Disavow Tool may remove a manual or algorithmic penalty for sites that were the victims of negative SEO.

209. Reconsideration Request: A successful reconsideration request can lift a penalty.

210. Temporary Link Schemes: Google has caught onto people that create — and quickly remove — spammy links. Also, know as a temporary link scheme.

---

Disclaimer

This material has been put together from various sources. I do not, at all, claim to be an authority on SEO. Indeed, a lot has been taken from what Brian Dean says about SEO. After all, he is an authority of sorts, on SEO.

The aim is that each of us acquires a renewed desire to learn more about the very important subject of SEO. 

Deep regards,