{"id":25157,"date":"2023-02-28T14:42:52","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T14:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qreativa.com\/seo-penalty-what-it-is-how-to-resolve-it-and-how-to-prevent-it\/"},"modified":"2025-02-11T13:04:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T13:04:06","slug":"seo-penalty-what-it-is-how-to-resolve-it-and-how-to-prevent-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qreativa.com\/en\/seo-penalty-what-it-is-how-to-resolve-it-and-how-to-prevent-it\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO Penalty, what it is, how to resolve it and how to prevent it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As is known, SEO actions<\/strong> aim to optimize the website<\/a> and improve its ranking<\/a> primarily on Google, the most used of search engines<\/a>. To avoid abuses and excesses, the American giant, however, does not hesitate to penalize sites that try to circumvent the algorithms<\/strong> that establish the ranking. <\/p>\n\n

Therefore, using methods contrary to the main rules and best practices established by Google equals exposing oneself to penalties<\/strong> that can be very severe, such as sudden disappearance from the SERP, or a sudden drop in traffic resulting in demotion.<\/p>\n\n

This type of sanction has an impact on a site’s referencing<\/strong> 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.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n

What is a Google SEO penalty<\/h2>\n\n

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<\/a><\/strong>, particularly on strategic keywords and expressions on which its action plan is based, or even, for the most serious violations, inclusion in a blacklist<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe effect of the sanction is a\u201d sudden drop in traffic<\/strong>, and therefore loss of visibility and revenue.<\/p>\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n

Most of the time, Google’s sanctions are notified on the Search Console<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

\"seo<\/figure>\n\n

Practices that can lead to an SEO penalty<\/h2>\n\n

To be sanctioned by Google, it is necessary to have violated what the search engine considers its laws<\/strong>. Some practices are, in fact, discouraged and literally detested by Google’s algorithm. Here are some of the irregular actions that provoke sanctioning intervention. <\/p>\n\n

Unnatural and forced backlinks or from a low-quality site<\/h3>\n\n

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<\/strong> and that these backlinks might have been purchased or exchanged.<\/p>\n\n

Cloaking<\/h3>\n\n

It is a particularly effective black-hat<\/em> practice. It involves creating two different forms of content on the same page, one for site users and \u201cthe other for search engines. It’s complicated to combine optimized content<\/a> for SEO, and readable, coherent, and appreciable content for an Internet user. Cloaking immediately solves this problem, which is why\u201d the use of this practice is heavily sanctioned by Google<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

Keyword spamming<\/h3>\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n

Automatic content generation<\/h3>\n\n

Content automatically generated by algorithms like GPT-3 is considered spam<\/strong> and penalized by the search engine.<\/p>\n\n

Duplicate content<\/h3>\n\n

Google likes original content, if the website<\/a> or its content turns out to be a copy-paste from another website<\/strong>, 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<\/strong>. But we’ll talk about this later. <\/p>\n\n

This list of prohibited practices<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n\n

The Different Types of Google SEO Penalties<\/h2>\n\n

Google’s penalties can be both manual<\/strong> and directly generated by the algorithm, therefore automatic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

The Manual Penalty<\/h3>\n\n

As the name suggests, the manual penalty<\/strong>, which Google more accurately calls manual action<\/em>, is the result of a human decision<\/strong>. In this case, it is, in fact, the members of Google’s Quality Team<\/em> 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<\/strong> determined by the company. This can come from spam reports created by users. <\/p>\n\n

This type of penalty generally concerns the presence of artificial backlinks or a dubious netlinking strategy<\/strong>, 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<\/strong> after making the necessary corrections. <\/p>\n\n

The Algorithmic Penalty<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

The algorithmic penalty<\/strong> occurs most often following the \u201cupdate of the algorithm or the evolution of one of Google’s filters<\/strong>. Unlike manual penalties that are clearly notified on the\u201d Search Console interface, algorithmic penalties are harder to detect because they are not clearly stated<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

Essentially, Google’s filters<\/strong> are involved in the application of the algorithmic penalty:<\/p>\n\n

Very often, webmasters and SEO specialists detect the presence of an algorithmic penalty following the \u201cobservation of a very strong decrease in organic traffic<\/a>. By cross-referencing the date of the decrease in contacts with that of the\u201d algorithm update and the communications made on social networks about it, it is possible to infer the link between these two events. <\/p>\n\n