How to Avoid or Fix Google Penalties

In addition to today's article, we will feature the comments of the following experts from our Twitter Chat:

Google penalty is the negative hit to a website that violates Google's Webmaster guidelines.

If a website doesn't follow webmasters' best practices, then Google negatively hits that website and drops its rankings due to the unusual activities.

A website's rankings drop suddenly when Google hits a penalty on the website. Sometimes Google deindexes a website and stops to list in Google results too.

Typically, you'll come across two types of Google penalties, namely: manual action penalty and algorithmic penalty.

As the name suggests, a manual action penalty is issued by Google's reviewers.

Google employees regularly monitor your website to find out whether you're using any black hat SEO tactics. Your website receives a manual penalty if they detect a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. You will receive a notification in your Google Search Console dashboard and guidelines to rectify it.

Here are a few manipulative practices that attract manual action penalties:

• thin content providing little to no value;
• user-generated spam;
• keyword stuffing;
• cloaking/sneaky redirects;
• suspicious links to your website;
• unnatural links from your website;
• AMP data mismatch;
• security issues;
• structured data-related issues;
• hacked websites.

An algorithmic penalty occurs when a Google algorithm update negatively impacts your website. For instance, Google released the Penguin update in 2012 to eliminate low-quality websites. Thus, any website that indulged in link schemes or attracted unnatural backlinks suffered a hit in search engine ranking.

Likewise, Google rolled out the Hummingbird update in 2013 to deliver an improved user experience by prioritizing search intent. Consequently, websites that didn't satisfy the search intent behind a keyword witnessed a drop in their rankings and traffic. In addition to major updates, Google regularly rolls out minor changes to improve its search algorithm. That's why you must watch out for algorithmic penalties.

Moreover, such penalties are often more challenging to diagnose and fix. This is because Google doesn't send any notifications or guidelines. It's up to you to discover whether an update was recently released and learn more about it. Additionally, you need to find out the underlying problem that has triggered the penalty.

Google penalties are issued at the following levels:

You can't fix a Google penalty, manual or algorithmic, unless you know your website has been affected. Let's take a look at the techniques to identify Google penalties.

The most apparent indication of a Google penalty is that you will see a drop in your website rankings. It could be a sudden or gradual drop and can impact the whole website or some part of it.

Here are some sure-shot situations to know that your website has been penalized:

• Your brand is unable to rank on your brand name;
• Your top ranking keywords dropped their positions and slipped to the lower pages of SERP or have been lost;
• Google has deindexed the whole website. You are getting no results while using the site: search operator.

You should also check whether a competitor has recently outranked your website for specific keywords. Run a quick Google search for one of your target keywords and check the search result listings. If a competitor's website suddenly rises to the top, it will likely steal your traffic.

If you've ruled out the above factors, run a Google search for your brand name. Alternatively, you can run a Google search using the site operator site: (site:yourdomain.com). If your website doesn't appear in these results, it's time to get alarmed.

Next, head to the "Security and Manual Actions" section of your Google Search Console dashboard and click on the "Manual Actions" tab.

You'll see a notification if a manual penalty hits your website. Otherwise, it displays a green tick with the message "No issues detected."

Then probably your website has lost its traffic because of Google Algorithmic hit. So to confirm that, first, you need to know if Google recently rolled out a new algorithmic update. Here are some platforms that can help you:

• SERoundTable.com
• SearchEngineLand.com
• MozCast
• Digital Marketing VIP Facebook Group

Once you confirm that, you must figure out why the traffic drop, so you can fix the issues and recover your website traffic.

Having highlighted the topic in great detail, we wondered whether Google holds a grudge against a website or domain forever if it has been penalized in the past.

Let's see what our experts can tell about it:

Fixing Google penalties depends on whether you face a manual or algorithmic penalty. Irrespective of the type of penalty, you need to diagnose the underlying problem and rectify it.

The best thing about Google's manual actions is that Google explains the reason for the penalty. That makes it easier to understand, figure out, and fix the penalty.

If you receive a manual penalty, Google sends a notification on your Google Search Console dashboard. It mentions the reasons for the penalty and provides helpful guidelines to fix the problem.

