As is known, SEO actions aim to optimize the website and improve its ranking primarily on Google, the most used of search engines. To avoid abuses and excesses, the American giant, however, does not hesitate to penalize sites that try to circumvent the algorithms that establish the ranking.
Therefore, using methods contrary to the main rules and best practices established by Google equals exposing oneself to penalties that can be very severe, such as sudden disappearance from the SERP, or a sudden drop in traffic resulting in demotion.
This type of sanction has an impact on a site’s referencing and leads to a loss of visibility in search results, greatly penalizing the site’s profitability. This is why our advice is to turn, if possible, to SEO specialists and request a professional SEO consultation.
What is a Google SEO penalty
When Google detects that a site’s SEO actions are contrary to its code of good conduct, it adopts necessary measures through sanctions that often have as an immediate repercussion the decline of the site on the SERP, particularly on strategic keywords and expressions on which its action plan is based, or even, for the most serious violations, inclusion in a blacklist.
“The effect of the sanction is a” sudden drop in traffic, and therefore loss of visibility and revenue.
Once the penalty is imposed, webmasters and SEO managers must correct the detected errors as quickly as possible and then wait, with great patience, for the site to return to its initial position.
Most of the time, Google’s sanctions are notified on the Search Console.
Practices that can lead to an SEO penalty
To be sanctioned by Google, it is necessary to have violated what the search engine considers its laws. Some practices are, in fact, discouraged and literally detested by Google’s algorithm. Here are some of the irregular actions that provoke sanctioning intervention.
Unnatural and forced backlinks or from a low-quality site
If Google suddenly detects too many backlinks from different sites pointing to one site or too many backlinks from a single site pointing to another, it understands that the adopted netlinking strategy is not natural and that these backlinks might have been purchased or exchanged.
Cloaking
It is a particularly effective black-hat practice. It involves creating two different forms of content on the same page, one for site users and “the other for search engines. It’s complicated to combine optimized content for SEO, and readable, coherent, and appreciable content for an Internet user. Cloaking immediately solves this problem, which is why” the use of this practice is heavily sanctioned by Google.
Keyword spamming
It’s no secret that spamming a single keyword within a page is not something to do. Google might take this as an attempt to hijack its algorithm. Moreover, and we can’t stress this enough, whether it’s about the number of keywords or content, quantity does not mean quality or relevance.
Automatic content generation
Content automatically generated by algorithms like GPT-3 is considered spam and penalized by the search engine.
Duplicate content
Google likes original content, if the website or its content turns out to be a copy-paste from another website, it will proceed with a sanction or an automatic complaint from the site from which the content was copied, and this will result in a manual sanction. But we’ll talk about this later.
This list of prohibited practices, of course, is not exhaustive and the practices sanctioned by Google are never set in stone, but are, at any time, subject to changes based on the evolution of its algorithms.
The Different Types of Google SEO Penalties
Google’s penalties can be both manual and directly generated by the algorithm, therefore automatic.
The Manual Penalty
As the name suggests, the manual penalty, which Google more accurately calls manual action, is the result of a human decision. In this case, it is, in fact, the members of Google’s Quality Team who decide to apply the penalty to a site that has violated the rules. As the name suggests, these penalties are executed manually following a suspected violation of the guidelines determined by the company. This can come from spam reports created by users.
This type of penalty generally concerns the presence of artificial backlinks or a dubious netlinking strategy, practices on which Google is, to say the least, unforgiving. To hope to regain one’s position on the SERP, it is necessary to request a review after making the necessary corrections.
The Algorithmic Penalty
The algorithmic penalty occurs most often following the “update of the algorithm or the evolution of one of Google’s filters. Unlike manual penalties that are clearly notified on the” Search Console interface, algorithmic penalties are harder to detect because they are not clearly stated.
Very often, webmasters and SEO specialists detect the presence of an algorithmic penalty following the “observation of a very strong decrease in organic traffic. By cross-referencing the date of the decrease in contacts with that of the” algorithm update and the communications made on social networks about it, it is possible to infer the link between these two events.
