Getting a Google penalty for your private label dating site is always down to more than one single factor. It’s unlikely that having one of these problems will land you the penalty. But, if you have 2, 3, or more of the following issues, then you’re stepping into the danger area. Running your online dating site will be made a lot easier if you take on board a few of the below tips.

Creating the perfect dating site

1. Having Thin Content on Your Dating Site
What is Thin Content? Thin content is any content on your dating website that is of low or no value, to the user and to you as well. It is content that stands in the way of goal funnels, informing others, impeding crawl budget, inflated internal link counts, and ultimately causing noise to a search engine – Google. Thin content can even apply to your meta page title – so whatever you do, don’t leave it as “home page” or “Insert content here”.
2. Spinning Content
What is Spinning Content? Content spinning is simply taking something that is written one way, and rewriting it so that it sounds different. This is as much damaging to your dating site as is duplicate content. It is vital that all the content on your white label dating site is unique. Rewriting some other dating sites content is an easy way to get a penalty.
3. Scraping Content
What is Content Scraping? Content scraping is an illegal way of stealing original content from a legitimate online dating website and posting the stolen content to another site without the knowledge or permission of the content’s original owner. Content scrapers often attempt to pass off stolen content as their own, and fail to provide attribution to the content’s owners. Scraping content is lazy, unethical, ineffective, and the perfect way to get a penalty.
4. Copying someone’s Content
Copying someone’s content or dating articles is not only illegal, but will probably get you penalized by Panda. Currently, Panda isn’t very good at detecting this since it’s hard to decipher where the content came from, but in time Google will create a solution for it – so watch out!

Become a Dating Expert

5. Having “Non-Expert” Content
Don’t let non dating experts write about your industry’s complex subject matter such as referral and affiliate marketing. The holes in this outsourced content will decrease trust and hurt your website. And more importantly, Panda dislikes non-expert content because it’s produced with little or no intention to help the user, as most people use this as filler content or bad tactic SEO.
6. Creating Multiple Articles Targeting the Same Dating Keyword
You should only write one article on any given keyword because it starts to become an issue of overlapping content. Unless it’s a completely different take on the keyword, avoid writing the same topic more than once. Panda hates this redundant content, or “overlapping” articles. Once again, because it has little value to the viewer.

Keep your Dating Members Profiles Safe

7. Not Using an SSL Certificate
If you’re accepting credit or debit card payments, then you need to have the necessary protection for the web user. Any dating site that accepts credit cards but doesn’t have an SSL certificate is highly suspicious.
8. Having Many Factual Errors in Your Content
Are you writing a technical piece with statistics for facts that aren’t true? Google is probably the biggest database of information in the world. It knows when your facts aren’t correct. If incorrect facts and statistics become a frequent occurrence on your site, it will be punished with a penalty!

Content Marketing for Niche Dating Sites

9. Writing Content Purely For the Search Engines
Don’t keyword-target every single blog post. Focus on giving the most value imaginable first and then try to inject some keywords you want to rank for.
10. Creating Rehashed/Unoriginal Content
Is your content just rehashed junk you took from other websites? Panda wants to see unique content with a unique view. Like other types of low-quality content, rehashed garbage is lazy. Pretty much all “lazy” content tactics will have the Panda knocking at your door.
11. Producing Less Value than you’re Online Dating Competition
How does the value of your content compare to others within the white label dating site’s industry? If your competitors are using full scale content marketing and producing high-value content on a consistent basis, how can you expect to outrank them? Being “outranked” may not get you a Google penalty, but it will certainly devalue your website and hurt your organic rankings. Google judges your website based on a “value comparison” of your competitors.

Create Honest Dating Reviews

12. Creating Fake Dating Reviews
You know those affiliate websites with nothing but “review” articles of Amazon products? Panda loves killing those sites because A) they are a lie since the reviewer has never actually used the product, B) they provide little, to no value, and C) they are jam-packed with affiliate links on every page. Be honest with your members and Google.
13. Having Excessive Keyword Density
Throw your keywords and phrases in your copy repeatedly and see what happens. Keep your keyword density around 1-3% if you want to stay Panda safe and penalty free. Do not keep repeating the word “dating” is a good place to start.
14. Using Sneaky Redirects
Don’t redirect people to a page they didn’t originally request. It’s annoying, inconvenient and Panda will down rank you for this for certain.

