If Google readily rewards websites that implement an SEO strategy combining quality and ethics by improving their positions in the SERP, the famous search engine like Google also grants penalties when questionable practices are suspected.
Using an SEO editor will allow you to offer Internet users and the Google algorithm quality content, without fear of retaliation.
Find out what a Google penalty is, its different forms, its main sources and the sanctions they entail, how to detect them, remedy them, and avoid them as well as our tip for not having to deal with them.
What is a Google penalty?
As in sports, Google penalties are there to sanction “bad behavior” or a “playing fault” (also called Black Hat SEO) in the world of natural referencing particularly favored by the search engine. In short, one or more elements and/or contents of your website do not correspond to the expectations specified in the webmaster instructions (or guidelines) of the GAFA member.
Its penalties have an immediate influence on your website and its ranking, therefore on its visibility and traffic. You will have to quickly spot them so as not to stay on the sidelines for too long and to limit their impact.
The different types of Google penalties
Thanks to a set of algorithmic and human filters, the search engine combs through all the pages on the web. 2 types of penalties can affect your site once it has been analyzed:
Manual penalty
It results from a complete analysis of your domain by members of the Google or Webspam quality team and is therefore assigned manually by a human being.
Without being an “SEO offender” with extremely questionable practices, your site may have been mentioned in Internet users’ spam reports, may contain pages with dead links, or present low-quality or poorly optimized content.
The manual penalty is the easiest to detect and resolve.
Algorithm penalty
An algorithmic penalty is generally assigned when an update or refresh is made to Google’s algorithms. The most famous are :
- Panda, which analyzes the quality and relevance of your content as well as the absence of duplicate content.
- Penguin, which looks at your netlinking and your internal networking, checking the quality of the links (backlinks and outgoing links) and whether any abuse is proven.
Having passed through these modified filters, your content, or the configuration of your site, no longer corresponds to the requested criteria, and all or part of your site is sanctioned.
The algorithmic penalty is more difficult to spot than a manual penalty, especially since most updates are not announced.
Find out: How To Choose an SEO Agency that works for you and avoids the Google penalty.
The main sources of Google penalties
The main causes of sanctions from the search engine often relate to the content of your pages and the links associated with them:
- Artificial links lead to or leave your site, leading to content that does not provide added value or is positioned on mostly unnatural optimized anchors.
- A massive addition of links in a very short period that can be considered unnatural.
- Poor quality content, too short, duplicated, not very informative, or with too much accumulation of keywords (overoptimization).
- Unstructured data makes it difficult for Google bots to understand your site and poor user experience.
- Non-corresponding AMP (Accelerated Media Page) content, with different content between web and mobile versions.
- The hiding of content (images, texts, or videos) and misleading redirections, may mislead users or offer different content to algorithms and Internet users (satellite pages).
However, other elements may lead to sanctions from Google:
- A hacked site demonstrates a vulnerability in your security.
- The association of your site with spam, whether by your actions (Black Hat) or by the actions of your host.
- Excessive or misleading purchasing practices or advertising for users.
- Negative SEO actions, Black Hat techniques used by competitors to have your site penalized by Google, such as the massive implementation of backlinks (external links referring to your site) of poor quality for example.
The consequences of a penalty from Google
Regardless of the type of penalty, your website will be impacted by being downgraded on a keyword, a URL, a subdomain, or on the entire domain (drop in search results ranking), deindexed (one or more pages may disappear from the SERP), or even blacklisted (your site disappears from Google searches).
In any case, traffic to your site will be impacted and you will have to do what is necessary to re-establish a situation of trust with Google so as not to lose the fruit of your efforts.
However, a drop in traffic on your site does not mean that Google has penalized you, and can come from crawling or server problems, a loss of audience over a particular period, the implementation of new competitors, change in the presentation of results in the search engine or the appearance of paid links.
How to detect a Google penalty?
To detect a penalty, use the Google Search Console tool, click on the “Security and Manual Actions” tab, then on “Manual Actions”. You will find the manual penalties carried out by Google Quality Raters, their why, as well as the recommendations and actions to be taken so that they are lifted.
If nothing appears, then you are certainly in the presence of an algorithmic penalty. Check in Google Analytics the modulations of your traffic to notice or not an anomaly, the dates of algorithmic updates on the Moz site and consult your positioning tools like OnCrawl or Monitorank to see if your site or pages have seen their positions fall.
How do I fix a Google penalty?
In the case of a manual penalty, follow the instructions in the Google Search Console and then request a review from the quality team from Google. Click on “Request a review” and provide all the changes you have made so that your request can be reviewed as quickly as possible. Everything should return to normal for your pages if the problem is resolved. A new exam may take several days or even weeks.
On the algorithmic penalty side, you will have no indication to guide you and you will have to carry out an audit to determine what are the causes of your traffic drop and treat them one by one. You can also consult the Moz site to identify algorithm changes and their implementation dates.
In any case, take the time to:
- Remove your duplicate content by locating it using Copyscape or Duplicate Content Checker.
- Reduce the number of advertisements to a maximum of 2 advertisements per page.
- Improve your content, by providing real added value to Internet users and by studying their expectations, without saturating your texts with keywords.
- Identify your backlinks and detect those coming from low-quality sites. You can request manual removal of the link from the site’s webmaster or use the “Disavow links to your site” command in Google Search Console.
However, you will not be able to request a review of your site, and you will have to wait for a new visit from Googlebots or a new update for your changes to be taken into account. You will likely have to wait several weeks for the penalty to eventually be lifted.
How to avoid Google penalties?
To avoid search engine penalties, delve into the Webmaster Guidelines to familiarize yourself immediately with best practices and avoid surprises to come.
Avoid “aggressive” or “confusing” behavior for users by overusing purchasing techniques or by soliciting them too often with pop-ups for example.
Look for the quality of your content without falling into the trap of overoptimizing it.
Finally, be transparent with Google by indicating your sources, and forget about attempts at concealment because you will, sooner or later, be uncovered. The ranking of your site is based on the trust granted by Google and your expertise.
Our tip for avoiding Google penalties
The Google penalties tell you that the firm’s best practices are not respected on your site and that you must take a certain amount of action. several modifications to end the sanctions.
To limit as much as possible the penalties linked to the content of your pages and the wrath of Panda and Penguin, you can use a writing platform, that will find writing professionals to optimize your texts and bring real added value to your readers by highlighting your expertise.
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