Punishments doled out by Google for violations of its policies or use of black hat SEO tactics, Google penalties are given both manually and algorithmically. If you’re unlucky enough to receive a Google penalty, your website will almost certainly suffer when it comes to ranking on the search engine results pages, and in some instances, may be removed from them altogether.
Does a Google penalty always spell trouble?
When you’re given a penalty by Google, your target audience will no longer be able to find you as you’ll no longer be listed on search results and your targeted keywords may have dropped significantly. If your audience can’t find you, they can’t buy from you, so ultimately, revenue will fall and your business will suffer.
Why do websites receive Google penalties?
If Google’s algorithms locate a website that is trying to manipulate the search results, they’ll issue a penalty as punishment for bringing down Google’s reputation, harming the product and giving users a negative experience.
Certain actions carried out by a website may result in an instant penalty from a Google employee, while others aren’t publicly advertised or can result in a rankings reduction over a period of time. The purpose of such penalties is always to protect Google from websites that are trying to outsmart it or manipulate the results.
Can Google penalties happen to any website?
In short, yes. While you may have been making what you believed to be honest efforts to improve the ranking of your site, you may still receive a penalty, and once you do, it isn’t always easy to rectify and return things to normal.
What are the two types of Google penalties?
There are two types of Google penalties: manual and algorithmic.
- Manual penalties – these are given out by Google employees, usually when a website is doing something that goes directly against Google’s Terms of Service. If you receive such a penalty, your first course of action is to make an appeal to Google to put your website back into the search engine results so that your audience can find you. Alternatively, you can have a digital marketing company do this for you.
- Algorithmic penalties – these are automatic and are typically the result of an algorithm that has been designed to rank websites in order of their value to the user. If you receive a penalty like this, while your website may still appear in the search engine results pages, its position will be much lower.
How easy is it to recover from a Google penalty?
The truth is that recovering from such a penalty isn’t always easy, and many businesses seek professional help from a digital marketing company to help them recover quickly, and successfully. Work with a digital marketing third party from the outset, and you can prevent Google penalties from ever becoming an issue.
Its not always easy to know if you’re likely to do something that incurs a Google penalty, but if you do receive one, the results can be catastrophic for your business. Because a digital marketing company that specializes in helping websites remove such penalties, will know exactly what search engines like to see, and what actions are likely to incur penalties, working with them can help you avoid them altogether. If avoiding a Google penalty is too late for you, however, you can certainly use their services to help you get quickly back on track and into Google’s good books again.