A Google penalty is a punishment action taken against a website for violating Google’s quality policies in their webmaster guidelines.
Also known as manual actions these penalties can result in lower rankings or removal from search results and can significantly drop the site’s organic search traffic.
In the worst cases, a Google penalty can result in completely removing your website from the Google search results.
Most websites are penalised for using deceptive practices to manipulate Google’s algorithm.
This is common for website owners who use black hat SEO strategies.
There are two primary types of Google penalties:
Most Google penalties are algorithm-based.
Google’s machine learning algorithms identify about 99% of all web spam, which can be up to 40 billion pages daily! The other 1% of spam is dealt with through manual penalties.
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What Will I Learn?
The most common causes for Google penalties are:
Don’t get caught in the trap of trying to “hack” Google’s algorithm.
Focus on white hat SEO strategies like creating high-quality content people want to read.
There are three ways to know if you’ve been penalised:
Pay close attention to your rankings and traffic. If you see significant sudden drops, it’s a good indication that something is wrong.
Google will often notify you through Google Search Console and tell you which URLs are affected.
How to recover from a Google penalty in 4 steps:
I won’t lie to you…
Google penalty recovery is hard work. There are a lot of factors and Google isn’t exactly straightforward about the recovery process.
If you aren’t confident, hire an SEO agency specialising in Google penalty recovery services.
They will have all of the tools, knowledge and experience to get you back on your feet!
The easiest way to check if you’ve been penalised is through Google Search Console.
Login to Google Search Console, click “Security & Manual Actions”, then Click “Manual Actions”.
If there is a manual action, all the details will be here.
No manual action?
You need to run a website audit to identify any errors on your site.
Think of the audit like going through your website with a fine-tooth comb to weed out any problems.
Check out our website audit tutorial to learn the entire auditing process.
This part is pretty straightforward…
Once you’ve identified the issues, you need to take the right steps to fix them.
Remove or disavow unnatural links. Delete any duplicate content on your website. Rewrite any AI or auto-generated content.
The most important thing is that you don’t cut corners.
Spend the time necessary to fix the issues and get the penalty removed.
You can request a “reconsideration” from Google if the penalty was a manual action.
Once you’ve fixed the issue, ask the Google team to review your changes.
If you have fixed the problem correctly, they should remove the penalty from your website in about 10 to 30 days.
With Algorithmic penalties, you’ll just have to wait for Google’s algorithm to notice the fixes you’ve made.
Check out our complete Google penalty recovery process tutorial to learn more.
Manual Google Penalties can take 10 to 30 days after you’ve fixed the issues. This will ultimately depend on how long a Google team member takes to review your changes.
Don’t forget to message them in Google Search Console to speed up the process.
Algorithm Google Penalties can take up to 6+ months before the penalties are removed and traffic starts to return.
Many factors will affect how long it takes because you need to rebuild trust with Google’s algorithm again.
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