Imagine that as soon as you wake up and check your website’s traffic, you notice a sudden drop in its ranking and traffic. You feel like you have just gotten a speeding ticket even though you were not speeding in the first place.
You have actually gotten a Google penalty, and it’s something a lot of b2b brands and businesses get. But what is the logic behind it, and why have you been getting more Google penalties recently?
A good penalty is Google’s way of waving a flag and telling you that something is really off with your website.
It comes in two forms. Some are manually issued, while others hit automatically like a digital speed trap. So, what’s slowing you down, and why have you been getting Google penalties recently? Let’s break it down.
What is a Google Search penalty?
A Google search penalty occurs when a website is flagged as violating Google’s search engine. This results in a drop in rankings and a complete removal from search results.
These penalties are typically triggered by practices like keyword stuffing, black hat SEO audits, and backlinks.
There are two kinds of search engine penalties. They can either be manual, where an employer at Google will review a flagged site and send you a penalty, or automatic, where Google’s system issues it automatically through its penguin or panda updates.
The ultimate goal of any of these penalties is to ensure that the websites follow the best practices and offer a good user experience to their users.
Types of Search Engine Penalties
There are three main types of Search Engine penalties. Here is a brief explanation for each.
- Panda Penalty: You will get a panda penalty if you have a low-quality site that contains spam or poor content. The goal of the penalty is to ensure high-quality content on Google that is optimized for users.
- Penguin Penalty: Penguin penalties will focus on targeting websites that have a lot of artificial backlinks or over-optimized anchors. These penalties ensure that businesses do not manipulate Google algorithms to rank their websites higher on search engines.
- Fred Penalty: Fred penalizes websites with low-quality content and excessive ads. It evaluates the balance between ads and useful content. Moreover, it punishes spammy, revenue-driven sites while rewarding those offering a superior user experience.
Read More: Content Marketing Strategy Top 10 Ingredients of Crafting Compelling Content
Why Do Sites Get Google Penalties?
These are some of the most common reasons why sites face penalties from Google. If you want to avoid facing search engine penalties, be mindful of these practices.
| Reason for Google Penalty | Description | Example |
| 1. Stuffing of Keywords | If you are overusing your keywords in order to manipulate Google search rankings. | A blog post with “best shoes” repeated unnaturally in every line. |
| 2. Duplicate or Misleading Content | If you are posting identical, plagiarized, or extremely similar content from multiple pages across different websites. | A site is copying articles from another blog without modification. |
| 3. Paid or Spammy Backlinks | If you are acquiring low-quality and irrelevant or even paid backlinks, you may receive SEO penalties. | A website buying hundreds of backlinks from unrelated sources. |
| 4. Thin Content | If you are publishing content with little value, such as auto-generated pages or pages with very little original text. | A site with multiple product pages having only one-sentence descriptions. |
| 5. Cloaking Practices | If you are showing different content to search engines than what is visible to users. | A site presenting a page full of keywords to Google but displaying a flash page to visitors. |
What Happens When You Get a Penalty?
When you get a Google penalty, it means you are in serious trouble. In most cases, after receiving search engine penalties, you will not be able to appear on search results.
Additionally, you may not be able to rank for your target keywords or appear automatically on Google search results. Bummer right? The worst part is that your audience will no longer be able to find you. It is like you are suddenly invisible.
If these search engine penalties are so severe, why aren’t businesses more careful? The answer is quite simple. Many times, businesses are unaware that they are doing anything wrong.
They may simply be making honest efforts to improve the ranking of their sites. In doing so, they may unintentionally adopt some malpractice or use black hat SEO practices leading to an SEO penalty.
Market Pro can help you get over your penalty and get your site active again. We not only review your site but also help you make any changes necessary to rank again. You can outsource SEO management to get better results.
How To Know If Your Website Has Been Hit by a Penalty?
There are no foolproof methods to know when you have been hit by an algorithmic penalty, but here is how you can find out.
- Track SERP changes: If you notice that almost all your content is de-ranked or not appearing on positions it used to appear. You can use sites like Ahrefs or outsource to SEO agencies who can look into the matter for you.
- Track Organic Traffic: Choose a reference period on google analytics and compare your audience and traffic of now vs before. This will help you know whether your site has been hit by a Google penalty.
How Can I Recover from Google Penalties?
Before we discuss Google penalty recovery, let us first talk about the two ways in which you receive these penalties: Manual and Algorithmic. Here is how they are different.
- Manual Penalties: A Google employee administers them. This usually happens when your site does something against Google’s terms of service.
- Algorithmic Penalties: This happens automatically. When there is a change in Google’s algorithm, your site may be compared with other sites, which may affect its ranking and authority.
Now that you know the different kinds of search engine penalties, how do you recover from them? Here is how.
- Manual Penalties: In order to recover, you have to appeal to Google. Once you do that, your website may be indexed again, and your audience will be able to find you.
- Algorithmic Penalties: You will have to optimize your site better because algorithmic penalties such as Penguin or Panda are a result of your site having plagiarized, duplicate content or slow loading time.
Get your Websites Audited with Market Pro
Receiving Google penalties is not as big a deal as some businesses make it out to be. It can happen to you even when you do everything right. So if you receive SEO penalties or general search engine penalties, how do you recover from it?
Market Pro has a dedicated team of website developers, content writing assistants and SEO experts who can look into your websites, and identity issues and optimize them for search engines.
If you think that side is facing penalties, contact us and we will help you get in Google’s good books once again. Whether you are a startup or running YMYL sites, know that we can get any manual and algorithmic penalties fixed in no time.