The penalty is a common word in Football Language; when a player breaks the rules of the game, he is penalized for his action.

Google can penalize too, of course not players, but websites. and top advertising agencies in Egypt care about understanding What is Google Penalty?  Let’s find out.

What is Google Penalty?

Google is the most popular Search Engine today, what makes Google gain this unique position, is putting their user’s experience as a top priority.

Google gives its users accurate information, the most relevant search results, and provides them with many other services. Business owners and marketers are making their best to rank on Google to reach the right audience.

There is something in the marketing language called: Black hat SEO. It refers to unethical marketing tactics; most of them are breaking Google’s rules.

When a website does something that breaks Google’s rules, it will be penalized. Unfortunately, Google penalty is the last thing you want to experience; because it means:

• Your website will be dropped down in ranking.
• You will no longer appear to your audience because the entire website will be removed from Google’s Cached Search Results.
• The final result is; all your efforts and money will be wasted.

When to get a Google Penalty?

To avoid this situation; you should ask: “when to get Google Penalty?”, actually; it can happen to any website. And there are two types of Google Penalties:

1- Automatic; Google algorithms deal with them, like Panda, and Penguin.

2- Manually handled by a Google employee.

There are many reasons for Google Penalties, Let us discuss most of them together:

1- Duplicate Content:

Content is a big part of the ranking. Duplicate and Content theft can be analyzed by algorithms as useless Content.

2- Keyword stuffing:

Keywords also are very important in ranking, but at the same time, adding too many keywords, makes Google analyze them, as keyword stuffing.

3- Over-use of Anchor Texts:

The overuse of Anchor Texts can cause Google Penalty.

4- Links:

Buying bad links, buying too many links, Hidden links, or Footer Links, all could be analyzed as a trickery way to rank, so you will be penalized.

5- Cloaking:

Cloaking means; displaying more than one version of a webpage, to the search engine robots, creating a lot of landing pages, and sneaky redirects, all have the same final result.

6- Over-use of Meta Keywords:

Meta Keywords are useful but do not add more than five of them per page.

7- Slow Speed:

The slow speed of a website can cause Google Penalty, and get your users bored.

8- Spam:

Spam Reports can cause Google Penalty.

9- Errors:

Errors on websites such as 404, 302, and 500, can be a reason for Google Penalty.

10 – Illegal Keyword: 

A good reason for the penalty is; using illegal Keywords, that can trick your users.

11- Spyware and viruses:

If your website contains Spyware or viruses, it will be penalized.

12- Over-using H1:

H1 tags help Google recognize what this page is about. Over-using H1 tags can be harmful too.

13- Links from other languages:

Yes, this is true, according to Google; users prefer to read in one language. Listing a link from a website with another language is bad behavior.

How to recover from Google Penalty?

Google Penalty is a bad experience, any website owner can face. You knew in this article; what is Google Penalty, below are some steps to recover from Google Penalty:

1- Remove bad links:

If you get panelized manually, use tools (Ahrefs for example) to view your backlinks, and to remove every bad link.

2- Fix the thin Content:

Delete the duplicate and stolen Content. If you want to republish content, please add a real new value before publishing. Tools like SEMrush can help you identify the thin or shallow content. It also can help you with Keywords. Never steal from another website, and report if your Content has been stolen.

3- Fix the Keyword issues: 

Tools like SEMrush and Google analytics help you with choosing the right keywords, so you do not need to stuff keywords. This trick was working in the past, but this is now.

4- Request help:

You can also ask Google to help or re-indexing your website.

5- Be patient:

Recovery takes time, so do not panic, and be patient.

How to avoid these long-term issues? 

To be honest, not all dropping down in ranking means Penalty, it is a competition dear, it grows day by day. Anyway if you are looking for someone to help you ranking safely; or recovering from a penalty; Vocus is always here for you. Keep in touch with us.