Quick Summary: Google penalties are the boogeymen of digital marketing. Everybody is scared of them. Nobody wants to sleep on Google’s bad side and wake up to see their strong, tall buildings (sites) demolished the next day.
Google penalties are the boogeymen of digital marketing. Everybody is scared of them. Nobody wants to sleep on Google’s bad side and wake up to see their strong, tall buildings (sites) demolished next day. Indeed, the consequences can be disastrous from SEO perspective – lost organic search visibility, declined traffic, falling revenue, among others. Google is very unforgiving and severe to all the sites that violate their webmaster guidelines. And once the site is penalized, trust us, it gets really difficult to fully recover from it.
So, go for prevention first but God forbid if it happens, then know how to cope with it. This article explains what are the penalties, what is being penalized, what’s allowed and how to work around to deal with and/or prevent Google penalties.
It is a negative impact of the site’s organic search rankings due to non-compliance with Google’s algorithms updates and/or manual actions.
It takes us back to 1998 when Google was warming up on its core mission to give its users access to accurate, unique, and written information by “experts.” Businesses soon started realizing the importance of high ranks on search engine pages, and then the war for the first page on the SERP began. Various techniques were experimented with like keyword stuffing, invisible text, etc in order to trick Google’s algorithms which went against Google’s core mission. To deal with this fundamental problem, Google started updating its algorithms that would hunt for any possible traces of spammy links, SEO tricks, unnatural use of language, among others.
The objective was to give each website the exposure it deserves and to deliver on its core mission for users. And things began to improve in quality, ranks, and user experience. Businesses began to rank higher and users began to find information quickly and easily.
In two ways actually: Manual Penalty & Algorithmic Penalty
Among many Black Hat SEO practices for which you could be penalized, a few are listed below:
If the content on your site is either duplicate or you think content spinning is smart. Besides plagiarism, Google penalizes low quality of your content and if it doesn’t find it unique, innovative and informative so that users do not have to go to another site in search of information. Why waste time in creating content that is already available to users elsewhere?
If you distort the content and through deceptive redirects, you are making search engines believe that your website deals with different content.
If you buy link or participate in link exchange which means you place a link to a website on your site and in exchange the other site places your link on their site. Google removes sites that have unnatural links and sites with anchor text optimization.
If you use excessive keywords in your content and give an impression to Google that site content is of poor quality, and less valuable and useful for the user.
If you compromise user mobile experience by giving intrusive ads, pop-ups, standalone interstitials that block the screen.
If your site annoys both users and search engines with slow load time. Nobody has time to wait for a website to load content more than few seconds. If it doesn’t load in 4-5 seconds, we move out and do not return to that site. Same goes for Google.
If you make excessive use of H1 tags and gives an impression to Google that you’re stuffing content with keywords. Filling content with H1 tags in order to make content look well-structured attracts penalties.
If you do not pay attention to error 404 or broken links and do not periodically keep your links updated, thereby compromising user experience, you make Google think you’re careless about users.
If you directly violate Webmaster’s guidelines and have noncompliance issues such as Payday Loan Penalty, Panda Penalty, Penguin Penalty, and other.
If you sidelined site optimization for mobile experience in today’s times when most of the searches are made through mobile.
If you do not monitor your site for spam comments which links users to other sites which are not related to your content, Google thinks you’re hardly bothered about your site and its content.
Now that you have some idea about what Google Penalty is and what are the types, let look at the ways to stay away from them.
The best way is to stay away from grey areas, follow Google’s guidelines, and stay aligned with Google’s core mission which is all about users’ experience and information to users.
Here are a few things you can apply to stay away from this trouble.
Check for compliances, content quality, keyword stuffing, spam links, image tags, and tens of other parameters on audit checklist. This will reveal hidden issues and gaps and half of the work is done. Take actions next to check off all ticks on the list.
Do some digging on spammy backlinks and get the list from Google Webmaster Tools. Mail the list to Webmaster asking to remove the links. Use the disavow tool in case Webmaster doesn’t respond. Don’t forget to optimize your anchor text.
Put together a good package of high quality and unique content on your site. Make judicious use of videos, images, infographics to make people love what they read and want to share. The links will come then and will increase your SERP ranks.
Stay updated with Google’s algorithms. Read Google’s rules again and follow them, which should not be difficult if you can stop thinking how to manipulate algorithms and stick to what Google values.
Earn Google’s trust by building brand signals in your site and among social networks. Make a professional website. Maintain social media profiles. Use branding colours on your profile and posts. Use the brand name as an anchor text while building your backlinks.
If your site doesn’t load in 3 seconds, an average user will leave your site. To boost site’s loading speed by things such as optimizing images, removing unnecessary plugins and files, using CDN, using fast and secure web hosting services, among others.
SEO is a long-term process. You cannot just bring a website on top ranks in a matter of days. And stay away from such individuals who claim to give you “guaranteed results.”
A few more actions you can take to avoid penalties:
The website is a vulnerable asset. Understand first what caused it. Remove the causes. Follow the compliances. Never forget the end-user and Google’s core mission. Create content for the user, not for Google. And that is how you are most likely to wake up every day on Google’s good side.
Are you struggling with Google Penalties? Do you need help on taking measures to protect your site from these? Our experts are always here for you. Talk to our team today.
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