Open your Google Search Console account and click on the "Manual Actions" tab under the "Security and Manual Actions" section in the left sidebar.

But If the section displays a green tick with the message "no issues detected, " your website doesn't have any manual penalties right now.

When you receive a manual penalty, Google explains the reason behind the penalty. This makes it easy to fix the problem. So, firstly, you must understand the meaning of the manual action type that Google indicated. Once you know your website's penalty, you should solve those issues.

For instance, you can remove the respective pages or improve the content if it's due to thin content. Likewise, you can disavow those links if it's due to suspicious backlinks. Google also provides links to guidelines that can help you fix more complicated issues.

Next, head to your Google Search Console account and submit a "Reconsideration Request" to Google. Ensure you include extensive details of all the steps you've taken to resolve the issue. Google authorities might ask for more information and documentation before approving your request. Even if denied the first time, you can resubmit your request after solving all the issues. Google can take a few weeks to months to review your request, so keep patience.

Identifying an algorithmic penalty is trickier because Google doesn't notify you before updating its algorithm. That's why you should closely monitor your website traffic and rankings. You should use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track your website performance and rankings. You need to check your Google Webmaster performance report to see the rankings drop. If you find a sharp ranking drop, then chances are that an algorithm update has negatively impacted your website.

To confirm that, you should search those dropped keywords on Google and find your site. If you don't see your website in its real position, then you should check all SERPs until you don't find your site or till reach the last list of SERP pages.

Next, check useful SEO resources on the internet to find out whether Google rolled out an algorithm update during that period. If there's been an algorithm change, you should read more about it to identify the issue. Understand how the update works and how it may have affected your website's ranking.

Google algorithms are just a set of rules that work to provide the desired outcome. So they don't hit any site specifically. That's why algorithm penalties are not penalties. But an algorithmic penalty can impact your website in many ways, directly or indirectly. For example, an algorithm update can reward your competitors. Maybe that's why you have lost your rankings. So, your website has no issues in this case, but competitors are the best option to rank there.

The best way to understand a Google penalty is to be familiar with how Google works and how an Algorithm update impacts websites.

For most webmasters, it is almost impossible to analyze an algorithmic update properly, especially Google Broad Core Updates. Even most SEO gurus don't know how to do that. Just finding similarities between top rewarded sites is not enough. There is a lot more. But it doesn't mean that you can't fix it!

Mainly, algorithm updates will impact your website if there are issues on your site. It can be related to the content, links, UI-UX, technical, or others. To figure out things correctly, you should perform a professional SEO Audit. It is the easiest and fastest method to recover from an Algorithm penalty.

An SEO audit will help you figure out all your website's issues. And once you figure out all the issues, you need to solve them one by one. And keep a record of everything.

Then wait to see what happens next. Whenever Google reevaluates data, you will get a boost if you have solved all the issues.

But precautions are better than cures! So, you should always try to keep your website safe from Google Penalties.

Technical SEO audit is the process of checking a site for internal technical issues and compliance with the requirements of search engines.

Carrying out an audit is correct if you receive a Google penalty. An SEO auditing allows you to find and fix errors and return to normal.

Google penalties can be scary and devastating. However, if you follow SEO best practices and properly manage your website, you can keep your website safe from Google penalties.

Search engines strive to deliver the best search experience to their users. That's why they have a penchant for websites that publish original, informative, relevant, and insightful content. Creating top-notch content reinforces your website's authority, credibility, and reputation. It also positions your website as a trusted source of valuable information.

Moreover, when you publish valuable content, other websites and bloggers will likely use it as a reference in their content. This, in turn, helps you earn genuine and high-quality backlinks. It won't be wrong to say that superb content is your website's lifeblood and SEO strategy. This is also a great way to minimize the devastating consequence of algorithm updates.

Moreover, your content must be well-structured and free of plagiarism and grammatical and spelling errors. It should fulfill the reader's search intent, address their pain points, and resolve their queries. It's also recommended that you create evergreen content that remains relevant years after it was first published.

But if you are still unsure what high-quality content is, here are some essential questions to ask yourself. If your answer for all is yes, then without any doubt, you are publishing high-quality content.