Affiliate Marketing for Dating

15. Going Crazy with Affiliate Links
If you really want to wake up with a penalty, then make sure you use tons of affiliate links on every page of your website. Google despises affiliate sites because the majority of them provide little value and are only built to make a few pounds (which is usually how much these types of sites make).
16. Having Spammy Outbound Links
Don’t link out to sites from “bad neighborhoods” unless you’re looking to raise some red flags. Instead, link out to relevant authority resources. This will boost the trust of your content and website. Look for dating communities or forums that talk about and answer questions in regard to your chosen dating niche.
17. Selling Links
Letting anyone buy links on your site is a really bad idea. If you do, make sure you “nofollow” them to avoid any issues.
18. Throwing Some Ads above the Fold
Don’t you love when you’re going to read an interesting article and you can’t even find it because of all the ad clutter? Fact: ads above the fold have a higher click-through rate BUT ads above the fold are annoying, send people off your website (who will never come back), and hurt the growth of your site or dating blog because no one stays to read your content. If no one reads it, no one shares it or links to it. You need to trade off making a few pence from ads over your prospective members walking away from the site.
19. Having Ads That Don’t Close
If you have popup advertisements, then there needs to be an option to skip or close it altogether. This is a perfect way to make users never come back to your site and really get the Panda fired up.
20. Disabling the “Back” Button
You know this is a very bad idea. Do we need to explain?
21. Not Using “noindex, follow” On Your Categories, Tags, Or Archives
If you did do this, it would help you eliminate most duplicate content issues on WordPress for example. But this article is about how to get a Panda penalty, make sure you keep all of these unnecessary pages indexed in Google and be transparent.
22. Duplicating Your Service Descriptions
Some businesses think its okay to create one product description with some scrambled words and place it on every product page. Panda hates this. Create unique descriptions for every product or service page. In fact create unique content everywhere!
23. Having a High Bounce Rate
High bounce rate is an indication of a bad user experience – especially on a dating site. A quick way to decrease it is to produce higher value content and internally link your content. Then keep a close eye on this – remember to test and measure at all times.
24. Keeping the User Average Time on Site Low
If users aren’t spending a decent amount of your time on your site then there’s a good chance that there isn’t a ton of appeal or value available. Unless you have a news website and the content is changing all the time, users should be on your site for at least a minute or more. If not, you need to produce better (or more) content or create a pathway for them to find your content through internal linking.
25. Letting Users Pogo Stick Away
This is a difficult metric to measure, but it can have a big impact on your dating site’s organic results. If your future members are finding your site through Google, clicking on your results, and bouncing back to the SERPs for the query, then there’s a good chance that your site didn’t help answer the user’s question. Since it’s difficult to measure, just identify pages with bounce rate and improve them. This information is easy to find in your analytic s and reports.
26. Making Sure You Have a Low Amount of Returning Visitors
Visitors who “frequent” your website shows that your site and content is “sticky” and that you’re offering some sort of value. A site that doesn’t have returning visitors has a low perceived value. If a site isn’t valuable to users, then it isn’t valuable to Google and you will have a hard time ranking.
27. Having Many 404 Errors and Broken Links
Having some is okay and is natural, but having an insane amount is annoying for the users, will really hurt your conversions, and will eventually impact your organic rankings.

Mobile and Responsive Dating Sites

28. Not Being Mobile Friendly
Your site should be mobile friendly (responsive) by now. If it’s not, then Panda or Google’s mobile algorithm is coming to get you very soon. Talk to your account manager about Dating Factory’s responsive templates.
29. Having a Site Loading Speed Of 10 + Seconds
Having a slow site is frustrating for your users, kills your conversions, and Panda hates it. If you’re serious about your site, then you’ll probably need to get off shared hosting because it’s a site speed killer.
30. Not Creating Contact, Terms of Service, Or Privacy Policy Pages
These pages help build trust for your website and without them your site looks sketchy. It’s easy to have them, so just do it to stay safe if anything.
31. Having No Business Address or Contact Information
Not every site needs to have an address visible (this true with a lot of white and private label dating sites), but some form of contact information should be available. This is particularly important if you’re dealing directly with customers who may have support questions/issues.
32. Using Poor Spelling and Grammar
Your content needs to go through an editorial process if you’re taking your site seriously. Double check always for errors and spelling mistakes.
33. Hiding and Making Your Text Invisible
If your users can’t see the text, then how can it help them? Don’t do this as is now considered “Black Hat” SEO. Find it hard to believe people still do this!
34. Stuffing Your META Tags
Don’t keyword stuff your META tags! Your META information is a good opportunity to rank for long tails outside of your main keyword. Use it wisely and don’t over-optimize.
35. Having Duplicate META tags
Some themes will actually use a default META description for pages that don’t have one. This is a terrible idea because it creates duplicate META descriptions across your site. It’s better to have no description, then it is to have a bunch of duplicates. Best advice is to write unique for every page.
The Good News about Panda Penalties…
Fortunately, Google’s Panda algorithm runs on at least a monthly basis and if you’re hit, the changes you make to recover will reflect pretty quickly. The good news is that all you need to do to recover in most circumstances is improve your website. Your dating website should be designed for the user. As long as you develop your site with this mind-set, you should never run into Panda penalty issues.