A quick guide to various Google Penalties
Introduction
It simply doesn’t matter if your working on improving a small businesses SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and that business only employs say only one person, or alternatively your working on a site that is owned by a national company that employs thousands of people- one things for sure, the work must always be white hat.
If you are unsure as to what “white hat” means, it means that the company must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. If your business, or your SEO company is optimising for another search engine, then you must also follow the Webmaster Guidelines for that business as well.
If the business does not follow the Webmaster Guidelines, and white hat seo methods, then the business may incur a penalty. A penalty can normally come in one of two forms, an algorithmic penalty or a manual penalty.
Both can mean that the business drops in terms of where it ranks. So for example, lets say that you run a construction business here in Cardiff, South Wales, you may have been ranked in the top four positions in Google’s SERP’s.
Then once Googlebot and Google’s algorithm detected that you had a lot of spam backlinks, and it looks like this has been completed to try and improve your SEO, then Google will issue a penalty.
A penalty, such as a Google Penguin penalty will mean that your business can drop down the ranks.
So for instance, lets say your construction company hires the wrong SEO agency, they build what are called low-quality backlinks, then this could mean that the business incurs an algorithmic penalty.
This can sometimes mean that the business is removed from Google, but it can also mean for some businesses that the website drops in the SERP’s and sometimes it can take a long time for the business to recover.
Google has offered guidelines for how a business should undertake SEO, these guidelines are simply called the “Webmaster Guidelines”.
Yet, there’s a golden rule that all agencies must follow and that is this, the agency must implement quality work that will help the customer, and not just think about improving the businesses rankings.
So the website must follow white hat seo guidelines, plus it must also be a website that offers useful information. This means for example that the business should not just try and improve its seo by mentioning “builders” or “construction company’s” over and over again, instead the construction website should offer useful information.
So whether the agency is building backlinks, writing content marketing or simply changing the businesses meta titles and meta descriptions, all of the work must be white hat.
So what is a Google Penalty?
As you can imagine, a business that’s ranked at the top of Google will obviously attract more calls.
For example, a plumber that’s ranked #1 for say “emergency plumbers” is unlikely to be quiet.
So, if people are looking for the services or the products that your company offers, then if your business is ranked at the top of Google this is likely to help your business- that’s obvious right?
Well, yes, it is obvious- but what is much less obvious is that there are many seo agencies that are willing to cut corners, offer cheap seo prices, and bring about short term results which can later turn into a penalty.
And what do we mean by this?
Well, some businesses may for example build spam backlinks, which may sometimes for a very temporary blip in time improve where your business ranks.
Yet, as soon as Google’s algorithm deems this work as spam, and your website receives a penalty, your business could be removed from Google, which SEO’s call deindexing a website, or your website could drop down a few pages, so for example from page 1 to page 3.
So how does this occur?
Well, for many reasons, but generally its because the seo is low-quality, and often this is due to low-quality backlinks being built, or the content marketing being low-quality (Google Panda penalty) so for example it may contain a keyword that you want to rank for in a way where it reads as if the work is spam.
So for example, a skip hire business may mention “skip hire + name of city” over and over again, this work is likely to be deemed as spam.
Instead the marketing agency should instead focus on offering good quality advice, and this will help the businesses seo if the information is likely to help that businesses customers.
Algorithmic Penalties
Google’s algorithm can issue algorithmic penalties, so for example if the algorithm was to detect that the business is using duplicated content, then the algorithm can issue a penalty.
So for example, lets say that you run a business that sells electrical items, let’s say T.V’s, washing machines, and also microwaves.
Now your business has copied and pasted the product descriptions for every single product that you sell, and you have copied the product descriptions from the manufacturers website, well this is likely to result in your business having lower rankings.
What would be far better is for your company to work with your marketing business, and to write your own product descriptions, and to highlight the features that each product has, and if the customer is unlikely to know what it means, such as “4k television” then you could add extra information, so that the customer will know what this means.
So, if your business was to implement low-quality seo, then the algorithm may detect this, and this could mean your business incurs an algorithmic penalty, such as a Google Panda, or a Google Penguin penalty.
So all work, even right down to product descriptions must be white hat, if you are unsure how to do this then you should contact a Cardiff SEO company.
Manual Penalties
So, an algorithmic penalty is a penalty that’s issued by the algorithm, which is obviously not a real person, yet sometimes your company’s website may well be reviewed by Google, and if a Google employee deems the SEO work to be low-quality, or that your business has flouted its Webmaster guidelines, then your business may incur a manual penalty.
This is a penalty that’s issued to your business, and can also result in your business seeing its website move down the ranks, or removed from Google.
Google Panda Penalty
A really common type of penalty is the Google Panda penalty. Normally a business will incur a Panda penalty if the onsite seo is low-quality, so for example if you have used duplicated content.
So for example, lets say you hire a web designer, and they copy and paste all of the product descriptions from another website, this will result in your website having duplicate text.
This duplicated text could result in your website incurring a penalty, that’s because the work is not original.
If the work is not original, then the business could suffer from being ranked lower in the SERP’s.
So for example, lets say your about to start a business here in Cardiff, South Wales, your business will sell high end bikes and mountain bikes.
But your busy setting up your new shop, hiring staff and getting the company branding right, so when your web designer asks have you got the content marketing ready, you simply reply can you take the product descriptions directly from the bike manufactures website?
Which we would say is a bad idea, we say it’s a bad idea because even on the first crawl of Googlebot seeing the website, it will spot that the website is full of duplicated text, it will therefore deem the SEO as weak right from the very start.
So what we mean by this is Googlebot will crawl and index each page of your website, it will spot that the text, that’s the content marketing on each URL is duplicated. It will therefore deem the SEO work as low-quality right from the start.
So instead if the bike retailer come to us, we would recommend that the text is original, so that the text offers useful advice to your customers, this will take a lot longer than just copy and pasting text, yet if the business wants to improve its seo, and wants to be ranked on the first page of Google, then high-quality content marketing will be needed.
This means a copywriter at our agency would need to write each product description, yet when Googlebot then indexes our work, this work will be deemed as high-quality.
So this is why your business should avoid cheap seo prices, and low-quality work and choose an SEO agency Cardiff that will offer high-quality work.
Google Penguin Penalty
Another really common type of penalty is the Google Penguin penalty. A Google Penguin penalty is normally incurred if the business has low-quality backlinks.
Yet, fixing a Google Penguin penalty is normally a lot more complicated, this is because backlinks will need to be disavowed, new high-quality backlinks will need to be built.
High quality backlinks, which will improve your company’s seo are not easy to build, so you should only hire a high quality seo agency or company that can build backlinks in a white hat way.
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