It's equally crucial to update your content and replace old statistics, data, and examples with the latest ones. Use images, graphics, and videos to make your content more engaging. Apart from blog posts, you should also focus on other content formats like e-books, whitepapers, checklists, etc. Lastly, you should optimize your content using relevant and popular keywords.

There was a time when you could rank high on Google by stuffing your content with a target keyword. However, indulging in this practice today can get your website penalized. Google has significantly improved its algorithm to prioritize keyword relevance and prominence over keyword density. Now Google can rank pages for those terms that the webpage doesn't have in its content. So don't focus on repeating keywords in the content.

You can add keywords in the title tag, meta description, image alt tags, and subheadings. Additionally, you should include the target keyword and its variations a few times in the main content where they need and fit naturally. Make sure you don't add keywords in your content forcefully. The key is to create meaningful and valuable content for real-life human users.

A solid inbound link profile is one of your SEO strategy's most important supporting pillars. In the early days of SEO, many webmasters got away with purchasing backlinks and adding spammy links. However, the scenario has completely changed.

It'll likely face a manual penalty if your website has many unnatural backlinks from low-authority websites. Therefore, you should ensure that all your backlinks are from credible, reputed, and high-authority websites. Additionally, these websites should be relevant to your niche.

You can check and monitor your Backlink profile using Google Search Console and tools like Serpstat. Serpstat Backlink Analysis Tool is a platform where you can check the following info:

Use different Serpstat reports to find low-quality backlinks that can lead to search engine penalties, identify high-quality backlinks of your competitors, and analyze backlink donors.

Look at each linking website and check its domain authority (DA) score. Moreover, you should analyze its content and determine whether it's related or relevant to your niche.

If there are any backlinks from irrelevant, suspicious, or low-quality websites, you should disavow them. You can use Google's Disavow Links tool for this purpose. It informs Google's crawlers to ignore specific backlinks while evaluating your website. You can also contact the owners/admins of the respective websites and ask them to remove the backlinks.

And needless to say, you should avoid buying backlinks from anyone. Instead, you should focus on publishing unique content that others would want to link to. This, in turn, will strengthen your reputation as a trusted powerhouse of information and keep you on Google's best friends list.

But if you want to get powerful links for your site, you should hire a professional SEO link-building company to help you get links. But buying links from platforms like Fiverr, Facebook Groups, etc., can harm your site.

Anchor text, the clickable text of a hyperlink, plays a crucial role in SEO. Judiciously using target keywords as anchor text can boost a web page's search engine ranking.

However, using the same keyword for multiple anchor texts on the same page can reward you with a penalty rather than a ranking boost. That's why you should use natural and branded anchor texts.

Your website should be clean and of high quality. Always use high-quality SEO-friendly themes for your website from reputable sources. A premium theme helps you manage your website correctly and assure you that your website is clean-coded and light-weighted.

Also, ensure that your users get a rich website experience. And for that:

• improve the page loading time;
• provide easier navigation structure;
• use high-quality images;
• be mobile-friendly;
• regularly post fresh and updated content;
• have a user-friendly website design.

Does Google penalize websites for having poor Core Web Vitals signals? Our main speaker Fili Wiese shared his point of view in our Twitter chat:

Guest posting continues to be a powerful way of attracting natural and high-quality backlinks. However, this strategy only works when you publish guest posts on authoritative blogs and websites relevant to your niche. Otherwise, you could face a Google penalty.

Recently, Google said guest posting is not an excellent link-building option. It can harm your website.

But guest posting is not a bad option if you know the real purpose of it. If you know this, then guest posting is a blessing. Don't write for any random publication. Only write for top publications so that they can boost your credibility and help you to grow your business.

Choosing good web hosting is also crucial for every business. Using low-quality hosting can impact your website performance and SEO rankings and can be a reason to hack your website. Sometimes server-side issues could be the reason for a Google penalty. That's why you should choose the best web hosting for your website.

Good web hosting keeps your website safe from hackers and spammers. Also, it helps your website load fast and rank higher on Google.

Getting a Google penalty is not the end of the world. You can recover your website from any Google penalty.

Yes, it may take some time to recover fully, so you should work on creating a user-friendly and valuable website for your audience to avoid the risk of getting penalized by Google. Follow the steps mentioned above to keep your website safe or to recover from any Google penalty.

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