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 also imposes penalties when dubious practices are suspected.
Hiring a SEO copywriter will allow you to offer internet users and Google's algorithm quality content, without fear of reprisals.
Discover what a Google penalty, its different forms, main sources and the penalties they entail, how to detect them, fix them and avoid them, and our tip for not having to deal with them.
What is a Google penalty?
Like in sports, the Google penalties are there to punish “bad behavior” or a “foul” (also called Black Hat SEO) in the world of natural search favored by the search engine. In short, one or more elements and/or pieces of content on your website do not meet the expectations specified in the webmaster guidelines of the GAFA member.
Its penalties have an immediate impact on your website and its ranking, therefore on its visibility and traffic. You should detect them quickly so you don't stay on the sidelines too long and can limit their impact.
The different types of Google penalties
Thanks to a set of algorithmic and human filters, the search engine combs through all web pages. Two 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 Google's Quality or Webspam team and is therefore applied manually by a human.
Without being an “SEO offender” with extremely dubious practices, your site may have been mentioned in users' spam reports, may contain pages with dead links, or may present low-quality or poorly optimized content.
The manual penalty is the easiest to detect and resolve.
Algorithmic penalty
An algorithmic penalty is generally applied when an update or refresh is made to Google's algorithms. The best known are:
- Panda, which analyzes the quality and relevance of your content as well as the absence of duplicate content.
- Penguin, which looks at your link building and internal linking, checking the quality of links (backlinks and outbound links) and whether any abuse is evident.
Having passed through these modified filters, your content or your site's configuration no longer meet the required criteria and all or part of your site is penalized.
The algorithmic penalty is harder to detect than a manual penalty, especially since most updates are not announced.
The main sources of Google penalties
The main causes of sanctions from the search engine often concern the content of your pages and the links associated with them:
- Artificial links pointing to or from your site, leading to content that adds no value or using anchors that are mostly unnaturally optimized.
- A massive addition of links within a very short period that may be considered unnatural.
- Low-quality content that is too short, duplicated, uninformative, or showing an excessive accumulation of keywords (over-optimization).
- Poorly structured data, making your site difficult for Googlebots to understand and resulting in a poor user experience.
- Mismatched AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) content, with different content between the web and mobile versions.
- Cloaking content (images, text, or videos) and deceptive redirects that can mislead users or present different content to algorithms and visitors (doorway pages).
However, other elements can lead to sanctions from Google:
- A hacked site, indicating a security breach.
- Association of your site with spam, whether through your own actions (Black Hat) or those of your host.
- Excessive or deceptive purchasing practices or advertisements that mislead users.
- Negative SEO actions, Black Hat techniques used by competitors to get your site penalized by Google, such as the mass creation of low-quality backlinks (external links pointing to your site).
Consequences of a Google penalty
Whatever the type of penalty, your website will be affected by being downgraded for a keyword, a URL, a subdomain or the entire domain (drop in search results rankings), deindexed (one or more pages may disappear from the SERP), or even blacklisted (your site disappears from Google search).
In any case, traffic to your site will be affected and you will need to take steps to restore a relationship of trust with Google so you do not lose the results of your efforts.
However, a drop in traffic to your site does not necessarily mean that Google has penalized you; it can result from crawling or server issues, a loss of audience during a particular period, the appearance of new competitors, changes in how results are presented in the search engine, or the emergence of paid links.
How to detect a Google penalty?
To detect a penalty, use the Google Search Console tool, click on the “Security & Manual Actions” tab, then on “Manual Actions.” There you will find the manual penalties applied by Google's Quality Raters, their reasons, as well as the recommendations and actions to take to have them lifted.
If nothing appears, then you are likely facing an algorithmic penalty. Check the fluctuations in your traffic in Google Analytics to determine whether there is an anomaly, check the dates of algorithmic updates on the Moz site, and consult your rank-tracking tools like OnCrawl or Monitorank to see if your site or pages have lost positions.
How to remedy a Google penalty?
In the case of a manual penalty, follow the instructions in Google Search Console and then request a review from Google's quality team. Click “Request Review” and provide all the changes you have made so that your request can be processed as quickly as possible. Everything should return to normal for your pages if the issue is resolved. A new review can take several days or even several weeks.
On the algorithmic penalty side, you will have no guidance and will need to carry out an audit to determine the causes of your traffic drop and address them one by one. You can also consult the Moz website to identify algorithm changes and their rollout dates.
In any case, take the time to:
- Remove your duplicate content by locating it with Copyscape or Duplicate Content Checker.
- Reduce the number of ads to a maximum of two per page.
- Improve your content by providing real added value to users and studying their expectations, without saturating your text with keywords.
- Identify your backlinks and detect those from low-quality sites. You can request manual removal from the site's webmaster or use the "Disavow links to your site" feature in Google Search Console.
However, you will not be able to request a site review, and you will have to wait for another crawl by 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 be lifted, if it is.
How to avoid Google penalties?
To avoid search engine penaltiesDive into the Webmaster Guidelines to become familiar right away with best practices and avoid future surprises.
Avoid “aggressive” or “disruptive” behaviors for users, such as abusing purchasing techniques or repeatedly bombarding them with pop-ups, for example.
Aim for high-quality content without falling into the trap of over-optimizing it.
Finally, be transparent with Google by indicating your sources, and forget attempts to hide things because sooner or later you will be found out. Your site's ranking depends on the trust Google places in you and on your expertise.
Our tip for avoiding Google penalties
The Google penalties indicate to you that the company's best practices are not being followed on your site and that you need to make a number of changes to end the sanctions.
To minimize penalties related to your page content and the wrath of Panda and Penguin as much as possible, you can call on a writing platformwhich will find professional writers to optimize your texts and bring real added value to your readers by highlighting your expertise.
The article Google penalty: how to recognize it and recover? first appeared on Redacteur.com.
