The giant Google holds a power that is often underestimated by Internet users. However, its control over your websites is not to be taken lightly. Between SEO, features and sanctions, it is better to understand how Google works. For this, Optimum Circle is now interested in the penalties that Google can impose, why, and how to avoid them?
What are Google penalties?
When can we face these penalties?
Google regularly penalizes websites of all kinds. Indeed, several criteria are taken into account in order to determine whether or not a website complies with the rules imposed by Google. So, if you find yourself exposed to penalties, several reasons may be involved.
This is particularly the case if your site is the source of:
- too many spam emails
- Hacking
- Keyword “stuffing”
- Non-qualitative content: no added value, plagiarism
- Hidden images
- Unnatural links (incoming or outgoing)
What types of penalties are there?
When Google makes the decision to sanction a website, it can be done in two different ways.
First, there are the manual penalties, which are handled directly by Google staff. This intervenes following warnings received from Internet users or automated. These employees of the “quality team” analyze themselves any possible infringements of the websites. If their suspicions about your site are confirmed, you risk an in-depth study of your domain and then risk a heavier sentence according to the rules broken. This type of situation occurs particularly during reports of spam, for example. When your site is manually sanctioned, you are notified with a Google notification. The latter gives you the precise reason why you are being sanctioned. To remedy this, tips and recommendations will also be made available to you by Google.
Algorithmic penalty
At the same time, there are penalties resulting from algorithms. In this case, the penalties are generated by the algorithms of Google itself. So no human intervention is involved in the first place. These algorithms capable of sanctioning websites are two in number:
- Google Penguin (or Penguin), rages when the infringement relates to the links of the website. The “backlinks” are particularly watched, being more and more used to try to gain ranks in referencing (SEO). This algorithm therefore judges the usefulness and nature of your links and is able to penalize you if you do not respect the protocol imposed by Google.
- Google Panda, for its part, judges the very quality of your content published on your web pages. So, if what you are offering is cheeky, untrue, or even copied from another website, then you risk being penalized by Google for its algorithm.
You should know that these algorithms mainly sanction following updates from Google. This is because the search engine improves its algorithms over time, and the latter are then more and more efficient at detecting infringements. In addition, you should know that algorithmic sanctions are not notified. This means that in order to be aware of it, you must watch out for any changes in the level of traffic generated by your site.
What happens after a Google penalty?
The consequences of sanctions on your website
Usually, the bad effects that occur after a Google penalty are noticed very quickly if you keep track of your website statistics. Indeed, in the event of a sanction, your site’s SEO will collapse, which will have immediate consequences on your traffic. Also, some pages may disappear if the breaches of the rules are on them precisely. In the worst case, your entire site is at risk of being removed from the search engine.
What to do when your site is subject to Google penalties?
First of all, if your penalty relates to your content, rest assured, you can easily remedy it. If this is a qualitative issue, try to suggest things that are more relevant, which add real value. If you have duplicate content, re-read every page on your site and delete what appears multiple times. During this review, also make sure that your keyword usage is kept reasonable and is not the result of abuse. This would be considered spam by Google and will be frowned upon.
If your penalty relates more to your external and / or internal links, be aware that there are many tools available to analyze them and determine their usefulness and quality. To name just two examples, you can use Ahrefs or SEMrush, which will detect problematic links.
Once all of this is done, you can ask Google to re-evaluate your website, or you will have to wait for its next update so that it can be reconsidered.