Essentially, Google’s filters are involved in the application of the algorithmic penalty:
- The Panda filter analyzes the site’s content and verifies that it is relevant and unique or not duplicated. The penalty can affect the entire site or individual pages.
- The Penguin filter is responsible for “analyzing the good quality of links on a website. It analyzes the” anchor of the hyperlink, or backlink, and its consistency. Since quality backlinks greatly improve SEO, tracking artificial links is particularly important for Google.
- The Fred filter, finally, checks the quality of the content.
The Main Google Penalties
Over the years, Google has updated its algorithms and the way it judges and ranks the relevance of pages and websites. This is why SEO practices have evolved so much.
However, although Google has designed and implemented countless algorithms, there are some that must absolutely be understood and analyzed to avoid incurring heavy penalties, and they are those mentioned in the previous paragraph.
The “Panda algorithm and the” overall analysis of the website
Behind this “innocent-sounding name hides a very severe penalty that has been shaking up SERPs since 2011. The mission of this Google filter is to identify low-quality sites and combat spam. The” Panda algorithm can target the “entire site or specific pages. Penalties can stem from various elements, which complicates the” implementation of corrective measures.
Here are the various practices monitored by the Panda algorithm that can lead to an SEO penalty:
- The appearance of too many external links in a very short period of time, meaning they are paid-for links.
- Every good SEO specialist knows that a user should be able to access any page in less than three clicks. A site that’s too deep means poor indexing of the site’s pages with negative effects on relevance and user experience.
- A user leaves a website within 3 seconds if a page doesn’t load quickly enough. This means that the website in question is too heavy because it contains an infinite number of elements to load. In addition to increasing the bounce rate, for Google this means that the site is not of high quality.
- Cloaking: let’s revisit this practice particularly hated by Google. Before the arrival of the Panda algorithm to refresh the SERP, one of the preferred practices of SEO specialists was to insert many keywords written in white on a white background. These keywords were invisible to the
user. Now they are, instead, detected by Google’s bot which considers them negatively in terms of user experience.
- Keyword spam or keyword stuffing, that is, inserting a certain keyword multiple times, is a practice that can endanger the sustainability of the website. This affects the
user’s
experience and the readability of the text, and since Google places the quality of UX at the center of its concerns, this will inevitably affect the natural referencing of the site.
The Penguin algorithm: focus on website backlinking
The second algorithm we’re talking about was developed and implemented by Google in 2012, a year after Panda. Penguin primarily revolves around backlinking, thus, the quality of links and their anchors.
Here’s what the Penguin algorithm monitors:
- How many links the website has registered in a single period, because too many will seem suspicious.
- Which sites the links come from: if you get multiple backlinks from the same site, it’s usually not a good sign and Google intervenes with a penalty.
- Quality of backlinks: Penguin investigates the quality of backlinks. It asks, that is, if they come from sites with the same theme, if they are coherent links, if the anchors are optimized or not, if the ratio between dofollow and nofollow links is sufficiently high (a ratio of 80-90% is preferable).
As is evident, Penguin, unlike Panda, focuses mainly on backlinking, its quality, the “optimization of anchors and the” origin of these links. The quality of the website’s backlinking will therefore determine its relevance and authority for Google.
The Fred algorithm: the penalty for low-quality content
The last algorithm that can trigger SEO penalization is simply called Fred. After Panda, which was a rather generalist algorithm, and Penguin, which was more focused on backlinking, Fred focuses on the website’s content. In particular, it analyzes the quality of the site’s content and promotes a better UX.
Here are the practices that Fred doesn’t like and that can lead to an SEO penalty:
- Too many ads: the advertising/content ratio is a quality criterion for a website. If the
latter has too many ads and not enough content, it can significantly deteriorate the
user’sexperience and, therefore, undermine its quality. The first victims of Fred were, not surprisingly, sites full of all kinds of advertising. The most affected by the action of this algorithm are all sites that have chosen to bet on
affiliation, multiplying links from the home page. It seems that Fred calculates the percentage of content compared to advertising and punishes those with a ratio that’s too high. - A poorly constructed site: the pages of the site must be coherent. Siloing consists of organizing a site according to the categories of products or services offered. Pages with content dissonant from the site’s architecture incur penalization.
