{"id":1616,"date":"2020-07-19T08:36:49","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T06:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blackhatlinks.com\/blog\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2020-06-16T09:28:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T07:28:42","slug":"google-penalties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackhatlinks.com\/blog\/google-penalties\/","title":{"rendered":"Complete Google Penalties Guide [Fixes Included]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Complete Google Penalties Guide [Fixes Included]<\/h1>\n

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\"Google<\/p>\n

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Google penalties<\/strong> can be very scary.<\/p>\n

Losing your listing overnight on the search engine results page, along with your traffic and revenue can be devastating.<\/p>\n

It’s not just the dreaded Google manual penalties<\/strong> you need to look out for though: algorithm updates can slash your website’s metrics overnight as well.<\/p>\n

That’s why today we’re going to explain in detail how these penalties work and how you can recover from them as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Let’s start!<\/p>\n

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Types of Google Penalties<\/h2>\n

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As we mentioned before, Manual Google Penalties<\/strong> and Algorithm Penalties<\/strong> (also known as Algorithm Filters) are two completely different things, and each case requires different remediation approaches.<\/p>\n

Allow us to elaborate.<\/p>\n

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Google Manual Penalties<\/b><\/h3>\n

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\"Google<\/p>\n

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These penalties can affect your entire website, or certain sections\/pages.<\/p>\n

Most of these penalties are derived from abusive optimization (over the top keyword stuffing, really thin and spammy content, hidden text, etc.) or from buying crappy, low budget links.<\/p>\n

Sadly a common occurrence when you shop at places such as Fiverr, sketchy forums, and other freelancing platforms).<\/p>\n

In fact, certain niches such as pharma & gambling are so competitive, that these toxic links are purchased as part of \u201cnegative SEO attacks\u201d.<\/p>\n

These are usually launched to spring Google into manually penalizing their competitor’s website.<\/p>\n

Negative SEO attacks<\/strong> are not as common in most niches since there’s not as much money involved and the algorithms that rule said niches are not as punishing or easy to trigger.<\/p>\n

Either way, this is why you should only buy high quality PBN links<\/a> from proven professionals. Subpar, toxic links from inexperienced SEOs are not worth the trouble or money.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, these manual penalties can be lifted<\/strong> (and we’ll show you how), but there’s a particularly revealing quote from John Mueller, a Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst we’ve featured in other articles:<\/p>\n

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\"John<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s no \u201creset button\u201d for a domain, we don\u2019t even have that internally, so a manual review wouldn\u2019t change anything there. If there\u2019s a lot of bad history associated with that, you either have to live with it, clean it up as much as possible, or move to a different domain. I realize that can be a hassle, but it\u2019s the same with any kind of business, cleaning up a bad name\/reputation can be a lot of work, and it\u2019s hard to say ahead of time if it\u2019ll be worth it in the end.<\/i><\/p>\n

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This further proves that manual penalties are not permanent, but certain domains have abused Google’s loopholes for so long, (and in so many flagrant ways) that once they’ve been \u201ccleaned up\u201d they become shells of their former selves.<\/p>\n

Naturally, this also means that Google won’t give you back your #1 spot in the SERPs just because you cleaned up your act. So don’t expect that.<\/p>\n

Instead, expect to slowly regain your rankings with solid SEO copywriting and careful link building.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a look at algorithm filters\/penalties next.<\/p>\n

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Algorithmic Penalties<\/b><\/h3>\n

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Algorithmic Penalties are, technically speaking, Algorithmic Devaluations<\/strong>, and not actual penalties<\/strong> individually issued by Google.<\/p>\n

The effect is certainly negative though, which is why they’re often referred to that way.<\/p>\n

Google launches updates to their algorithms and sometimes they can “devalue” sites, meaning they can jump from Page 1 to Page 3 in the SERPs overnight, thus severely limiting their visibility and traffic.<\/p>\n

These can be particularly tricky to remedy because each update brings forth all sorts of changes that make it difficult to figure out why the rankings shift so dramatically.<\/p>\n

It’s usually not until at least a couple of months later that SEOs are able to piece together a pattern that establishes what the algorithmic update sought to fix.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an algorithmic update you might remember:<\/p>\n

Back in 2018 a major update rolled out, commonly referred to as the “Google E-A-T Update”, since it focused heavily on their Quality Raters Guidelines. This update featured major ranking shifts across several niches.<\/p>\n

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\"Google<\/p>\n

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Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) websites as well as websites in the pharmacy industry saw the biggest changes at the time, and it wasn’t until a few months later that SEOs figured what happened.<\/p>\n

Turns out, Google’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) guidelines had been updated and its algorithms changed to reflect this. Many websites that had failed to provide authoritative and trustworthy sources backed by experts in their fields lost their ranks.<\/p>\n

Google understood that these websites could impact people’s lives tremendously and that adding stricter quality controls was in their user’s best interest.<\/p>\n

Many others saw their website jump from page 2 all the way to the top spots in the SERPs. This is why it’s inaccurate to call them penalties (since people have certainly benefited from these changes in the past).<\/p>\n

In a way, it\u2019s a bit of a coin toss every time a major update rolls out. Best you can do is adhere to strict content quality standards, and you should be safe.<\/p>\n

However, because of their complicated nature, we’ll stick to teaching you how to avoid and fix manual penalties<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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How to Check for Google Penalties<\/h2>\n

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\"How<\/p>\n

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Finding out if your website has been manually penalized (or punished by recent algorithm updates) requires two free tools:<\/p>\n