What is a Google Penalty?

Google analyses the web content of every website and then that website is ranked for a search engine. Google uses automated software which rates the content of a website. But Google also has human employees who read the website and rate it according to its content. Google basically analyses the Search Quality Rating of a website or blog.

When the Google instructors who check the web content, found any illegal content or content which does not match Google’s terms and policies or standard, they will just give the website a penalty. That penalty results in decreasing the search ranking of a website which automatically decreases the traffic or engagement of a website.

What are the types of Google Penalty?

Google Penalty is broadly classified under two specific categories.

1. Algorithmic Penalty – This is the technical penalty that has to be self handled as Google will not assist in any way. One needs to carefully asses the available algorithmic records and correct them using their own tools and knowledge. Learning in depth about Google Analytics right at the beginning can help a great deal in managing the Algorithmic Penalty.
2. Manual Penalty – Though shady SEO promotions and unmarked backlinks are the major causes of Manual Penalty, it is not very easy to correct the Penalty. It is essential to have a thorough one on one communication with the Google team and discuss the reasons for the failure and handle the issue accordingly

Don’t want a penalty? Follow the rules

The main reason for getting a penalty from Google is that the user does not follow the rules and regulations of Google. If you want to get far from the Google penalty then you should follow the rules otherwise you will get in trouble when got a penalty.

How to recover from a Google penalty?

Before talking about how to recover the Google penalty, there are some important things which are needed to tell you. The main misconception of people is that they consider Google manual penalty and algorithm as the same thing, but it is incorrect. An algorithm is different from a manual penalty. Here we will tell you about recovering from a manual penalty. There are so many types of penalties. We will tell you the fix of every manual penalty.

Cloaking and Sneaky Redirects

Cloaking and sneaky is a trick in which the owner of the website show different pages to Google and different pages to visitors. When a visitor clicks a search he is automatically redirected to a whole new page. The penalty given for this violation can affect a partial portion of a website or even the whole website.

Steps to Recovery:

1. Go to Google Search Console > Crawl > Fetch as Google, then fetch those pages which are affected by the penalty.
2. Have a look at fetched content and non-fetched and compare them.
3. If there is any difference between them, try to make them similar.
4. Check your all redirects and delete redirects which send the user to a new unknown website.
5. Submit a reconsideration request after fixing these issues.

Cloaking: First Click Free Violation

This cloaking is meant that a website is showing full content to Google but it is hiding full content from the viewers of that website, especially visitors coming from Google. Those websites who demands to register, subscription or any kind of log in too see full content is against the Google policies and can have a penalty for this violation. This can also affect the website partially or totally.

Steps to Recovery:

The article or any kind of content shown to visitors who are coming from Google must be shown the same content as to Google is shown. Make changes if need to be.

Submit a reconsideration request after fixing the issue.

Cloaked Images

Cloaking does not only apply to articles or links. Cloaking also applies to images. If the following actions are happening from the picture then it is considered as a cloaked image:

• Images that are obscured by another image.
• Images that are different from the image shown.
• If the image redirects a visitor to an unexpected destination.

Steps to Recovery:

1. The simplest fix of this penalty is that show the exact same image to Google as the users of your site.
2. Submit a reconsideration request after fixing the issue.

Hacked Websites

There are a lot of internet hackers who are constantly willing to exploit web management and to share their own content and links on them. This is also cloaked and is also difficult to fix. When Google notices that your website is hacked, it will just deliver you a simple message that your website is hacked. This also affects your reachability and engagement.

Steps to Recovery

1. First of all contact with your web hosting company and ask them to make a support team.
2. Disable your website for a temporary time to prevent more damage.
3. Use the search console to know the hacking type.
4. Know that which damage has been done to your website.
5. Identify the security flaws from which the hackers got the way to enter the website.
6. Clean your site to close the vulnerability that let the hacker in.
7. Request a review and ask Google to reconsider your hacked labelling.

Using plagiarism free content

Copyscape is a brilliant rendition for keeping your content spam or plagiarism free. Being cost effective and extremely user-friendly, Copyscape can easily detect even the slightest of Plagiarized data in the content and help one rectify it beforehand without any chance of future trouble.

So these were some of the recovery guides for the Google manual penalties.