What is Google Penalty & How to Recover?

A Google penalty is a considerable punishment taken against a website when it violates the Google webmaster guidelines. Google penalties can impact a website’s ranking, or sometimes the penalties can remove them from search results altogether. Usually, it occurs when a website intentionally uses the “black hat” SEO technique or disobeys google policies. 

As a result, your potential audiences can no longer find your content, and your Website’s traffic ceases too. Since your revenue depends on your traffic, the incomes get affected similarly. Once penalty strikes, it becomes tough to build a good reputation on Google and bring the good rankings back. 

Types of penalties that Google can Levy on your Website

There is a difference between Google Algorithm Update and Google levying a penalty on your Website. For the common knowledge of all, if a website has implied black hat SEO techniques which means there has been a violation of rules, then Google penalises. In contrast, any algorithmic updates in Google affect the search results and ranking.

A list of Google penalties or manual actions taken by Google are:

• Spam generated by users
• Hosting services violates
• The issue with data structuring
• Website linked to an unknown source
• Website linked from unnatural sources
• Thin Content

1. Spam generated by users

When a visitor or user is using irrelevant links or content, this manual penalty is exercised by Google. Therefore, websites that accept non-regulated user-generated content have a high risk of being levied this penalty.

Spam content that visitors may generate are:

• Blog spammed by content
• Free hosts of spam accounts
• Spamming forum threads.
• Auto-generated posts/ profiles.

Regular monitoring of websites can protect you against such malicious spammers. Here’s how to save yourself from this penalty:

• Moderating the profile and comment section
• Restrict the comments on individual post
• Use of Captcha to avoid spamming
• User-generated link with no following features
• Spammers are to be blocked immediately

After removal, A user will submit the review request to the Google search console.

2. Hosting services violates

When the Hosting provider creates a website that violates the webmaster guidelines, that’s when this penalty hits your Website. Google takes a manual action of penalty when it finds that a handful of websites hosted by a particular service provider are spam and violates the guidelines. All the hosted websites will be penalised; if this penalty hits you, highly recommended to change the Hosting services provider.

3. Issue with Data Structuring

If, while monitoring Google finds that there has been a mismatch in laid out structure markup and the posted content, right away, this penalty will be levied on the Website. Furthermore, if the Website is not as per Structured Data Guidelines, Google will serve this penalty for such violation.

Before launching or changing the code of a website, ensure to follow the Structured data Guidelines and run the Website through the Structured Data Testing Tool to be on the safer side.

4. Website linked to an unknown source

Manipulation techniques used for building links or building links at scale or exchanging links are some of the practices exercised by SEO experts with a mindset to outrank the competitors. However, these practices are categorised as manipulating the search results and hence they are unnatural.

To avoid such a penalty, ensure to follow:

• Avoid getting into link-exchange plans.
• Abstain from connecting at scale utilising the specific keyword-rich anchor text.
• Screen the external connections through the pursuit control centre and attempt to eliminate any nasty connections found or repudiate them.
• Stay away from numerous visitor posts utilising the specific watchword rich anchor text.

5. Website linked from unnatural sources

Almost similar to the penalty mentioned above, the only difference being the above one stated that the other domain is the platform for our Website links. In contrast, this one specifies the outbound links.

To avoid being hit by this penalty:

• Never indulge in excessive link exchange
• No linking to useless domains
• Curb buying and selling of links

6. Thin Content

The moment Google detects low-quality content or valueless content, this penalty hits your Website. So always provide quality content that spreads out a value for onlookers.

Some examples of Thin Contents are:

• Affiliate link promotions
• Content generated automatically
• Low-quality content on a guest blog

Regular audits will help keep the Website up to date and avoid such penalties.

Tools and techniques to watch out from being marked by these silent killers (Google Penalty)

Many tools and other helpful techniques are available to help all the website launchers or other SEO practitioners ensure they don’t want to fall under Google’s penalty.

• Keep Reviewing Google Algorithm updates

• • • Panda (2011)
    • Penguin 4.0 (2012)
    • Hummingbird (2013)
    • Mobilegeddon (2015)
    • Rank Brain (2015)
    • Core (2017-present
    • Medic (2018)
    • Bert (2019)

Regular monitoring for Failures of BlackHat Seo 

Ranking problem detection

Optimisation of Google penalties by detecting

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the best way to stay out of Google’s watchful eyes?

Answer:

Create unique content, avoid getting into spammy links and make sure to diversify the anchor text, and There should be no plagiarized content.

2. How did the Penguin update change how Google rolled out penalties?

Answer:

Penguin was initially launched to tackle safe spam rather than poorly made sites. It worked on penalties that involved BlackHat Seo like cloaking, link exchanging, and keyword stuffing.

3. What is a Google penalty?

Answer:

A Google penalty is a considerable punishment against a website that violates the Google webmaster guidelines. Google penalties can impact a website’s ranking, or sometimes the penalties can remove them from search results altogether.

4. How to avoid being linked to and from Unnatural Sources?

Answer : 

• Avoid getting into link-exchange plans.
• Abstain from connecting at scale utilising the specific keyword-rich anchor text.
• Never indulge in excessive link exchange.
• No linking to useless domains
• Curb buying and selling of links

5. What are some of the updates rolled out to the Google search engine in the past decade?

Answer:     

• Panda (2011)
• Penguin 4.0 (2012)
• Hummingbird (2013)
• Mobilegeddon (2015)
• Rank Brain (2015)
• Core (2017-present
• Medic (2018)
• Bert (2019)

6. What are the types of penalties that Google can levy? 

Answer: 

• Cloaking
• Thin Contents
• Website linked to and from an unknown source
• User-generated Spam 
• Data structuring issues

Conclusion

A penalty placed by Google can seem like a significant roadblock for web admins and SEO, but following these tips, it can be smooth sailing to growth. First, keep yourself updated with the new and ongoing changes rolled out in the search engines. Then, ensure that your content is rolled out surgically instead of being posted at once, making it deemed to be spam.

At SIMBAA we provide high-quality google penalty removal services to businesses in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Goldcoast, and Adelaide. Reach out to us for a Free Discovery Call