- Non-diversified content: the absence of images and videos significantly degrades the user experience. Too much text makes a web page heavy to read. To avoid being penalized by Fred, it’s good to pay the utmost attention to content diversification, alternating text and graphics in equal measure.
How to detect a Google penalty
If it’s a manual penalty, the website administrator is notified of the penalty. A notification explaining the reasons for the penalty is, in fact, sent through Google’s Search Console tool. The information appears in the Security and Manual Actions tab, under Manual Actions. Additionally, recommended actions to revoke the penalty are notified.
If no communications are received on the Search Console and unusual and unexplainable changes in the site’s traffic and positioning are noticed, it’s likely to be an algorithmic penalty. To identify this type of penalty, it’s necessary to monitor the site’s traffic fluctuations through Google Analytics, which is a good indicator in case of statistical anomalies.
Ranking tracking tools are key allies in detecting an algorithmic penalty. They allow both tracking a site’s positioning on search engines and performing an audit to identify factors that may impact this positioning. It’s important to keep in mind that a drop in ranking in search results can also be due to a change in Google’s algorithm. It is therefore recommended, as already mentioned, to compare the date when the site began to lose traffic with that of a possible Google update.
What are the consequences of a Google SEO penalty
Google SEO penalties can have different consequences, all quite serious:
- Downgrade: a sudden drop in the site’s ranking is observed.
- De-indexing: in case of duplicate pages, these disappear from search results.
- Blacklisting: the site simply disappears from Google’s SERP and no longer appears in search results.
How to react to an SEO penalty?
A penalty is not irreversible. To address it, several actions are possible.
If it’s a penalty related to content, the possible actions to take are highlighted below:
- Remove duplicate content: any automatically generated or filler content should be identified and removed immediately. You can use duplicate content detection tools on a site, such as Kill Duplicate, Copyscape, or Duplicate Content Checker.
- Monitor keyword usage: keyword stuffing is strongly discouraged and damages SEO. To remedy this bad, terrible for Google, practice, you can revise and rewrite repetitive passages composed of many keywords.
- Add high value-added content: it’s essential to offer impactful content for readers. To do this, you must analyze your target audience’s expectations, define a precise and coherent editorial line, and create relevant, sufficiently long, and well-structured content.
- Reduce the number of advertisements: a site saturated with ads has a high chance of being penalized by Google. Normally, there shouldn’t be more than two per page.
If the penalty concerns link quality instead, it’s first essential to identify the backlinks that carry significant weight in referencing a website. Indeed, penalties related to these are the most common.
Several SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush have features that allow analyzing external links pointing to the site. Google’s Search Console also allows examining backlinks from the Links to your site section. In particular, to remedy the penalty, you should trace back to recent links added shortly before the penalty was applied.
It’s also appropriate to detect links from spam sites that can significantly affect SEO.
To remove unnatural links, you can use the disavow incoming links function, accessible from Google Search Console.
How to avoid penalties and how to remedy if penalized
Google tries in every way to enforce its law by implementing filters and algorithms to penalize sites that break the rules. While following the evolution of trends and new search-related issues, Google’s objective remains unchanged: to satisfy the user’s request as much as possible with increasingly relevant results
.
Careful monitoring of SEO trends and regular monitoring of site indicators are good habits to adopt. The main challenge is, in fact, to react promptly to penalization: the more time passes, the more difficult the recovery will be!
This is especially true if the site is mainly based on organic traffic and, therefore, coming from the search engine. Avoiding SEO penalties, respecting Google’s quality criteria, and using natural practices obviously remains the only way to prevent your site from being downgraded or disappearing from the SERPs in the worst case.
The “SEO agency Qreativa is the solution you’re looking for if you’ve noticed an unusual drop in traffic, evident position slips, or even worse, the pure and simple disappearance of pages from the search engine: all signs of” Google’s punitive intervention!
To remedy this as quickly as possible, our team of experts will work on the content and links, optimizing your site’s architecture and advising you on all necessary actions to recover.
Qreativa is also at your disposal even if you haven’t encountered any of the mentioned anomalies. A check of your site can prevent future penalties: why treat when you can prevent?
